A Cultural Psychology of Agency: Morality, Motivation, and Reciprocity

Abstract

We highlight the need to culturally broaden psychological theories of social development in providing an overview of our programs of cross-cultural research on interpersonal morality, motivation, and reciprocity. Our research demonstrates that whereas Americans tend to treat interpersonal morality as a matter of personal choice, Indians tend to treat it as a role-related duty. Furthermore, Americans associate greater satisfaction with acting autonomously than with acting to fulfill social expectations, whereas Indians associate high levels of satisfaction with both types of cases. We also demonstrate that cultural variation exists in reliance on communal norms versus reciprocal exchange norms in everyday social support interactions among American, Indian, and Japanese populations, with these norms providing a background for contrasting experiences of agency. In conclusion, we highlight the contributions of cultural research to basic psychological theory. Although cultural research provides greater awareness of diversity in psychological functioning, its fundamental value is to contribute new insights into the theoretical formulations and methodological stances adopted in the discipline more generally.

The developmental and cultural psychology of free will

“…Nevertheless, striking cultural differences exist. Moreover, they seem to emerge most often when personal considerations are in conflict with moral, social‐normative, or interpersonal concerns (Miller & Bersoff, ; Miller, Goyal, & Wice, ). Considering the evidence available to children as they attempt to learn about personal and interpersonal causes of behavior, these beliefs are variable for good reason.…”

“…Thus, they interpret the experience of self‐control as an internal struggle (and this could, over time, be reinforcing the link between desires and willpower). Children in Singapore, China, and Peru may instead interpret their struggle as externally driven by norms or expectations of others, or rather, as some theorists suggest (e.g., Lamm et al, ; Miller et al, , ), through a model of self that aligns internal desires with external expectations…”

Self‐ and other‐evaluative moral emotions in prosocial contexts: A comparison of Chinese and Canadian adolescents

“…However, in Eastern cultures that endorse an interdependent self, the prosocial action is viewed as a normative obligation (Miller, ). Thus, acting or failing to act prosocially is a greater source of personal satisfaction or shame (self‐evaluative emotions) in Western cultures (Miller, Goyal, & Wice, ). In the present study, we found that prosocial actions triggered stronger self‐evaluative emotional reactions in Canadian middle and late adolescents.…”

Mindfulness and the cultural psychology of personhood: Challenges of self, other, and moral orientation in Haiti

“…From a cultural pscyhological perspective, what I describe as Haitian “other-directedness” can be seen to reflect a relational/interdependent modality of self in which principles of action regulation prioritize external contingencies, and in which persons need to actively adjust their own behaviors to social constraints (Kitayama et al., 2007, p. 142; see also Miller, Goyal, & Wice, 2017). Haitian resistance to the inner self-directed meanings of mindfulness can thus be read as an reflection of their relational modality of self that leads them to prioritize consideration of expectations and needs of others in social situations—a mode of self-regulation that may be considered especially valuable when the sociocultural context itself is characterized by uncertainty, contingency, and precarity—as it often is in Haiti.…”