Culture‐Inclusive Theories of Self and Social Interaction: The Approach of Multiple Philosophical Paradigms

Abstract

In view of the fact that culture-inclusive psychology has been eluded or relatively ignored by mainstream psychology, the movement of indigenous psychology is destined to develop a new model of man that incorporates both causal psychology and intentional psychology as suggested by Vygotsky (1927). Following the principle of cultural psychology: "one mind, many mentalities" (Shweder et al., 1998), the Mandala Model of Self (Hwang, 2011a,b) and Face and Favor Model (Hwang, 1987, 2012) were constructed to represent the universal mechanisms of self and social interaction that can be applied to any culture; both models can be used as conceptual frameworks for analyzing mentalities of people in any given culture. Taking research works from Foundations of Chinese Psychology: Confucian Social Relation as exemplars (Hwang, 2012), this article illustrates how to construct cultureinclusive theories of Confucianism by multiple philosophical paradigms. The mechanism of culture-inclusive theory can be applied to explain qualitative research findings on lifeworld events of people in a particular society. It can also be utilized to predict results of quantitative research conducted to verify theoretical propositions in the scientific microworld by empirical methods. Keywords: Mandala Model of Self, Face and Favor Model, culture-inclusive theories, multiple philosophical paradigmsIn my first article in this special issue (Hwang, 2014), I discussed the philosophical grounds of critical realism (CR) and analytical dualism for constructing universal mechanisms and culture-inclusive theories in psychology. In this article, I will present my Mandala Model of Self, as well as my Face and Favor model to show how they may serve as a new "model of man" for an integration of culture and psychology. Both models are supposed to be universal mechanisms containing components that incorporate a certain compelling idea of culture.

How Can Indigenous Research Contribute to Universal Knowledge? An Illustration with Research on Interpersonal Harmony

“…Indigenous ideas may be analyzed together with ideas from other cultural traditions to generate theoretical innovation. Recently, Hwang (2015) advocated that researchers should use multiple philosophical paradigms to construct culture-inclusive theories. He demonstrated how this approach can be adopted to develop culture-inclusive theories of self and social interaction representing both the universal mind of humans and the specific mentality of people in a given culture.…”

Towards a Cultural Psychology: Meaning and Social Practice as Key Elements

“…In this sense, Boesch (1996), Bruner (1990Bruner ( , 1996 or Cole (1996), for example, speak about situated action and Shweder considers that intentional worlds or objects have no natural reality beyond activities (Shweder 1990). Thus, to the intentional aspect of behavior, they assign: action (Boesch, 1996(Boesch, , 1997Bruner, 1990;Cole, 1996;Eckensberger, 2014;Hwang, 2014) or its meaning (Bruner, 1990), play the role of connecting link between culture and individual. e) Authors from different cultural approaches accept an interactive conception of the former relation.…”

Editorial: Eastern Philosophies and Psychology: Towards Psychology of Self-Cultivation

“…Based on rich experience of developing Chinese indigenous psychology in Taiwan for more than 30 years, Hwang proposed a unique epistemological strategy for constructing culture-inclusive theories of psychology which consists of two steps: First, he constructed a Mandala model of self (Hwang, 2011, 2015a) and a Face and Favor model of social interaction (Hwang, 1987, 2012). Because these two models are supported to be universal, the second step of his strategy is using them as frameworks to analyze any cultural system in opposition to the pan-cultural dimensional approach of reductionism prevalent in mainstream psychology (Hwang, 2015b).…”

“…Following Hwang's (2015a,b) strategy, Wu conceptualized the process of cultivating the ideal self in Confucian education on the basis of her cultural-semantic analysis of the “ Lessons for Learning ” (Xue-Ji) in the Classic of Rites (Liji). Fwu et al studied the mediating role of self-exertion on the effects of effort on learning virtues and emotional distress after academic failure; Chen et al examined high-school teachers' beliefs about effort and their attitudes toward struggling and smart students.…”