The Self and Social Behavior in Differing Cultural Contexts

By Harry C. Triandis

(A Reaction Paper)

The study of self has always been a very broad topic, as there are many concepts relating to it
created by many researchers and one of them is Professor Triandis wherein he created an article
entitled “The Self and Social Behavior in Differing Cultural Contexts”. He tackled the self which is
based on the aspects of individualism and collectivism that shows an individual's role in the
society; in which individualism depicts western culture while collectivism depicts eastern culture. In
his article, the child-rearing pattern is one of the aspects that is correlated with how the self is
developed into individualism or collectivist culture.

In his article, it was mentioned that there are two types of families; such as families that
emphasize “finding yourself” and families that emphasize “what other people will think about you”.
Such aspects just show’s us the difference in culture in which would result in opposite thoughts that
would focus on one’s self and as a group.

It is true that families from the east tend to have a big family in which they make many rules to
observe peace in the family, while families from the west have a smaller number of members which
results in the child having the opportunity to do his or her own thing. But he failed to mention that in
eastern culture when a family has an only child they tend to spoil the child that causes less
autonomy for the child, while in western culture when a family has a big number of members, the
child in the family would still result in having individualistic thoughts. It just shows that it is not just
based on the number or size of the family but instead it is based on how the child was raised.

Child-rearing in western culture “emphasizes self-reliance, independence, finding yourself, and

self-actualization” and this pattern of raising a child resulted in them having individualistic thoughts,
while child-rearing in eastern culture “emphasizes conformity, obedience, and reliability” that
resulted in the child to have collectivism thoughts.

Eastern and western thought differ in many things and an individual's individualistic and collective
thoughts are not just based on how large the family is but is based on the child-rearing pattern in
developing the cultural thoughts of a person, and this aspect just shows the roles of an individual in
society. Professor Triandis’ article really gave me an insight into some of the reasons why western
people prefer to be self-reliant which is the opposite of us, but at the same time, I personally prefer
reading articles with simple words which is the opposite of this article. But nevertheless, his article
was good.
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