Independent Self Research Articles

Examining identity crisis in Samina Ali’s Madras on Rainy Days

An identity crisis, a term devised by Erik Erikson, is a phase of rigorous study of different means of looking at oneself. Modern Indian English writers have been in the pursuit to restore order and meaning in their lives, especially the women. Women writers have presented their women protagonists as the one who are taking control of their lives, eventually, with or without the support of their family. Samina Ali is one such writer, who explores the identity of her characters in a Muslim community. The novel, Madras on Rainy Days determines the identity of a contemporary Muslim woman protagonist, Layla who is torn between her liberated life in the USA versus her controlling life in India. She faces several difficulties as she cannot be her independent self. She’s forcefully married to Sameer, whose real identity is revealed later by the end of the story. In search of her own home and identity, Layla chooses to stay in India as a brave and enlightened single woman rather than moving out to free America with her gay husband. This paper tends to discover in the text that how a character deals with the fluctuating notion of identity, by breaking free from the shackles of the dominating society. Keywords: Examination, Identity, Women, Self-expression, Modernization, Liberation

The learner identity of adolescents with trajectories of resilience: the role of risk, academic experience, and gender

In at-risk areas of social exclusion, a higher number of adolescents drop out of school. Dropout from compulsory education and early school leaving are associated with unemployment, poverty, and greater health problems, posing a significant threat to the youth’s development and wellbeing. Nevertheless, some students manage to pursue formal education even in high-risk areas, exhibiting resilience. Interwoven between the processes of risk and resilience, the students’ identity development plays a vital role. The present study aimed to analyze the learner identity of students who exhibit a resilience trajectory in areas at risk of social exclusion, and its relation to the degree of risk they face, their academic experience, and their gender. The sample consisted of 132 students from at-risk neighborhoods in Spain who successfully completed compulsory secondary education and continued beyond that level. To measure their academic selves, a modified version of the Twenty Statement Test (TST) was used, which was analyzed using a category system that included four dimensions: organization of the self, emotional valence, plane of action, and thematic reference. The results indicate the participants primarily used personal, positive, evaluative self-descriptions related to the academic world, mostly based on effort. A higher degree of risk was associated to more self-descriptions referring good relationships with others and class attendance, while higher academic experience was associated to more independent selves. The study also found several gender differences. The implications of these findings for research and social intervention in at-risk contexts are discussed.

Self-Leadership dan Proactive Behavior pada Mahasiswa MBKM

This research aims to determine the relationship between self-leadership and proactive behavior in students participating in the MBKM program. This research uses quantitative correlational methods. The sampling technique used saturated sampling or total sampling with a sample of 135 students. The subjects in this research were students participating the MBKM program. The instruments in this research are the independent self- leadership scale and the proactive behavior scale. The data analysis technique uses simple linear regression analysis and shows a positive and significant relationship. This means that the higher the level of self-leadership a student has, the higher the student's proactive behavior will be. Keywords: MBKM, Proactive Behavior, Self-Leadership

Communication rules regarding support seeking in patients with a physical illness, according to people with a Surinamese or a Dutch cultural background

ObjectivePeople with different cultural backgrounds can evaluate the appropriateness of direct and indirect support seeking differently. In this study we explored how direct and indirect communication rules for verbal support seeking by patients with diabetes were perceived among Dutch and Surinamese female participants, and whether the appropriateness differed for the ingroup, outgroup and intercultural support seeker-support provider interactions. MethodsThe study applied a 2 (direct versus indirect support seeking) X 2 (Surinamese patient versus Dutch patient) X 2 (Surinamese support provider versus Dutch support provider)-design. Dutch and Surinamese participants (N = 686) were randomly assigned to one of the eight conditions in which they were provided with a depiction of the patient, the direct or indirect request for help, and the help provider. The main outcome was the rated appropriateness of the help-seeking request in the specific context. ResultsThe results revealed a significant main effect of communication style: both, Surinamese and Dutch participants evaluated the direct help-seeking as more appropriate compared to indirect help-seeking, independent of patient or provider culture. This effect was particularly strong in participants who scored high on the individual difference in independent self, as shown by a significant interaction. DiscussionLiterature usually identifies that Surinamese and Dutch populations have different cultural backgrounds and values that express themselves in different attitudes, in general more collectivistic and more individualistic, respectively. However, with regard to help seeking preferences the study results did not verify this expectation. These findings underscore the importance of the support providers’ role in assessing and understanding the individuals’ communication style with regard to help-seeking, rather than assuming communication preferences on the basis of cultural background.

Ideological Alienation in the Novel "Women of the Moon" by Jokha Al-Harthi

Objectives: The research aims to investigate ideological appropriation embedded within implicit structures, revealing societal ideologies and the role of women.
 Methods: To achieve its objective, the research adopts an analytical descriptive cultural approach rooted in the text, employing various analytical functions, to elucidate what remains marginalized within this dominance. It involves utilizing text archaeology and establishing a network of relationships between the text and society at various levels and linking them to the hypotheses of ideological appropriation.
 Results: The study highlights the role of ideology in appropriation, the state of exclusion, subjugation of the oppressed self, and the appropriation of consciousness. This occurs at a moment when the novelist attempts to provide an alternative by constructing awareness and an independent self that preserves the values and customs of society in which values are not lost, and morals are not appropriated by the occupying colonizer. The events in the novel unfold implicitly in two directions: the quest for the self-appropriated by the male other, and the lost identity appropriated by the colonizer.
 Conclusions: The study seeks to uncover the various concepts of ideological appropriation, defining its concepts, forms, and hidden implicit patterns which take three directions: the ideological, representing the core focus of appropriation and the exclusion of thought and self-expression; the self-appropriation, symbolizing the stage of self-denial and the appropriation of being; and cultural appropriation, which assumes the most oppressive direction by ensnaring individuals in a spiral of ignorance and cognitive impoverishment, as evident in the concept of domination.

Consumer self-construal modulates the relevance of E-tail socialness

PurposeThe growth in social content such as video facilitates consumer exposure to social information at e-tail settings. Research has recommended enhancing the e-store socialness. Focusing on focal consumer outcomes (flow and purchase intentions), the current research delineates a boundary condition, proposing that e-tail socialness improves outcomes when the consumer interdependent self, rather than the independent self, is activated.Design/methodology/approachThe experimental approach is employed to test the research thesis. Two experiments (N1 = 303 Females 42.4%; N2 = 387 Females 51.4%) that used different manipulation for socialness and sample frames (USA and Canadian) are performed. Analysis of variance was applied.FindingsThe results generally support the research thesis, suggesting that e-tail socialness enhances consumer flow and purchase intentions when the interdependent self is activated. The effect, however, is marginal for segments with high brand preference.Practical implicationsAs more information increase overload and reduce decision quality, e-tail practitioners should focus on providing social information predominately for consumers whose interdependent self is activated. This recommendation is particularly relevant for segments with low brand preference.Originality/valueSo far, studies recommend enhancing the e-store socialness, or increasing the social volume, to achieve better outcomes. Such research stream is giving rise to the “social is better in e-tail” conventional wisdom. The current work contributes by delineating a boundary condition based on consumer self-construal. This work suggests that the use of online socialness is fruitful predominantly for interdependent consumers.

Positive experiences in emotional labor: Deep acting, symbolic boundaries, and labor autonomy

One important approach to studying emotional labor is to focus on its negative impact from the perspective of organizational psychology. Less attention is paid to the positive effect. This paper adopts a cultural sociology approach to study how “maternity helpers” use boundary work, such as “deep acting” and constructing symbolic boundaries, to produce positive experiences in the process of emotional labor. In deep acting, they actively distort the boundaries of the private space, introduce a family-oriented narrative, and participate in a certain amount of “philanthropic labor”. They are also engaged in constructing symbolic boundaries by promoting themselves as “childcare experts”, in order to get the upper hand when interacting and negotiating with clients. Both boundary work strategies constitute an attempt to challenge social boundaries by constructing symbolic boundaries. This paper argues that the concept of autonomy in emotional labor should adopt a relational approach, thus accounting for the ability for the laborers to autonomously choose strategies that can produce equal and meaningful social relations, rather than merely focusing on the independent self with clear boundaries or the ability to control the labor process. Nevertheless, autonomy in emotional labor is constrained by both institutional and cultural conditions.

Woman, Mother, and the Other: Unraveling the Matrix of Feminine Self

A woman as a mother in Indian society is a subject of great reverence. The mother is considered an embodiment of the divine mother goddess. But due to the pronatalist Indian social structure, a woman has less value outside of marriage and motherhood. The question arises here—as a personified goddess, is she equally valued in her real life and free to make her procreative choices as an independent Self? There is continued inequality and persistent sexism between men and women that structure the way they are viewed in society. Men construct the idea of women from their own perspective instead of what women are in reality, expressing themselves as the subject and women as “the other.” Ancient scriptures state that a woman is created to facilitate men in the act of procreation. For this, society further imposes various restrictions on her subjectivity through social practices to control her sexuality and maternal body. This paper explores and examines the social layers of a woman in general, and the way mythology perpetuates the idea and influences her life even today. Illustrations of various mythological texts glorify her position solely as subjugated procreator and caregiver, not as a woman as self but as mother and the other. In the contemporary social context of globalization and the consequential challenges presented to the traditional ways of life, the contentious issues in relation to these texts will be taken up for discussion and analysis. This paper concludes with caution that a real woman cannot be seen as the personification of goddesses in relation to the oppressive elements of a patriarchal society. Her pseudo-glorification merely unravels her enslaved otherness, and cannot be her empowered Self.

Cultural Variation in Behavioral Correlates of Cortical Thickness among 9-10-Year-Old Children

Background: One of the main characteristics that differentiate Asian and European cultures is self-construal, the former has a higher tendency to have interdependent, and the latter tends to have an independent self. Recent structural brain imaging studies have shown that the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) is thinner in Asian than European individuals, attributed to a need for reduction of reward relevant to self to maximize the reward relevant to the group. There is more to find out about differential cortical thickness and behavioral correlates across these cultural groups Aim: This study was performed to investigate the associations between cultural group membership, age, cortical thickness, and two sets of reward-related behaviors (e.g., reward responsiveness and prosocial behaviors) in a national sample of 9/10-year-old children in the U.S. Materials and Methods: For this cross-sectional study, we used demographic, socioeconomic, structural, and behavioral data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Our analytical sample included 5942 American children between the ages of 9 and 10 who were either European (n=5741) or Asian (n=201). The cortical thickness for various Regions Of Interest (ROIs) was measured using Structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (sMRI). Two aspects of the behavioral profile, reward sensitivity, and prosocial behaviors, were also measured using self-report data. As a proxy of self-construal, culture was the independent variable or the moderator variable, depending on the model. Mixed-effects regression models were used for data analysis to adjust for nested data across families and study sites. Results: In the overall sample, asian children had a smaller thickness of cortical regions across all ROIs than European children. Age did not interact with culture on cortical thickness, suggesting a similar rate of pruning across cultures. Culture showed statistically significant interactions with cortical thickness across ROIs within and beyond PFC on children’s reward responsiveness and prosocial behaviors, indicating stronger associations for Asian than European children. Conclusion: Compared to European children, Asian children show lower cortical thickness across ROIs, a phenomenon that is not limited to PFC and is not due to a differential rate of age-related pruning. There are stronger associations between the thickness of several cortical areas with prosocial behaviors and reward responsiveness in Asian children relative to European children, extending the existing literature on culture, cerebral cortex, and reward salience. Our findings support the hypothesis that Asian children’s cortical volume changes are a cultural adaptation to maximize conformity and harmony with the group in Asian culture by reducing the relevance of reward salience of self and maximizing it for the community. More research is needed on cultural differences in behavioral correlates of structural and functional measures of cortical regions among European and Asian children.

한국 아이돌 뮤직비디오에 나타나는 변증법적 여성서사 연구

The purpose of this study is to examine the dialectical female narrative that appears in the music video of the girl group “Red Velvet” through Hegel's dialectic. In the red velvet song with the velvet concept targeted in this study, “Women's narrative,” in which women become the subject of narrative and express the self-realization of the female subject, is a central element. Macroscopically, these songs form a “These-Antithese-Synthese” relationship, and epicly, they consist of a “divide-integration-divide-integration” aspect. In general, “These” is a hesitation to return to a patriarchal and male-centered society, and “Antithese” is symbolized by a determination to overcome this hesitation and build an independent and independent self. In other words, in the case of “divide”, hesitation was resolved or completed without being overcome, and in the case of “integration”, hesitation was overcome and self-identity was found. Given that the relationship between the four songs ends in an anti-harmony relationship, it can be seen that the female community represented by Red Velvet overcame this hesitation, solidified its identity, and achieved self-realization. This logic of “These-Antithese-Synthese” in Red Velvet's music video can be expanded further from Red Velvet to a metaphor for the situation that girl groups face in Korean society. For girl groups aimed at commercialism, feminism tended to be taboo in itself, but since the mid-2010s, gender issues have emerged as socio-cultural issues, and girl groups have also begun to change. Girl group members show direct or indirect support for feminism, and the agency that plans girl groups has also introduced girl crush and girl group that advocates feminist concepts. However, this move remains at the commercial level, and the girl group's utterance on feminism is becoming more cautious than before. As such, the situation facing girl groups in Korean society is very complicated, so girl groups are constantly repeating their attitude of conformity and rejection to the patriarchal society. When there is constant reflection and concern about feminism socially, girl groups will be able to add sincerity to their music.

Vicious Infants: Dangerous Childhoods in Antebellum U.S. Literature by Laura Soderberg (review)

Reviewed by: Vicious Infants: Dangerous Childhoods in Antebellum U.S. Literature by Laura Soderberg Ellen Butler Donovan (bio) Vicious Infants: Dangerous Childhoods in Antebellum U.S. Literature, by Laura Soderberg. U of Massachusetts P, 2021. Vicious Infants is not a book that discusses children's literature. However, scholars who take a childhood studies approach will find that this book enriches our understanding of how childhood was viewed and used in the early nineteenth century in the US. In four dense chapters, Soderberg pairs literary and extra-literary texts to examine childhoods that were viewed as threatening to social stability, that is, texts that depict children in ways that reveal social and political anxieties. While this idea is not new or radical, challenging the assumption that all childhoods were White, protected, and pastoral continues to be necessary. In the first chapter, "Bound Children: Sidestepping the Social Contract in Apprenticeship Literature," Soderberg reads William Apess's autobiography, A Son of the Forest (1829), and Harriet Wilson's semi-autobiographical novel, Our Nig (1859), through apprenticeship contracts. Soderberg traces the history of legal minority back to William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England in order to highlight the status of the child as unable to control one's body and therefore unable to enter into contracts, with the exception of indenture, in which the future adult retrospectively agrees to the terms of the contract (a kind of prolepsis). Soderberg suggests that this same prolepsis is characteristic of the bildungsroman, using this similarity to juxtapose the literary texts and the apprenticeship documents. The ostensible goal of both the bildungsroman genre and apprenticeship documents is to move individuals from dependence (public dependence in Soderberg's examples of apprenticeship indenture and in the situations Apess and Wilson depict) to independent, socially assimilable adults. Yet Soderberg highlights the ways in which indenture both in the apprenticeship documents and the narratives by Apess and Wilson prevented independence, forcing the eventual adults to remain dependent on public welfare. In the cases of Apess and Wilson, the indenture that both protagonists experience does not result in the conventional ending of a bildungsroman—an independent self fully integrated into society. Instead, due to their racial identities, both protagonists exist outside the social organization. The second chapter, "The Incorrigible Child: Juvenile Delinquency and the Fearful Rise of the Child Self," examines records from the New York House of Refuge (essentially juvenile prison) and child-rearing [End Page 192] advice from domestic manuals by Amos Bronson Alcott, Lydia Maria Child, Heman Humphrey, and John A. Gere. Soderberg again traces back the use of the phrase "incorrigible child" to Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England and further posits that in antebellum America, the term became an assertion "beyond interrogation by any other parties" (51). She concludes, "Under this model, criminalized children defy scrutiny because their bodies have been marked as unreadable" (51). Soderberg's argument in support of this conclusion illustrates a weakness that pervades the work: though Soderberg references specific sources, her discussion is too cursory to be convincing. More useful, though unsurprising, is her observation that inscrutability was most often ascribed to immigrant children and urban child laborers in factories who were beyond the reach of parental oversight. Of most interest in this discussion is the analysis of the distinction between a child's interiority and exteriority. Drawing on the domestic manuals, Soderberg shows that corporal discipline, when necessary, was designed to shape the child's interiority. However, the profiles of inmates in the House of Refuge repeatedly describe the interiority of "incorrigible" children as "inscrutable," consequently out of reach of any disciplinary influence and therefore dangerous. In the third chapter, "Prodigious Births: Black Infancy, Antebellum Medicine, and the Racialization of Heredity," Soderberg juxtaposes Sir Jonah Barrington's "Skinning a Black Child" (1827) and Henry Clay Lewis's "Stealing a Baby" (1843), comic stories that circulated widely within medical discourse and which sought to separate White paternity from Black bodies, with Susan Paul's The Memoir of James Jackson, the Attentive and Obedient Scholar, Who Died in Boston, October 31, 1833, Aged Six Years and Eleven Months (1835), thought to be the first biography by an African American...

Behavioral and electrophysiological analyses of self-referential neural processing in major depressive disorder.

Cognitive theories suggest that patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) constantly negatively evaluate their self-referential information. Unlike Westerners with an independent self, self-representation is strongly influenced by cultural differences; the Chinese self may include others (interdependent self). This study uses a self-referential effect task combined with event-related potentials (ERP), and 34 patients with MDD and 54 healthy controls (HC) were asked to judge whether an adjective was suitable for describing the self, mother, or a public person, followed by an unexpected recognition task. They were required to judge whether a word was presented during the encoding phase. The results reveal that during the encoding phase, for both self- and mother-referential adjectives, patients with MDD endorsed fewer positive adjectives and more negative adjectives than the HCs. During the recognition phase, both groups showed a typical task effect (self=mother>other), while patients recognized more self-referential adjectives than the HCs. ERP data reveal that patients with MDD show larger P2 amplitudes during the encoding stage than healthy individuals. During the recognition phase, negative adjectives evoked larger P2 amplitudes in patients than in HCs under the self-referential condition. These findings shed important light on the information processes that may contribute to our understanding of depression and may offer implications for clinical interventions.

How Abusive Supervision via Rumination Leads to Goal Failure, Negative Affectivity, and Leadership Ineffectiveness: The Role of Reconciliation, Blaming, and Guilt, Complemented by Independent Self Construal

How Abusive Supervision via Rumination Leads to Goal Failure, Negative Affectivity, and Leadership Ineffectiveness: The Role of Reconciliation, Blaming, and Guilt, Complemented by Independent Self Construal

근대 유럽에서 풍경화의 발흥과 진화

This article aims to introduce how European landscape painting emerged in ancient times, gradually revived during the early modern period, and finally developed into an independent subject or genre, which later affects modern East Asian landscape paintings. Landscape paintings in Europe originate from the Minoan civilization of the Aegean sea around B.C. 1450. It also appears in a form of realistic style ‘painting within a painting’ in Roman wall paintings from Campania since B.C. 80. Although this tradition was neglected by the Christianity-oriented medieval art from the 4th to 14th century, it reappeared during the mid-14th century. As the Renaissance Humanism of the 15th and 16th century raised the awareness of the independent self, nature was objectified as a coexisting companion and began to be represented in a vision-based way.BR From the early 15th century, landscape painting was revived as the background of paintings of Flanders, Florence, and Venice. Later in 1473, those background materials began to appear on the canvas solely, signaling the rebirth of a ‘sheer landscape painting.’ Soon after, it developed into both watercolor landscape painting and oil painting landscape painting, and became an independent painting subject accompanied by the emergence of a subject specialist in the 16th century. In the Netherlands during the 17th century, with the support of the bourgeoisie, realistic and naturalistic landscape paintings thrived and landscape became a major genre in painting, eventually leading to the establishment of the tradition of modern landscape painting. Meanwhile, classical landscape painting flourished in Rome and became the canon of modern academic art. From the 18th century to the early 19th century, landscape painting was associated with Naturalism and Romanticism in England, while being the major theme of the Barbizon school in France. Eventually, landscape expanded as a part of the visual culture. On the other hand, German Romantic painters deviated from the customs of landscape paintings to elevate the spirituality of landscape, which combines the perception and mind as religious paintings does through the spiritual eye. After the mid-19th century, landscape, along with nude, became one of the most favored subjects in modern painting and photography, followed by the emergence of Impressionism which led landscape painting to its peak period.

Influence of Confucianism and Taoism on self-construal and thinking style: an intervention study

ABSTRACT Using original texts of Confucian and Taoist primary classics as materials, we conducted an eight-week educational intervention experiment combining classroom teaching and post-class reflection as cultural manipulation. Ninety-four sixth-grade students from three parallel mainstream classes were randomly assigned to three intervention groups, comprising two experimental groups (Confucian and Taoist values interventions) and a control group (natural science intervention). The results suggest that the Confucian intervention had a positive effect on interdependent self and holistic thinking, the Taoist intervention had a positive effect on independent self and holistic thinking, and the natural science intervention promoted analytical thinking.

Narrative identity among people with disabilities in the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic: The interdependent self

This study examines narrative identity among a large, diverse sample of people with disabilities (PWDs) in the United States during the “second wave” of the Covid-19 pandemic (October-December 2020). The study relied on abductive analyses, combining a purely inductive phase of inquiry followed by two rounds of investigation that filtered inductive insights through three theoretical lenses: social-ecological theory, the theory of narrative identity, and perspectives from the interdisciplinary field of disability studies. The central result was the identification of a particular configuration of self, one that was demonstrably interdependent with both immediate interpersonal contexts and with broader cultural contexts. This interdependent self was interpreted in both positive and negative ways by PWDs. These findings invite future inquiry into commonplace conceptualizations of an independent self at the center of personality research and suggest that dominant conceptualizations of “the good life” may overly emphasize independence.

No‐self and compassion: Nietzsche and Buddhism

AbstractThe article examines two claims made by Antoine Panaïoti: (1) That both Nietzsche and Buddhists denounce the self as a misleading fiction. (2) That Buddhist compassion is close to a “compassion of strength” that Nietzsche approves. This article agrees with (1) and disagrees with (2). The descriptive metaphysical commitments of Nietzsche and Buddhism are subordinate to their divergent normative projects. Both reject a single, enduring, and independent self; but where Mahāyāna Buddhism advocates care or compassion toward all sentient beings, Nietzsche questions the value of compassion, holding that suffering is not bad in itself. Some recent commentators suggest that a text by the Buddhist philosopher Śāntideva offers an argument from “no‐self” to universal compassion. Nietzsche disputes this connection; and Śāntideva's Madhyamaka position, in which nothing has an intrinsic nature, cannot easily counter Nietzsche's claim that suffering is not intrinsically bad. Nietzsche's privileging of states of “becoming,” “discovering,” or “creating” oneself sets him deeply at odds with Buddhism. For Buddhists the fundamentally problematic attitude is a pre‐theoretical sense of self, “egoism,” or “self‐grasping” which is at the root of human craving. Agreeing with the philosophical claim that there is no self is not sufficient to dispel this pre‐theoretical orientation.

The Independent Parasite: Mosca’s Theatrical Service in Volpone

This article explores the relationship between Volpone and Mosca as a master-servant bond grounded on roleplaying and theatricality. I argue that Mosca’s growing importance as an actor within Volpone’s theatrical schemes for wealth acquisition lead Mosca to envision detachment from his master and to gain an independent self. Mosca’s independence is legally recognized by the Venetian authorities only for a moment in the final act before he is discovered and punished. Notwithstanding its conservative ending, the play reveals paths of advancement for the parasite through deceit and theatricality. In addition, Mosca’s soliloquies reveal an introspective mind that delights in his role of parasite. I relate this introspection to a form of subjectivity arising from the precarious employment of household servants in early modern London, which prompted their adaptation to a variety of roles. My argument examines early modern texts that put forth an ideology of service and that discuss duplicity and the parasite. I specifically delve into the figure of the parasite in Gervase Markham’s A health to the gentlemanly profession of seruingmen and in Jonson’s Discoveries as well as into the the concept of “eye-service” and parasitical service in William Gouge’s Of Domesticall Duties to draw connections between the anxiety of social mobility found in these texts and the rise of Mosca in Jonson’s play. Through Mosca’s rise and fall in the play, Jonson, I argue, shows the possibilities but also the limits of social mobility for servants in the transitional period of early-seventeenth-century London.

Luxury symbolism, self-congruity, self-affirmation and luxury consumption behavior: a comparison study of China and the US

PurposeDespite the growing research into luxury symbolism and its influence on consumer behavior, few studies have investigated the underlying psychological processes that occur in different cultural contexts. This study investigates the relationships among luxury symbolism, psychological underpinnings of self-congruity, self-affirmation and customer loyalty, especially regarding how these relationships differ between consumers in China and those in the US.Design/methodology/approachSample data were collected through surveys administered to 653 participants (327 in China and 326 in the US). A multi-group structural equation model was adopted to examine the conceptual model and proposed hypotheses.FindingsThe results show that luxury symbolism positively influences self-consistency, social consistency, social approval and self-esteem, and subsequently impacts self-affirmation and customer loyalty. However, for US consumers, self-esteem and social approval have significantly negative impacts on self-affirmation, while for Chinese consumers, social approval has no significant impact on self-affirmation. The authors also find that interdependent self-construal positively moderates the relationship between luxury symbolism, and social approval and social consistency. Independent self-construal positively moderates the relationship between luxury symbolism and self-consistency, and negatively influences the relationship between luxury symbolism and self-esteem.Originality/valueBased on the theory of self-congruity and self-affirmation, this study fills a literature gap by revealing the psychological underpinnings regarding luxury symbolism and customer loyalty. It extends extant studies in luxury consumption by introducing self-construal (independent self vs interdependent self) as an important cultural moderator in luxury symbolism. This paper provides insights for luxury practitioners to create efficient marketing strategies by satisfying consumers' psychological needs in different cultures.

Outside the “Cultural Binary”: Understanding Why Latin American Collectivist Societies Foster Independent Selves

Cultural psychologists often treat binary contrasts of West versus East, individualism versus collectivism, and independent versus interdependent self-construal as interchangeable, thus assuming that collectivist societies promote interdependent rather than independent models of selfhood. At odds with this assumption, existing data indicate that Latin American societies emphasize collectivist values at least as strongly as Confucian East Asian societies, but they emphasize most forms of independent self-construal at least as strongly as Western societies. We argue that these seemingly “anomalous” findings can be explained by societal differences in modes of subsistence (herding vs. rice farming), colonial histories (frontier settlement), cultural heterogeneity, religious heritage, and societal organization (relational mobility, loose norms, honor logic) and that they cohere with other indices of contemporary psychological culture. We conclude that the common view linking collectivist values with interdependent self-construal needs revision. Global cultures are diverse, and researchers should pay more attention to societies beyond “the West” and East Asia. Our contribution concurrently illustrates the value of learning from unexpected results and the crucial importance of exploratory research in psychological science.