Hello, I’m Wang Fang. We continue discussing culture. Consider anthropologist Francis Hsu’s description of American and Chinese homes in Americans and Chinese: Passages to Differences (1981):

“American houses usually have yards, large or small, with low shrubs but rarely high walls. Most Chinese homes have high enclosing walls; only the roof can be seen outside, and sturdy gates separate the courtyard from passersby’s view. Indoors, Americans emphasize personal space. Private space is inviolable: parents have no freedom in a child’s room, and children cannot enter parents’ territory without permission. In Chinese homes, private rights barely exist; parents interfere with children, and children use parents’ belongings. Americans maintain strict individual boundaries inside the home but little boundary between home and outside. Chinese households lack internal boundaries but isolate themselves from the outside behind high walls and double gates.”

For Hsu, this difference extends beyond architecture and understandings of home to American and Chinese culture (Chiu & Hong, 2006).

His vivid account captures a fascinating East–West difference in relations between self and others. On one side, group boundaries are blurred but boundaries between individuals are clear and strict. On the other, a high, strong wall divides insiders from outsiders, while inside it group members are intimate and undifferentiated. Today we askhow culture shapes our construction of self beyond its influence on thought.

Imagine everyone’s mental world as a universe built around the self, which undoubtedly occupies its center. Many important people—parents, partners, children, and friends—surround us. How do they exist around that center?

Cultural psychologists identify two representative forms. In one, individuals approach one another but remain independent: intimate yet bounded, clearly distinct, and everyone besides the self is other. This is theindependent self.The other form is close and interwoven. Boundaries blur and parts of two selves merge; each contains the other. The self is not independent, and another person may be both other and one of us. This is the interdependent self, orinterdependent self-construal.（interdependent self）。