The experience and consequences of self-construction and affective states

Introduction The quest for self has been central to all the civilizations, Eastern or Western. However, the social scientific views about self in modern times have their genesis in the work of William James (1890) who came up with the notion of a "social me". Subsequent to James (1890), remarkable work on self was done by the symbolic interactionists who viewed self as a social product (Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934). Extending symbolic interactionist view in a different direction Goffman (1959) focused on self-presentation. Outside the symbolic interactionist tradition, social nature of self was well articulated in the writings of Baldwin (1897) and Sullivan (1953). Despite this early enthusiasm, several factors contributed to the decline of interest in the topic of self. It regained attention of researchers with the onset of cognitive revolution in 1970s and emergence of cognitive psychology. During 1970s-80s psychologists made significant strides in the study of affective and motivational aspects of self (Rosenberg, 1965; Wylie, 1974; Steele & Liu, 1983; Tesser, 1986; Swann, 1983). Markus and Kitayama (1991) have noted that there are two main cultural models of self: independent and interdependent. In the American and many Western-European cultures, the self is viewed as a separate, bounded, autonomous entity containing a variety of internal attributes which is referred to as the "independent‟ model of self or self construal. In contrast, in most of the Asian cultures the self is often held as connected with others. This is referred to as "interdependent‟ model of self. People are motivated to find a way to fit in with relevant others, to fulfill and create obligations and in general to become parts of various interpersonal contexts. Markus and Kitayama (1991) have argued that cultures determine self-construal and self-construal determines the cognitive, motivational and emotional functioning of people. While cultural divergence in construing selves is indicated in several ways in the disciplinary practice, psychologists have ignored it and focused their view on one particular conception of self hood - that is the western cultural concept. However, for many cultures the Western view of self not only fails to capture the sense of self but also fails to offer a comprehensive view of selfhood. It does not acknowledge the cultural influences in the construction of self.