Poor_Communication

Culture Self Concept Differences [Author] [Instructor] [Course] [Date] Culture Self Concept Differences The twenty statement test (TST) by Kuhn and Mc Partland (1954) was developed to operationalize basic concepts of interactionist theory, and has still been used widely in many studies to identify contents of self concept. The reason behind its undoubted use is its ability to provide direct measure of an individual’s self concept ant its ease of use. The Twenty Statements Test (TST) was being administered in New York and Seoul by Rhee E, Uleman JS and Roman RJ (1995). They selected about 454 students to analyze two opposite cultures based on individualism and collectivism, respectively. Responses were coded into 33 categories. Responses were classified as abstract or specific and as either autonomous or social. These two dichotomies were found more independent in Seoul than in New York. New York sample was comprised on Asian Americans who differ in their spontaneous social identities. They just one or twice listed ethnicity-nationality on the TST or most often never listed it. Regarding both abstractness-specificity and autonomy-sociality it was found that self concepts of Unidentified Asian Americans' resembled with that of Euro-Americans' self concepts while that of twice identified Asian Americans' self-concepts coincided with Koreans' self-concepts (Bond & Cheung, 1983). Self-concept consistency has a pivotal position to authenticity and adjustment in Western cultures. The authors postulated that the entailments of self-concept consistency rely on the cultural background of the individual as well as the type of consistency involved. Besides the fact that consistency of the self-concept across different contexts may be less important in East Asian than Western cultures, East Asians still take advantage from specific social contexts of consistency including maintenance of stable and discrete relational selves over time. In consistency of self perception is related to less subjective authenticity and relationship quality in European Americans instead of East Asian Americans. In the whole, the results suggest that inconsistency may be less consequential for East Asians relative to Westerners only if it reflects culturally prescribed adjustment to different social contexts (Rhee E, Uleman JS and Roman RJ, 1995). In 1971 Sandra Bem created a measurement which she called the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) and claimed that her instrument is distinct from others as it allows individuals to be both feminine and masculine instead of restricting them to only one. The BSRI was comprised on set of twenty characteristics in each of three categories i.e. masculine, feminine and neutral. The individual rates themselves on a scale from one to seven according to characteristics they possess. Rating on scale includes never or almost never true to always or almost always true. Anyone above median score 4.5 is seen as possessing feminine or masculine traits. Opposed to other tests BSRI enables individual to score high on both the masculine and feminine scales because both of them are scored separately (Bem, S. L, 1977). Along with the belief that masculinity and femininity are separate, Sandra further postulated that androgynous individuals i.e. one possessing both masculine and feminine traits were proved to be "really effective and well performing" Bem, S. L. (1993). I agree to Ben’s research and statement that “a person have both traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine traits” as her work elucidated and interrogated erstwhile assumptions about the contradictory or bipolar nature of sex roles. This led to establishment of persuasive concept of psychological androgyny. These analytical and logical endeavors have been reinforced by significant amount of empirical data to support the hypothesis that a mix of generally believed masculine and feminine dispositions is more adaptive as compared to stereotypic prominence on either alone. References Rhee E, Uleman JS and Roman RJ, (1995),Spontaneous self-descriptions and ethnic identities in individualistic and collectivistic cultures, US National Library of Medicine National Institute of Health, Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7643297 Bem, S. L. (1993). The lenses of gender: Transforming the debate on sexual inequality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bem, S. L. (1977). On the utility of alternative procedures for assessing psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 54, 196-205 Bond, M. H., & Cheung, T. (1983). College tudents’ spontaneous self-concept. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 14, 153-171.