In this chapter, we provide an overview of the concept of naïve dialecticism, a set of lay beliefs prominent in East Asian societies consisting of an appreciation of holism, expectations of change, and tolerance of contradiction. After introducing the concept and discussing how it differs from the analytical or linear thinking more typical in Western culture, we discuss how dialecticism is assessed. Finally, we discuss the implications dialecticism has for understanding cultural differences in social cognition, the self-concept, and well-being.
Naïve dialecticism (which we will also refer to as dialectical thinking, or simply dialecticism) is an example of the lay theory approach used to understand cross-cultural differences in thought, feeling, and behavior. Lay theories are implicit beliefs or folk psychologies that describe the nature of the world (e.g., how are objects and events causally related to each other?), and in turn the nature of knowledge (e.g., what kinds of knowledge are valuable? how should knowledge be acquired?; Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001). Lay theories stand in contrast to other approaches commonly used to explain cross-cultural differences, such as values (e.g., individualism-collectivism; Triandis, 1995) and self-construals (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; see Peng, Ames, & Knowles, 2001, for a discussion).
Dialecticism has been distilled into three non-mutually exclusive beliefs or principles: Holism, or the belief that everything in the world is interconnected and interpenetrating; change, or the belief that everything is in a state of constant flux; and contradiction, or the belief that both sides of an apparent contradiction can hold some truth in a situation (Nisbett et al., 2001; Peng & Nisbett, 1999). Accordingly, dialectical thinkers believe that persons, events, objects, and ideas must be considered in context, current states of affairs can quickly change into other states, and when faced with contradictory ideas, a compromise approach or finding a “middle way” is preferred whereby elements of both sides of the contradiction are maintained. On the other hand, nondialectical thinkers (hereafter referred to as analytical or linear thinkers) believe (relatively speaking) that entities can be understood in isolation, current states of affairs will last into the future, and a polarization approach is preferred when one is faced with contradiction, such that one side of the contradiction is discounted and the other retained.
There is a growing consensus that differences in dialectical and linear styles of thought have their roots in different social arrangements or orientations that characterize East Asian and Western (typically Northern and Western Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia) societies. Specifically, dialectical thinking arose from an agricultural mode of subsistence that characterized ancient China and required large-scale cooperation, thus fostering interdependent qualities such as obligation to others, collective efficacy, and preserving social harmony. This in turn encouraged a style of thought characterized by an attention to relationships and social forces that impinge on individual actors. Linear thinking, on the other hand, can be traced to hunting and fishing ecologies that described ancient Greece. Because hunting and fishing societies are not as socially complex as large agricultural ones, people are relatively independent, enjoying more personal freedom in deciding how to live their lives. Therefore, more attention is paid to individuals’ internal characteristics (e.g., personality, motivations; Nisbett et al., 2001; Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002; see Varnum, Grossmann, Kitayama, & Nisbett, 2010, for a recent review).1
Dialecticism is also reflected strongly in the “Three Teachings” of the Chinese intellectual tradition that then spread throughout East Asia: Confucianism, Buddhism, and especially Taoism, where the principles of holism, change, and contradiction are clearly expressed in seminal texts such as the I-Ching (The Book of Changes; see Peng, Spencer-Rodgers, & Nian, 2006). In fact, the symbol of Taoism (the yin/yang symbol) is an elegant expression of naïve dialecticism: the idea of holism is represented as the circle, change is embodied in how polar opposites (light and dark, or the white and black of the symbol) seem to merge into each other, and contradiction is evident in how within the sweeps of light and dark, a small circle of the opposite color is embedded. Moreover, dialecticism is evident in many institutions, practices, and customs that persist even today in East Asian society (e.g., the continued popularity of fêng shui, the practitioners of which seek to situate buildings in harmony with the surrounding environment; see Nisbett et al., 2001, for an overview of business, legal, and other practices).
Dialecticism has been applied fruitfully in various domains, including attention, categorization, causal attribution, judgment and decision making, and emotional experience, to name a few (see Spencer-Rodgers, Williams, & Peng, 2010, for a review). However, for many years a major stumbling block was the lack of a measure of dialecticism. Initially, dialecticism was simply invoked as an explanation of ethnic/national differences in behavior, without direct evidence, an approach that has been pointed out as problematic by many authors (see Matsumoto, 1999, for a critique on this point regarding independent/interdependent self-construals). Measurement of dialecticism is useful not only for testing cross-cultural differences but also for investigating implications of dialecticism within a single culture (e.g., Cheng, 2009). Also, research investigating the antecedents and consequences of dialecticism becomes possible when measures of the construct are available.
As of this writing, there are two self-report measures of dialectical thinking. The first is the 24-item Analysis-Holism Scale (AHS; Choi, Koo, & Choi, 2007), which is composed of four subscales: Locus of Attention to the perceptual field as a whole versus objects within the field (e.g., “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”); Relatively complex explanations of Causality in terms of the interaction between an actor and aspects of their environment versus a focus on the internal dispositions of the actor (e.g., “Any phenomenon has numerous numbers of causes, although some of the causes are not known”); Perceptions of Change as constant (even if dramatic and sudden) versus either a consistent/traditional rate of change, or stability (e.g., “Every phenomenon in the world moves in predictable directions” [reverse-scored]); and Attitude toward Contradiction as a search for compromise versus resolution through choosing one side or the other (e.g., “It is more desirable to take the middle ground than go to extremes”). The AHS has demonstrated good convergent validity (e.g., positive correlations with attributional complexity) and discriminant validity (e.g., near zero correlations with individualism-collectivism), known-groups validity (e.g., Korean undergrads, who are theoretically more dialectical than American undergrads, score higher), and predictive validity (e.g., AHS scores predict the consideration of more pieces of information when drawing causal inferences; Choi, Dalal, Kim-Prieto, & Park, 2003; Choi et al., 2007).
The other scale is the Dialectical Self Scale (DSS; Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2015), a 32-item scale consisting of three subscales: Tolerance of Contradiction (e.g., “When I hear two sides of an argument, I often agree with both”), Expectations of Cognitive Change (e.g., “I believe my personality will stay the same all of my life” [reverse-scored], and Expectations of Behavioral Change (e.g., “I often change the way I am, depending on who I am with”). Although the scale is unpublished, from the sections that follow it will become apparent that the DSS also has good psychometric properties such as known-groups validity (East Asian samples score consistently higher than Western ones) and predictive validity (e.g., DSS scores predict less behavioral consistency across social roles such as with a friend and with parents; Boucher, 2011; English & Chen, 2007). The major differences between the two scales lie in the presence of items explicitly tapping holism in the AHS (specifically, in the Causality and Locus of Attention subscales), while the DSS lacks a holism subscale. Also, while the AHS focuses broadly on the general tendency to think dialectically, the DSS is meant as a measure of dialectical self-perceptions and therefore may not be suitable in domains not having to do explicitly with the self (e.g., research on basic categorization processes). That being said, at least one group of researchers has adapted DSS items to refer to how people perceive their culture in general, as opposed to how they perceive themselves (Church, Willmore, et al., 2012).
One limitation of both these measures is that they rely on self-reports, which can be problematic in tapping cross-cultural differences. People within a culture may be unable to report exactly on how culture affects their thought processes and behavior given that culture shapes people’s behavior in subtle ways (Oyserman et al., 2002). In addition, people in different cultures vary with respect to how they answer survey instruments. For example, it is well-known that East Asians respond to survey items more moderately than European Americans (C. Chen, Lee, & Stevenson, 1995). It is still a matter of debate whether response styles are a serious problem in cross-cultural research (C. Chen et al., 1995; van de Vijver & Leung, 1997), but Hamamura, Heine, and Paulhus (2008) offer the intriguing possibility that moderate responses and ambivalent responses (i.e., endorsing true-keyed and false-keyed items measuring the same construct) could be attributable to cultural differences in dialecticism. Given that dialectical thinkers are more tolerant of contradiction, it follows that they would avoid extreme responses and instead respond more moderately. They should also more easily perceive contradictory characteristics as being true than linear thinkers, and thus respond more ambivalently. In support of these ideas, individuals of East Asian heritage were found to respond more moderately and ambivalently to items tapping both self-esteem and all five factors of the Big Five than those of European heritage, and DSS scores mediated ethnic differences in Big Five responses (Hamamura et al., 2008). Of course, as stated above, despite potential response-style differences, those of East Asian descent score consistently higher on established measures of dialecticism (AHS, DSS) than groups that are theoretically more linear in their thinking (e.g., Boucher, 2011; Church, Willmore, et al., 2012; English & Chen, 2007). If response styles were having an inordinate influence on these measures, then East Asians would score just as dialectically as other groups, or as even less dialectical.
Researchers have also successfully primed dialectical thinking in various ways. For example, Spencer-Rodgers, Peng, Wang, and Hou (2004) primed dialecticism by having Chinese and European Americans write about a time in which their lives were “full of contradiction and uncertainty” (p. 1427) or not. Those who were primed dialectically scored (marginally) higher on the DSS than the control group. Reading a holistic passage (L. Y.-Y. Kwan & Chiu, 2014) or even more subtle primes like including a yin-yang symbol on the study questionnaire have been shown to induce dialectical thinking (e.g., by eliciting greater expectation of change; Alter & Kwan, 2009). Above, we described how differences in dialectical versus linear styles of thought derive from differing social arrangements in Western and East Asian societies. Supportive of this link, Kühnen and Oyserman (2002) found that priming independence or interdependence via a pronoun-circling task (“I’s” vs. “we’s”) facilitated analytical and holistic information processing, respectively.
Finally, various primes have been used to evoke dialecticism among bilingual, bicultural individuals. Since people who are bicultural have extensive knowledge of and experience with two cultures, both of those cultures (or “cultural frames”; Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martínez, 2000) are available to influence thought, feeling, and action. What determines accessibility, or the use of one frame or the other, are cues in the immediate environment, such as physical location, culturally laden symbols, and the language being spoken. In support of this idea, Chinese-English bilinguals (living in the United States) who completed the study questionnaire in Chinese scored higher on the DSS and AHS than both bilinguals answering in English and European Americans answering in English (these latter groups did not differ from each other; Boucher & O’Dowd, 2011; see also S. X. Chen, Benet-Martínez, & Ng, 2014).
Despite the fact that dialecticism was proposed as an explanation for cross-cultural differences only about 15 years ago (e.g., Peng & Nisbett, 1999), it has already proven to be extremely fertile for hypothesis generation and testing. In the pages that follow, we address how dialecticism has been applied to social cognition, the self-concept, and well-being.
Broadly, social cognition is the study of how people think about and understand others (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Here we will restrict ourselves to two main topics: (a) How does dialecticism affect perceptions of individuals? and (b) How does dialecticism impact perceptions of groups?
Early research on the implications of dialecticism focused on lay dispositionism, or “the use of traits as the unit of analysis in social perception” (Chiu, Hong, & Dweck, 1997). Lay dispositionists are more likely to use traits and other dispositional information (e.g., attitudes) in making behavioral predictions for others’ behavior (L. Ross & Nisbett, 1991). They are also more likely to demonstrate correspondence bias, or infer that others have dispositions that correspond to disposition-relevant behavior (e.g., inferring a shyness trait in someone demonstrating shy behavior; Gilbert & Malone, 1995), and commit the fundamental attribution error, offering dispositional explanations for behavior even when situational causes are also readily apparent (L. D. Ross, Amabile, & Steinmetz, 1977). Since lay dispositionists think of others as collections of traits, and traits describe and explain consistencies in people’s behavior across situations and over time, they also expect behavioral consistency in others (L. Ross & Nisbett, 1991).
Research largely supports the idea that lay dispositionism is less apparent among dialectical thinkers than analytical thinkers, at least when comparing East Asians and Americans. For one, Norenzayan, Choi, and Nisbett (2002) documented that Koreans and Americans used trait information to predict future behavior to a similar extent when no situational information was provided (e.g., both groups predicted that someone who behaved in a helpful manner before would behave helpfully in the future). However, when situational information about the to-be-predicted behavior was made salient (i.e., the situation would either impede or facilitate helpfulness), Koreans were more affected in their behavioral predictions than Americans, suggesting they were more likely to take the situational information into account. A similar effect has been found when inferring others’ attitudes from their behavior (Choi & Nisbett, 1998), and Japanese believe that attitudes and behavior do not need to be as consistent as do Australians (Kashima, Siegal, Tanaka, & Kashima, 1992). Also, Hong Kongese participants were less likely to commit correspondence bias, as they were more reluctant than Americans to conclude that morally good and bad behavior was indicative of someone’s moral character, suggesting that they were taking contextual information into account (Chiu et al., 1997).
Finally, East Asians are less likely to commit the fundamental attribution error, as they offer more contextual explanations than Americans when making attributions. This difference has been shown in explanations for mundane everyday sorts of behavior (Chua, Leu, & Nisbett, 2005; Knowles, Morris, Chiu, & Hong, 2001) and for much more extreme cases such as homicide (Morris & Peng, 1994). Priming Chinese versus American symbols among Hong Kongese individuals produces similar effects (Hong et al., 2000).2 These cultural differences in attribution seem to be due to dialectical thinkers considering more information before making an attribution. If everything in the world is interrelated, it follows that any single event is multiply determined; thus, dialectical thinkers would be expected to have more complex causal theories than analytical ones. Indeed, Choi and colleagues (2003) found that Koreans thought more pieces of information were relevant to understanding an actor’s motives than did Americans, and this more complex reasoning mediated cross-cultural differences in external attributions.
Another interesting implication of a more complex, causally rich pattern of social perception is that the consequences of events could be understood differently in terms of causal impact. In thinking about the effects of an event, people who conceive the world holistically should consider not only direct, immediate impacts but also more indirect, distal ones. A number of studies showed that Japanese did perceive a larger “ripple effect” of a number of behaviors; for example, in thinking about a hypothetical car crash that was the participant’s fault, Americans felt more responsible than Japanese for direct outcomes like the damage to their own car, while Japanese felt more responsible than Americans for indirect effects like inconveniencing fellow commuters (Maddux & Yuki, 2006).
Finally, several pieces of evidence suggest that expectations of behavioral consistency are not as strong in dialectical thinkers. If everything in the universe is interconnected, then even small, seemingly insignificant changes can produce massive downstream effects; thus, for those who embrace holism, expectations of change should be more evident as well. The principle of contradiction suggests that even dramatic changes in states of affairs and the meaning attached to events could be possible. Ji, Nisbett, and Su (2001) showed that Chinese predicted a greater probability of change than Americans for a variety of situations (e.g., someone who grew up poor would become rich, quarreling kindergarteners could one day become lovers). Interestingly, Chinese were also more likely to attribute wisdom to someone who thought the meaning of an event could change in the future (e.g., that winning the lottery could become a bad thing; Ji et al., 2001). In addition, Koreans believe that personality is more malleable than Americans (Norenzayan et al., 2002), and while Americans rated individuals who were consistent in their behavior across roles as more socially skilled and generally likeable, behavioral consistency was uncorrelated with these social evaluations among Koreans (Suh, 2002).
Based on the findings above, one could argue that, perhaps, traits are simply not meaningful units of analysis for dialectical thinkers. However, many of the studies above do not bear out this possibility, as they show that dialectical thinkers do consider traits when making judgments. Where they differ from linear thinkers is in their greater tendency to consider contextual information (e.g., Norenzayan et al., 2002). Recent data from the United States, Mexico, the Philippines, and Japan indicate that people in all these disparate cultures understand traits as connoting cross-situational consistency, temporal stability, and as predictive of trait-relevant behavior. These beliefs are simply less strong in dialectical cultures such as Japan (Church, Willmore, et al., 2012). The universal meaningfulness of traits is also revealed in others’ judgments: there is significant self-other agreement and consensus among close others’ (family and friends) ratings of a person’s traits in the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, and China (although agreement is generally lower in China than the other countries; Katigbak et al., 2013; see also Malloy, Albright, Diaz-Loving, Dong, & Lee, 2004). In fact, dispositional thinking has long roots in East Asia: an analysis of ancient texts from eight cultural groups including China, Greece, and India, revealed that personality judgments, including trait ascriptions, were evident in all dating at least from 1000–200 BCE (Mayer, Lin, & Korogodsky, 2011).
Future work should focus on tying these nationality differences to established measures of dialecticism. Almost all the research cited in this section used nationality as a proxy for dialectical beliefs, assuming that East Asian samples would be more dialectical than American ones. There are some exceptions though. For instance, Church, Willmore, and colleagues (2012) found that Japanese were less likely to agree with items indicating that traits have high predictive validity, should be used to explain behavior, and should be inferred from trait-relevant behavior than both Americans and Mexicans, and these differences in beliefs about traits were partially mediated by DSS scores. Correlational research such as this supplemented with priming research could ensure that the cultural differences reviewed in this section are due to differences in dialecticism as opposed to some other mechanism such as individualism-collectivism.
Another interesting avenue would be exploring how cultural differences in dialecticism shape impression formation beyond the tendency to draw trait inferences. How might dialectical thinkers’ tendency to take more information into account before making attributions (Choi et al., 2003) translate to other aspects of impression formation? We offer two predictions. First, dialectical thinkers may show weaker primacy and recency effects, which is when the first and last pieces of information about a target are given more weight in forming an impression (e.g., Anderson & Barrios, 1961). Dialectical thinkers may instead consider all information more evenly; indeed, a recent study found some support for this idea with respect to the primacy effect when comparing Japanese and Americans (Noguchi, Kamada, & Shrira, 2014). Our second prediction centers on another pervasive effect—the positive-negative asymmetry that occurs in impression formation, where negative information is weighed more heavily than positive information (e.g., Anderson, 1965). Given that dialectical thinkers holistically attend to more information and are more tolerant of contradiction (understanding that targets may possess a blend of positive and negative qualities), they may form more balanced impressions than what has typically been found in Western samples.
One way in which dialecticism shapes group perception is that groups are perceived to have agentic qualities that are usually reserved for individuals. If everything in the world is interrelated (principle of holism), individuals are causally intertwined with others, including their groups (Nisbett et al., 2001). It is well-documented that in East Asian cultures, relative to Western ones, individuals are constrained by various social collectives such as the family, school, and work organization, and adherence to the norms and rules of various groups are culturally mandated (e.g., Su et al., 1999). Thus, when individuals misbehave, dialectical thinkers may more readily perceive that the individual’s group is also responsible, as the group presumably could have done something to prevent the behavior (L. Y.-Y. Kwan & Chiu, 2014). In support of this idea, Japanese and Hong Kong Chinese were more likely to attribute individual and group wrongdoing to dispositions of the group than Americans, who were more likely to focus on individual dispositions to explain the same behavior (Menon, Morris, Chiu, & Hong, 1999). Recently, it was shown that priming holistic thinking led to greater assessments of group blame for individual wrongdoing (an employee for a transportation company who hits a pedestrian with his car) than priming analytical thinking (L. Y.-Y. Kwan & Chiu, 2014). These judgments correspond to lay beliefs about agency: while Americans attribute greater agency to individuals than Hong Kong Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese attribute greater agency to groups than Americans (Menon et al., 1999). East Asians believe that even quite diffuse groups (i.e., society) have thoughts, feelings, and intentions that can direct behavior to the same extent as individuals, whereas in Western cultures, individuals are perceived as possessing these internal states more so than groups (Kashima et al., 2005).
An interesting consequence of these differences is that members of dialectical cultures may be more likely to apply stereotypes to understand others’ behavior. If groups are understood to possess disposition-like qualities (Kashima et al., 2005), and groups can more easily compel members to act in line with group expectations (Su et al., 1999), then it would be reasonable to draw inferences about individuals based on their group membership, thus exhibiting stereotyping. Indeed, in a study using descriptions of novel groups (“Snoets” and “Frints”), Chinese were more likely than European Americans to predict that individuals would possess characteristics stereotypical of their group, and more likely to predict that someone was a member of a group based on their having characteristics stereotypical of that group (Spencer-Rodgers, Williams, Hamilton, Peng, & Wang, 2007).
Finally, dialecticism may impact ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation. According to social identity theory, people categorize themselves and others into groups, and generally favor their own groups while feeling prejudice and discriminating against outgroups (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Many studies report that these tendencies are much more evident among Western than East Asian samples, for a variety of targets such as family members and other groups like one’s university (Cuddy et al., 2009; Endo, Heine, & Lehman, 2000; Heine & Lehman, 1997). These cultural differences may be attributable to dialecticism, particularly to tolerance of contradiction. Dialectical thinkers acknowledge both positive and negative aspects in themselves on both explicit and implicit measures (Boucher, Peng, Shi, & Wang, 2009; Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2004), and this pattern of thinking may extend to the groups of which the individual is a part. For example, Japanese rated themselves and their national ingroup as possessing both positive and negative traits to roughly the same extent (Tsukamoto, Holland, Haslam, Karasawa, & Kashima, 2015). In the only paper of which we are aware that has tied dialecticism to these tendencies, Ma-Kellams, Spencer-Rodgers, and Peng (2011) examined both explicit and implicit ingroup evaluations. In one study, after priming individuals to think dialectically or linearly, they had participants offer attributions for the negative behaviors of someone in their ethnic group and an ethnic outgroup member. Ingroup favoritism was indexed as situational attributions for the ingroup member but dispositional ones for the outgroup member. Those given the dialecticism prime showed less ingroup favoritism than those given the linear prime. In another study, DSS scores were correlated with implicit evaluations in the form of the implicit association test, that is, those scoring more highly on the DSS were faster to pair ingroup words with negative words (and outgroup words with positive words; Ma-Kellams et al., 2011). Unfortunately, since ingroup derogation and outgroup favoritism are confounded in the tasks they used, it is not clear whether dialecticism is associated more with one or the other. On the implicit side of things, using more sensitive measures like the Go/No-Go Task could better tease these processes apart (see Boucher et al., 2009, for a discussion).
In this section, we focus on cultural differences in the self-concept, or how people describe aspects of their own personalities (J. D. Brown, 2007). Here, the impact of the dialecticism construct has been most keenly felt in the challenge it presents for the universality of the motive for self-consistency. A bedrock assumption in theories about the self is the need people have to maintain consistency in thoughts and feelings about themselves (e.g., Lecky, 1945). We discuss three kinds of consistency: internal consistency, consistency across people/situations (cross-role or cross-situational consistency), and consistency over time (temporal stability).
Dialecticism leads to ready predictions about cross-cultural differences in self-consistency. Those who think holistically believe everything, including the self, is part of a larger whole, and a chief requirement of holistic thinkers is living harmoniously with others (Nisbett et al., 2001). If the self is contextually embedded, then as the context and people within it changes, so too will the self. Accordingly, individuals from theoretically dialectical cultures (China, Japan) spontaneously describe themselves more in context than do linear thinkers (Americans; e.g., Cousins, 1989), and shifts in the social context elicit greater shifts in self-definition among Japanese than Americans (Kanagawa, Cross, & Markus, 2001). Further, if the self changes with context, then the self in one context may be quite different from the self in another. For example, if one is outgoing with friends but shy at school, it would not be illogical to conclude that one is both outgoing and shy. Moreover, according to the principle of contradiction, this conclusion would not be experienced as bothersome (Peng & Nisbett, 1999). Consistent with this idea, East Asian samples not only express less internal consistency within their self in general, or their global self-beliefs (e.g., personality traits, value judgments; Choi & Choi, 2002; Tsukamoto et al., 2015), but also report less consistency across various social roles (e.g., with parents, with a same-sex friend; Kashima et al., 2004; Suh, 2002) than Americans. These cross-cultural differences extend to the subjectively experienced self (i.e., the inner, private self), as Japanese and Chinese report thinking that their inner selves change more with the context than do European Canadians (Tafarodi, Lo, Yamaguchi, Lee, & Katsura, 2004).
Cross-cultural differences in self-consistency have been tied explicitly to measures of dialecticism. Spencer-Rodgers, Boucher, Mori, Wang, and Peng (2009) found that the greater internal inconsistency of Chinese, Japanese, and Asian Americans’ global self-beliefs (e.g., reporting that they were both outgoing and shy, in general) was mediated by the DSS, while Boucher (2011) reported that DSS scores mediated global and cross-role inconsistency differences between Chinese and Americans. Similar results have been found comparing Americans of East Asian and European descent (English & Chen, 2007). In addition, Church, Alvarez, et al. (2012) reported that dialecticism mediated the relationship between culture and cross-role consistency, but measures of independent self-construal and cultural tightness-looseness did not (see also Church, Willmore, et al., 2012). Language priming (English vs. Chinese) among bilinguals not only influenced responses to the DSS and AHS but also replicated cross-national differences in global self-consistency (Boucher & O’Dowd, 2011). In a more recent set of studies (S. X. Chen et al., 2014), participants conversed with an interviewer in English and Cantonese. Those who scored higher on the DSS rated themselves as acting more differently across language contexts and were rated by the interviewers as acting more differently than those scoring lower on the DSS.
It should be noted that dialectical thinkers do not give completely random, incoherent self-descriptions. In a six-culture study (including the United States and Japan), even though Japanese described themselves more inconsistently across roles than the other groups, there were nevertheless substantial positive correlations in self-descriptions across roles and positive correlations between role-based self-views and descriptions of the self in general for all cultural groups (Church et al., 2008; see also Church, Alvarez, et al., 2012). Thus, while members of dialectical cultures do describe themselves with some consistency, supporting the general usefulness of the trait concept in those cultures, they simply do so less than those in linear cultures. In addition, although dialectical thinkers describe themselves less consistently across roles, there is nevertheless a high degree of temporal stability in these self-descriptions (assessed from one month to over six months apart); indeed, this stability is comparable for the most part to that found among European Americans (Church, Alvarez, et al., 2012; English & Chen, 2007, 2011). Finally, dialectical thinkers seek to verify their context-specific self-views, showing a preference for feedback that is consistent with how they see themselves in specific contexts (S. Chen, English, & Peng, 2006). If dialectical thinkers had completely random self-concepts, there would be no difference in their preferences for verifying versus non-verifying feedback.
We think an area where more research is needed is within-role consistency. As far as we are aware, there are only two studies to address this issue. Choi and Choi (2002) reported that Koreans were more likely than European Americans to indicate that they are both extraverted and introverted at a family dinner. Boucher (2011) examined this in two roles (son/daughter and friend) with a wider collection of traits and found that DSS scores were positively correlated with inconsistency in both roles (e.g., individuals who scored relatively higher on the DSS were more likely to report that they were both self-confident and insecure as a friend). It would be interesting to see what produces this inconsistency. It could be that “within-role” consistency is simply a by-product of cross-role consistency; for example, in considering the friend role, a dialectical thinker may think about behaving differently with different friends and conclude that they are relatively inconsistent in that role. Another possibility is that dialectical thinkers are thinking of only one person in each role (e.g., what they are like with their mother), yet are aware of how they change their behavior to best suit the needs of that particular individual at any given time, or change in response to other contextual shifts that occur while with the same person (e.g., in public vs. private).3 This latter possibility certainly highlights attentiveness to context and the facilitation of social harmony that is indicative of a holistic outlook.
A classic distinction that is drawn in research examining what constitutes a life well lived is hedonia and eudaimonia. Researchers who focus on subjective well-being (or “happiness”) may be understood to be working in the hedonistic tradition, as typically the focus is on maximizing positive affect, minimizing negative affect, and being satisfied with one’s life (Diener, 1984). People who work on eudaimonia place emphasis on other life aspects that contribute to well-being, such as living authentically, having a sense of purpose, and finding meaning in life (Deci & Ryan, 2008). Dialecticism has been applied to both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, although most of it has focused on hedonic aspects of well-being.
Generally speaking, East Asians report less positive and more negative affect than Westerners (e.g., Kitayama, Markus, & Kurokawa, 2000; Suh, 2002), and higher scores on the DSS are associated with lower positive and greater negative affect (Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2004). While this is interesting in its own right, in this section we focus on how dialecticism moderates the relationship between positive and negative affect. In linear cultures, these two dimensions are typically strongly negatively correlated, both in terms of how emotion is conceptualized and how it is experienced. That is, if one is feeling high positive affect, then they typically are feeling low negative affect, and vice versa, and feeling enduring, unambiguously positive affect is considered ideal (Bagozzi, Wong, & Yi, 1999; Uchida, 2010). In dialectical cultures, there is a different understanding of emotional experience. The principle of change suggests that emotional states may be viewed as more transitory, fleeting experiences, and the principle of holism suggests that the meaning of emotional events may shift with the context (Ji et al., 2001). According to the principle of contradiction, it would not be unusual or problematic to experience a balance between positive and negative emotions, either in general or even at the same time in response to some emotional event. In fact, this may be expected and even desirable.
Researchers have tackled the question of culture and what we will call “mixed emotions” in various ways. Some researchers use retrospective designs in which participants rate the frequency of positive and negative affect they have experienced over some period of time (e.g., the past month; Schimmack, Oishi, & Diener, 2002). Others use experience sampling, asking participants to rate their momentary experience of positive and negative affect several times a day for usually about a week. This daily data can then be aggregated to examine the typical relationship between positive and negative affect (e.g., Scollon, Diener, Oishi, & Biswas-Diener, 2005). These methodologies converge in revealing that the negative correlation found between positive and negative affect in Western samples is significantly attenuated, and sometimes even reversed, in various East Asian samples (Kang, Shaver, Suh, Min, & Jing, 2003; Kitayama et al., 2000; Perunovic, Heller, & Rafaeli, 2007; Schimmack et al., 2002; Scollon et al., 2005). Also, in a study comparing Chinese and European Americans, priming dialecticism produced mixed emotions relative to no prime, and DSS scores mediated nationality differences in mixed emotions (Spencer-Rodgers, Peng, & Wang, 2010).
Some researchers have suggested that even if mixed emotions can be experienced over a longer period of time (e.g., in the past week), theoretically it would be unusual to experience both positive and negative emotions at the exact same time (e.g., Larsen, McGraw, & Cacioppo, 2001). In fact, there are conflicting findings about whether individuals from dialectical cultures experience positive and negative emotions concurrently: some studies find that while correlations between momentary positive and negative emotions are highly negative in various East Asian and Western samples (Scollon et al., 2005; Yik, 2007), they are weaker and sometimes even positive in East Asian (but not Western) ones (Bagozzi et al., 1999; Perunovic et al., 2007). Consistent with the idea that priming can affect the experience of mixed emotions, Perunovic and her colleagues (2007) broke their East Asian Canadian sample into groups corresponding to which culture they had identified with most right before completing each of their emotion diary entries (Asian vs. Western) and what language they had just been speaking (Asian vs. non-Asian). Interestingly, identification as Western or speaking English produced negative correlations between momentary positive and negative emotions, while identification with Asian culture or speaking an Asian language weakened these positive-negative emotional experience correlations (Perunovic et al., 2007).
A last line of research relevant to this question is how people respond to specific events. In the experience sampling studies mentioned above, participants are asked to report their emotions at a given time without reference to what is happening in the situation. Other researchers have asked participants to describe a specific event and report the emotions they felt in response (Hui, Fok, & Bond, 2009), have provided participants with the same events and asked them to predict how the protagonist would feel (Leu et al., 2010), or actually put participants in the same situation to gauge their reactions (Shiota, Campos, Gonzaga, Keltner, & Peng, 2010). These studies provide additional evidence for the role of dialecticism in mixed emotions: for example, in a Hong Kong sample, high scorers on the DSS reported mixed emotions in response to both positive and negative events; among low scorers, mixed emotions were reported only in response to negative situations (Hui et al., 2009). While the response to negative situations seems reasonable as a coping strategy (“finding the good in the bad”; Larsen, Hemenover, Norris, & Cacioppo, 2003), the response to positive situations among dialectical thinkers is striking. Why would someone want to “find the bad in the good”?
This robust pattern of East Asians feeling a mix of positive and negative emotions in response to positive events (Hui et al., 2009; Leu et al., 2010; Miyamoto, Uchida, & Ellsworth, 2010; Shiota et al., 2010) is rooted in each of the Three Teachings that make up dialecticism. In Taoism, happiness may signal that adversity is on its way in a yin-yang relationship (principles of change and contradiction; Ji et al., 2001). According to Buddhist teaching, the selfish one-sided pursuit of happiness produces suffering (Leu et al., 2010). Finally, Confucianism stipulates that one should be attentive to how one’s actions and emotions affect others, and happiness can produce negative interpersonal consequences such as jealousy and inattention to others (principle of holism; Miyamoto et al., 2010; Scollon et al., 2005; Uchida, 2010). Indeed, one study compared Japanese and American endorsement of positive and negative aspects of happiness. While both groups agreed with the positive statements more than the negative ones, Japanese agreed with the negative items more than Americans, and another study revealed that agreement with a negative view of happiness was correlated with AHS scores (Uchida, 2010).
Research on mixed emotions has interesting implications for cross-cultural differences in interventions designed to increase well-being. There has been an explosion of interest in happiness-boosting activities (see Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009, for a review), but little research on cross-cultural efficacy. The only study to examine this issue of which we are aware compared the effect on life satisfaction of a gratitude task (writing letters to people to whom the participant felt grateful), a kindness task (doing three kind acts), and a neutral task for Americans and Koreans (Layous, Lee, Choi, & Lyubomirsky, 2013). Americans benefitted from both activities, and Koreans benefitted just as much as Americans from the kindness intervention. However, Koreans benefitted less from expressing gratitude, a finding the researchers attributed to the possibility of mixed emotions (gratitude mixed with indebtedness or guilt) being activated during the writing task (Layous et al., 2013). Research on other interventions such as optimism, experiencing flow, and mindfulness, to name a few, is needed. Moreover, interventions that aim to increase unambiguous positive affect may be less effective for East Asians due to the differing meanings of happiness found among dialectical thinkers (Uchida, 2010). This would be another interesting research direction.
As we described above, dialectical thinkers express more self-inconsistency in terms of their global self-concept, or self-views in general (e.g., Boucher, 2011), and cross-role self-conceptions, or self-views in different roles (e.g., Boucher, 2011; English & Chen, 2007). They also report more inconsistency in their self-evaluations (or feelings of self-worth), being more likely to agree with both positive and negative self-statements (Boucher et al., 2009; R. A. Brown, 2013; M. Ross, Heine, Wilson, & Sugimori, 2005; M. Ross, Xun, & Wilson, 2002; Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2004). The consensus is that while self-consistency strongly positively predicts well-being among linear thinkers (e.g., Sheldon, Ryan, Rawsthorne, & Ilardi, 1997), this link is weaker among dialectical thinkers. This is true regarding life satisfaction and (a) self-evaluative consistency (R. A. Brown, 2013), (b) global self-consistency (Boucher, 2011), (c) cross-role consistency (Boucher, 2011; Church et al., 2008; English & Chen, 2011; Suh, 2002), and (d) the experience of mixed emotions (Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2010). Church et al. (2014) also found weaker effects of cross-role variability on eudaimonic outcomes such as meaning in life in dialectical compared to linear cultures.
Dialecticism also has implications for the relationship between self-consistency and authenticity. Authenticity is the feeling that one behaves in ways that are freely chosen, unconstrained, and reflective of one’s true self (Sheldon et al., 1997). In self-determination theory, a closely related concept to authenticity is autonomy, which refers to perceiving one’s behavior as willingly undertaken and not imposed by others (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Interestingly, in a study comparing eight cultures on the links between satisfaction of autonomy needs across different roles and well-being, Asian cultures typically scored lower on autonomy than participants in the Americas (the United States, Mexico, and Venezuela), and these differences were mediated in part by the DSS (Church, Katigbak, et al., 2012; see Boucher, 2011, for similar findings). Nevertheless, satisfaction of autonomy needs pan-culturally predicted both hedonic well-being (high positive and low negative affect) and eudaimonic well-being (e.g., meaning and purpose in life, positive relationships with others; Church, Katigbak, et al., 2012).
But what does it mean to act authentically? In linear cultures, since the self is defined primarily with internal features, authenticity is typically taken to mean behaving consistently with those features across contexts and over time. In support of this idea, acting consistently across roles and felt authenticity are positively correlated, and both are independent predictors of well-being in theoretically linear cultures such as the United States (Sheldon et al., 1997). However, as described in sections above, for dialectical thinkers the self is conceived more holistically, and it is considered normative and even desirable to behave differently in different roles and with different relationship partners. Indeed, for Japanese the experience of a true self was correlated with context-sensitivity, not consistency (Kashima et al., 2004). In a comparison between European- and East Asian Americans, consistency across relationships was associated with felt authenticity for the former but not the latter group (English & Chen, 2011; see also Church et al., 2014). Boucher (2011) found a similar difference in comparing low and high scorers on the DSS.
The picture that seems to be emerging here is that while coherence within the self-concept may be a fundamental motivation, how coherence is achieved may differ between dialectical and linear thinkers. Certainly, some kind of self-unity would seem to be a culturally invariant requirement for successful living due to the order and predictability it provides (e.g., Steele, 1988). For linear thinkers, attention is focused on individual objects within the larger field, and objects are understood in terms of internal attributes that transcend both proximal and distal contexts (Nisbett et al, 2001). Thus, coherence is achieved through identifying and expressing self-beliefs that are internally consistent, stable across social context, and over time. For dialectical thinkers, coherence is found in understanding that one is a small part of a larger whole, and tailoring one’s customary thoughts, feelings, and actions in salient social contexts in order to maintain harmony within them (S. Chen et al., 2006). Thus, self-contradiction is understood as a sign of social sensitivity and maturity (Kitayama & Markus, 1999; Matsumoto, Yoo, & Fontaine, 2009). However, it need not be the case that consistency does not play any role in coherence for dialectical thinkers. Behaving consistently in specific contexts over time may be just as central to authenticity for dialectical thinkers “because this … allows for culturally valued adjustment to others while also fulfilling basic coherence needs” (English & Chen, 2011, p. 838). In support of this idea, English and Chen (2011) found that temporal instability within relationships was detrimental for authenticity for European- and East Asian Americans alike.
It is well-documented that East Asians rate their life satisfaction lower than Western samples (e.g., Diener, Diener, & Diener, 1995), and nationality differences in life satisfaction are mediated by DSS scores (Boucher, 2011). Since dialectical thinkers acknowledge both the positive and negative aspects of themselves (e.g., Boucher et al., 2009) and their groups (Ma-Kellams et al., 2011), it makes sense that this would extend to acknowledging the positive and negative aspects of their lives.
Above, we reviewed evidence concluding that self- and affective consistency do not predict life satisfaction as strongly for dialectical thinkers. So, what does? In a recent review of historical shifts and cultural differences in the definition of happiness, Oishi and his colleagues (2013) suggest that for many cultures, including ones traditionally considered to be dialectical, happiness has been defined not as positive internal states, but as luck or good fortune, that is, as something that is favorable yet external to the individual self. (Incidentally, until about a hundred years ago, this was also how happiness was understood in the United States; Oishi, Graham, Kesebir, & Galinha, 2013). These differences in definition connect closely to differences between analytical cultures such as the United States, which privilege individual actors and their internal qualities, and dialectical ones, that attend holistically to the context and factors external to the individual (Nisbett et al., 2001). It is interesting, then, that there are several external factors that either uniquely predict life satisfaction in East Asia, or do so more strongly in East Asian than Western cultures, such as (a) perceiving approval, encouragement, and acceptance from close others (Suh, 2002; Uchida, Kitayama, Mesquita, Reyes, & Morling, 2008), (b) believing that life satisfaction is approved by others as a cultural ideal (Suh, Diener, Oishi, & Triandis, 1998), (c) perceiving harmony in one’s most important relationships (Kang et al., 2003; V. S.-Y. Kwan, Bond, & Singelis, 1997), (d) experiencing interpersonally engaging emotions such as respect (Kitayama et al., 2000), and (e) pursuing happiness (Ford et al., 2015). Regarding this last finding, the motivation to achieve happiness was negatively correlated with well-being in the United States, but positively correlated in East Asia. This highly paradoxical finding has been explained in at least a couple of ways. For one, the relative value placed on happiness in the United States creates unrealistically high standards for the experience of happiness, which could result in disappointment (Mauss, Tamir, Anderson, & Savino, 2011). Ford et al. (2015) add that culture may also shape the way in which happiness is pursued, with East Asians being relatively more likely to do so through social engagement, which has known impacts on well-being (e.g., Diener & Oishi, 2005).
That being said, it will be necessary for future research to tie these cultural differences in sources of well-being to established measures of dialecticism. To give one example, recent research suggests that dialecticism is related to coping flexibility, which is the ability to flexibly adapt coping responses depending on the nature of the stressful event (Cheng, 2009). Since coping flexibility is reliably associated with several indicators of well-being (see Cheng, 2009, for a review), this suggests that dialecticism can have positive impacts on well-being, in addition to buffering against factors known to be deleterious to well-being, such as self-concept inconsistency. In sum, researchers should consider external variables (e.g., relationship harmony) in addition to internal variables (e.g., self-consistency) in order to get a comprehensive understanding of what constitutes the “good life” in dialectical cultures.
While there are an abundance of definitions of meaning in life, in general people who believe they have meaning in life evaluate their lives as having purpose, as being significant in the broader scheme of things, and perceive life events as being understandable (see Hicks & Routledge, 2013, for a discussion). There is a paucity of research on how culture might shape the pursuit or experience of meaning. We focus on one popular measurement tool of meaning in life that contains two components: presence, or judging one’s life to be meaningful, and search, which describes the active process of finding meaning or increasing meaning (Steger, Frazier, Oishi, & Kaler, 2006).
Typically, these factors are moderately negatively correlated, that is, if one thinks their life has meaning, they do not report also searching for meaning (Steger et al., 2006). However, in research comparing Americans and Japanese, Steger, Kawabata, Shimai, and Otake (2008) argued that dialectical beliefs may moderate the relationship between these types of meaning. Consistent with the principles of non-contradiction and stability, analytical thinkers should either perceive their lives as meaningful or report searching for it. After all, if one already has meaning, this is expected to last into the future so what would be the point of seeking it? But dialectical thinkers could have meaning and also be searching for it. If meaning is but a transient experience that could change at any time, more effort may be required to sustain it, and both having it and looking for it at the same time could be states that coexist harmoniously. Their data revealed several interesting effects. For one, Americans scored higher on presence than Japanese, while the reverse was true for search. This aligns with the tendency of analytical cultures to enhance their individual selves and their lives (in this case, seeing them as already full of meaning) more so than dialectical cultures (see Boucher, 2010, for a review). Consistent with differences in tolerance for contradiction, presence and search were negatively correlated for Americans, but positively correlated for Japanese (see Church, Katigbak, et al., 2012, for similar findings). Finally, while the presence of meaning was similarly beneficial for both samples in terms of subjective happiness, search for meaning was negatively associated with happiness for Americans but positively correlated for Japanese (Steger et al., 2008). This latter finding is reminiscent of research suggesting the differential impact of pursuing happiness across cultures described above (Ford et al., 2015).
A ripe area for future research is examining how dialecticism directly impacts meaning in life judgments, instead of using nationality as a proxy. Also, do dialectical cultures differ from linear ones on what they base their meaning in life judgments? In an influential model, Baumeister (1991) discussed four needs of meaning: having a sense of purpose, behaving consistently with moral standards, being able to exert control in obtaining desired outcomes, and feeling like a worthwhile individual. This formulation suggests the possibility of cross-cultural differences. For example, in addition to primary or direct control over outcomes, secondary forms of control such as exerting control through powerful others or interpreting events to control the emotional impact of them are particularly salient in dialectical cultures (e.g., Morling, Kitayama, & Miyamoto, 2002). Given the importance of meaning in life for well-being (Hicks & Routledge, 2013), it is important to understand whether and how dialecticism impacts these judgments.
Readers will note that we have focused almost exclusively on cross-national comparisons in our discussion of the implications of dialecticism for social cognition, the self-concept, and well-being. This is because, unfortunately, it is still common for researchers to use nationality or ethnicity as proxy variables for dialecticism. Using established measures of dialecticism are important not only for explicating cross-national differences but also in examining how dialecticism functions within a culture (e.g., Boucher, 2011; Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2004). Priming dialectical versus linear thinking is also important in this regard (Alter & Kwan, 2009; Cheng, 2009; L. Y.-Y. Kwan & Chiu, 2014; Ma-Kellams et al., 2011).
One final area where we will suggest dialecticism can be applied to understand within-culture variability is social class. Recall that differences in cognition between linear and dialectical thinkers can be traced to differing social orientations (independent and interdependent, respectively), which in turn can be traced to differing ecologies (Nisbett et al., 2001; Varnum et al., 2010). A similar argument has been made linking cognitive differences between upper- and lower-class individuals to differing social orientations due to differing resources (e.g., Kraus, Côté, & Keltner, 2010). Specifically, since upper-class individuals have objective resources such as money, education, and other material advantages, they have the personal freedom to pursue their own independent interests, without needing other people’s help. On the other hand, lower-class individuals, since they lack resources, are more constrained by social context and more dependent on other people to achieve their goals. This produces differences in attention, with upper-class individuals showing more self-focus and lower-class individuals paying more attention to context and other people (Kraus et al., 2010). A growing body of research converges on the idea that upper-class individuals think more analytically and lower-class individuals more dialectically; for example, lower-class individuals give more contextual and fewer dispositional explanations for behavior than upper-class individuals (Grossmann & Varnum, 2011; Kraus, Piff, & Keltner, 2009; see Kraus, Piff, Mendoza-Denton, Rheinschmidt, & Keltner, 2012, for a review). Given the wealth of outcomes associated with dialecticism, social class should prove to be a fruitful area of inquiry for those interested in within-culture variability.
In this chapter, we have provided an overview of the naïve dialecticism construct and discussed various domains in which dialecticism has been applied, focusing on those that have direct implications for personality (social cognition, the self-concept, and well-being). Along the way, we have offered several directions for future research. From this review, we hope it is clear that dialecticism helps explain cultural differences in how people think of others, how they describe aspects of their own personalities, and how they think about and experience happiness. Given the current prevalence of the dialecticism construct in the literature, it is surprising to consider that the seminal writings on dialecticism are from only about 15 years ago (Nisbett et al., 2001; Peng & Nisbett, 1999). Now that there are reliable and valid self-report measures of dialecticism, and several ways to prime dialecticism successfully, we hope more researchers will consider it in their work on how culture shapes personality.
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