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the differences between Western “independent” and Asian “interdependent” models: while generally in academic psychological studies, personality is conceived as a set of characteristics ascribed to an independent person; in several Asian cultures personality is constructed on the basis of an interdependent model of the person in relationship with others. In Thinking From the Han, Hall and Ames emphasize the different intellectual backgrounds of China and the West, where Confucian and Buddhist doctrines on the one side and the Christian theology on the other, influenced the notion of individual. On the rationale for cross-cultural studies of personality, including the search for cultural universals, personality structure and assessment, implications of individualism-collectivism and their measurement, values and beliefs, emotions and subjective well-being, motivation, as well as the integration of trait- and cultural-psychology perspectives, see “The Cross-Cultural Perspective in the Study of Personality” by Church and Lonner. See also “The English Version of the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory” by Cheung, et al., and “The Geographic Distribution of Big Five Personality Traits” by Schmitt, et al. Furthermore, Motivation and Culture by Munro, Schumaker, and Carr, which deals with the relationships between culture and various types of motivation concerning work, religion, society and sex, offer basic information. On the relation between personality and culture, see “Why Study Personality in Culture?” by Yueh-Ting Lee, et al., and “Theories Linking Culture and Psychology” by Cooper and Denner. According to some scholars (McCrae, Costa, Ostendorf, Angleitner, Hrebickova, et al., in “Nature over Nurture”), basic tendencies like neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness are deemed independent of culture. Others (e.g., Church in “Culture and Personality”) again posit that certain traits are more likely to be found in all cultures, but important differences exist in the way that these traits shape individual behaviors which become more or less relevant depending on whether a culture is regarded as individualist or collectivist. On psychological universals, see “The Search for Psychological Universals” by Lonner.
5. As posited by Bourke (“Fear and Anxiety: Writing about Emotion in Modern History,” 124), “emotions mediate between the individual and the social. They are about power relations. Emotions lead to a negotiation of the boundaries between self and other or one community and another” (quoted by Boddice, The History of Emotions: Past, Present, Future, 88). In Chinese culture, emblematic is the notion of renqing 人情;