As Seen by the Other … : Perspectives on the Self in the Memories and Emotional Perceptions of Easterners and Westerners

The experiment reported investigated the phenomenological consequences of Easterners' and Westerners' perspectives on the self. Two findings are consistent with the notion that Asians are more likely than Westerners to experience the self from the perspective of the generalized other First, Eastern participants were more likely than Western participants to have third-person (as opposed to first-person) memories when they thought about situations in which they would be at the center of a scene. Second, Easterners and Westerners engaged in different sorts of projections when they read the emotional expressions of other people. Westerners were more biased than Easterners toward egocentric projection of their own emotions onto others, whereas Easterners were more biased than Westerners toward relational projection, in which they projected onto others the emotions that the generalized other would feel in relation to the participant. Implications for how phenomenological experiences could reinforce different Eastern and Western ideologies about the self and the group are discussed.