This article examines Russians'and Americans'reasoning about the
boundaries of responsibility within friendships. Matched Russian
and American samples were asked to resolve dilemmas concerning
personal responsibility between friends. It was found that the Rus
sian subjects'resolutions of the dilemmas were, in general, charac
terized by being less protective of the self than those of the American
subjects. However, this was not the case in all situations, suggesting
that the psychological differences between the two groups are best
conceptualized in terms of the ways of speaking and thinking
invoked in specific situations, rather than as traits or personality
styles that are common to all members of a culture. A conceptuali
zation of the relationship between individual psychological process
es and cultural context, based on the work of Vygotsky (1981) and
Wertsch (1991), is offered to explain the results.
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