The current paradigm shift from realism and humanism to social constructionism and
postmodernism has tremendous implications for social sciences, especially for
psychology. The idea that not only our knowledge, but also our self, emotions and
cognitions are constructed by society and culture is embraced by some cross-cultural
and cultural psychologists and postmodernists. While this stance attempts to
integrate culture and psychology, it depreciates the part of the self that can stand
apart from culture and society and therefore be shared among humankind. This paper
proposes a layered model of selfhood to incorporate both universal and existential
human experience and the influence of culture and society. Heine, Lehman, Markus and
Kitayama’s (1999) cross-cultural study of self-regard serves as an
exemplar of the constructionist approach and their data are reanalyzed using the
proposed model of selfhood. The notion of ‘play’ is introduced
to understand the dynamics at the interface between cultural regulations and
individuals. This paper also explores the cultural norms of East Asia and America.
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