Integrating System Approaches to Culture and Personality The Cultural Cognitive–Affective Processing System

As the chapters in this volume attest, the foundational premise that culture and person coconstitute one another, perhaps more than any other, characterizes contemporary cultural psychology (Cole, 1996; Kitayama, 2002; Miller, 1997; 1999; Piker, 1998; Shweder, 1990). Ironically, however, this very premise is most challenging for a cultural psychological view of personality, for “personality” has historically been, and in much cross-cultural research continues to be, conceptualized as the qualities of the individual that are separable from context (Kitayama & Markus, 1999; Pervin, 1999; Poortinga & Hemert, 2001; Shweder, 1991). The challenge for a cultural-psychological approach to personality remains to specify the nature of, and the mechanisms underlying, the co-constitution of person and culture. This chapter brings together insights from various theoretical and empirical lines of research (e.g., Hong & Chiu, 2001; Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martinez, 2000; Kashima, 2001, 2004; Markus & Kitayama, 1998; Mendoza-Denton, Shoda, Ayduk, & Mischel, 1999; Cohen, 1997)