Culture, Self-Construal And Self-Disclosure

Culture is communication and communication is culture (Hall, 1959). Culture as a total way of life exerts a great influence on communicative behaviors. The core dimension of cultural values—individualism and collectivism (I/C) has long been the research focus of intercultural scholars and I/C has a direct effect on communication styles. However, one complaint against cross-cultural studies is that they often use culture as a universal variable to explain behavioral differences between national or ethnic groups. Thus, it may be inadequate to find underlying predictors of behavior and may be misleading at times. Only recently, however, have researchers begun to look at how individual-level factors mediate the influence of I/C on communicative behaviors. The individualistic or collectivistic tendencies that individuals learn when being socialized into their culture in turn also influence individual-level factors.Self-disclosure refers specifically to the sharing of one's personal thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and beliefs (Chen, 1995). It is a communicative behavior to make aspects of one's self apparent to others and being more open and expressive. It can promote communication and interpersonal relationships among people. As a social communicative behavior it is conditioned by cultural and individual factors and is mainly caused by different emphasis on specific cultural values.The main purpose of the present study is to investigate Markus and Kitayama's (1991) independent self-construal and interdependent self-construal (individual-level factors) which mediate the influence of individualism and collectivism (cultural-level factors) on the use of self-disclosure (communicative behaviors) between American and Chinese female students. In this thesis, the characteristics of individualism and collectivism are described, and the differences between interdependent self-construal and independent self-construal are compared. According to the results, Chinese females are correlated with interdependent self-construal while American females are with independent self-construal, and the depth of self-disclosure to their closest female friends has no significant differences.This thesis can contribute to the understanding of individual-level factors mediating cultural-level factors on the communication style of self-disclosure.