Term Paper on "Psychologist Erik H. Erickson's 8 Ages of Man Across Two Separate Cultures"

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Stewart et. al (1999) compared the relationship of adults and adolescents in individualistic cultures vs. collectivist ones by conducting a study to investigate the value priorities and autonomy expectations in 58 pairs of Caucasian and 66 pairs of Asian teenagers and their mothers. Social scientists have defined "value priorities" as a hierarchy of criteria used by people to select and justify actions and to evaluate people and events (Schwartz, 1992). A person's value priorities are greatly influenced by the culture's dominant ideologies. In individualist societies, such as the U.S., Australia and Great Britain, for example, young people stress autonomy values, as well as self-direction, and stimulation, rather than conformity and tradition (Rosenthal et al., 1989). To the contrary, youth in collectivist societies, such as Asian societies including Hong Kong, have tended to focus on tradition and conformity (Bond, 1988).

According to Stewart et al. (1996), individualist societies value and encourage independence and collectivist groups emphasize interdependence. Therefore, an understanding of intergenerational patterns may improve the understanding of how these different cultures socialize their members. It is also interesting to look at this intergenerational question in regard to how it relates to the changes that take place in collectivist societies as they "modernize." For example, China is undergoing major changes as it develops a middle-class. Will the collectivist attitudes and interaction patterns be replaced by individualist ones, as originally believed by Hofstede (1980), or do basic aspects of collectivist interaction remain regardless of societal change?

Stewart et al. (1999) found that Although Asian and Caucasian teenagers showed similarities on many value priorities, the Asians' autonomy expectations were slower in comparison to the Caucasians. Mother-teenager autonomy expectations were correlated in Asian but not in Caucasian families. Unlike Asian mothers, Caucasian mothers supported earlier autonomy expectations for their teenagers.

Looking at the culture as it undergoes change, the study showed the coexistence of individualist and collectivist values for cultural groups "in transition." Findings support theories that in modernizing collectivist cultures, family interdependence continued despite adoption of many individualist values. Caucasian and Asian families maintained some important distinctions in a culture that is changing into a multicultural setting. Caucasians and Asians were positioned on their value priorities similar with studies done in their home cultures. Although broad values may change, later autonomy expectations from parents remained. These conclusions were consistent with theories that found critical importance in family interdependence in collectivist cultures, even with individuals going through modernization. Some values might become more individualist, but family relatedness and expectations of parental control continue in modernizing Asians.

Parental expectation seemed to be a key factor by which the cultural effect on autonomy is exercised. Parental expectations and teenagers' own values combined to significantly predict teenage autonomy. However, these variables influenced autonomy in quite different ways for Caucasian and Asian teenagers. Asian teenagers' autonomy expectations were more strongly influenced by their mothers' attitudes than were Caucasian teenagers' autonomy expectations. "Internalization" of parental expectations appeared to be accomplished more effectively in Asian families. Westerns adolescent culture was recognized as a time of "identity formation" (Erickson, 1968) when values still may be influenced.

One area of influence that was not measured in their (Stewart et al. 1999) study was the effect of peers. The adolescent years in Western culture involve a normative shift in interest and influence from parents to peers. The fact that Asian teenagers showed more continued family influence is consistent with results from research, suggesting that the family is a source of influence on both positive and negative moods and maintains its importance for a longer time in Asian-American individuals than in Caucasians (Greenberger & Chen, 1996). Whereas parent-adolescent conflict "peaks" and begins to decline in middle adolescence for Caucasian youth, Asian individuals report increased conflict with parents during college years.

These findings support models that predict persistent family interdependence despite adoption of many individualist values in modernizing collectivist cultures. It is through increasing information about and appreciation for such cultural differences that the science of psychology will take a truly international perspective.

Intimacy is another way that cultures differ, especially in the area of friendship. For Erickson, this concept of intimacy takes place in one's older teen years, young adult period. These individuals begin to ask questions such as, "Shall I live my life with another or live alone?" Conflicts center on establishing intimacy with friends, family, lovers or spouse. The central task is caregiving. Friendship is especially an issue that is of concern to adolescents, because of their degree of uncertainty and self-esteem issues. Even within a society, such as the United States, the term "friendship" can mean many different things. As Rubin (1985) has stated: "Complicating matters, peoples' definition of someone as a friend often has little relationship with how often they actually see that person" (Rubin, 1985). Thus, there is no overall accepted definition of the term friendship even when people talk about the level of intimacy, closeness and trust, since these are such broad, nebulous terms. The concept of friendship may not even be definable by most people; rather it is a tool for them to think and talk about relationships instead of a strict set of criteria that they use for evalution.

The difficulty of friendship becomes even more complicated when looking at this cross-culturally. Although Penning and Chappell (1987) did not find any cultural differences in terms of the average number of an individual's reported friends, the authors did find differences in the levels of ease with which individuals could name a "close" friend. The anthropologists Bell and Coleman (1999) argued that friendship is more difficult to develop in cultures where there are strong kinship structures.

The little research that has been conducted on cross-cultural friendship has clearly demonstrated that people from various locations have different labels for relationships. For instance, Ruan (1993) reported that in China a mere 6.6% of people in one's social network are described as friends, compared to America where that number is 67.8%. Most likely, Americans do not have that many more friends than do the Chinese; they just define their friends differently. Smart (1999) found that Chinese do not make as great of a distinction as Westerners between friendships founded on sentiment or emotion and those that have an instrumental and mutually beneficial purpose. Other researchers studying Asians have observed differences between Americans and Koreans, who have lower expectations about friendships and likewise report less-intimate relationships with their friends (You & Malley-Morrison, 2000). It does appear, however, that in most cultures, friends are considered those people who have something most in common with one another.

McAndrew and Rybak (2006) conducted a study to better define the criteria that cultures use to delineate friends from nonfriends and levels of friendship. They also hoped to contribute to the cross-cultural database regarding the value of friendship. Specifically, they did a study to compare how people in the United States vs. those in Poland define friendships. Previous studies concluded that Americans and Eastern Europeans define relationships differently, and all of Central and Eastern European cultures have terms that distinguish between different degrees of friendship. In Poland, for example, there are three words that describe different degrees of friendship from the most to least intimate, przyjaciel, to kolega, to znajomy.

The English equivalent of a przyjaciel is someone with whom one most likely has a lifelong relationship and a lot of honesty and self-disclosure. It is close to the term best friend," although Americans use this phrase more frequently than the Poles use przyjaciel. Znajomy is… READ MORE