Independence from Whom? Interdependence with Whom? Cultural Perspectives on Ingroups Versus Outgroups

to be nobody but yourself-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle that any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.-e. e. Cummings Western social theorists have long pondered the relationship between self-perception and social perception, that is, the relationship between the ways we interpret and evaluate our own actions, feelings, and personal characteristics and the ways we interpret and evaluate those of other social actors. Within social psychology, in particular, some theorists have stressed connections or