Indy, this ties to the idea of self construal- the way that people see themselves. Propounded by Markus and Kitayama in 1991, some people seer themselves as independent, some see themselves as interdependent. As part of their studies, they showed different cultures a fish tank, and then asked the observer what they saw. Americans would say they saw a blue fish, a brown fish etc. Japanese people would say they saw an ecosystem, a world of life. And how they saw the world was deeply related to how they saw themselves.

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