A critical review of cultural stereotypes underpinning research on self-construal and cognitive dissonance

Prior cross-cultural dissonance research has relied on cultural stereotypes and assumed that participants from Western cultures are individualistic and have independent self-construals while participants from Asian cultures are collectivistic and have interdependent self-construals. The present article provides a critique of the theory of independent and interdependent self-construals as well as prior cross-cultural research on dissonance, and suggests using self-construal priming to avoid relying on cultural stereotypes in accounting for differences in dissonance experienced. Implications and future research directions are discussed