Relational to the Core: Lay Theories of Humanness in Australia, Japan, and Korea

Abstract

The authors investigated how different cultures understand what it means to be human, focusing on whether people essentialize human nature and conceptualize it in accordance with the culture's dominant form of self-construal. Seventy-nine European Australian, 76 Japanese, and 97 Korean university students were asked to rate a set of personality traits on humanness, essentialism, individualism, collectivism, and relationism. There was substantial cross-cultural agreement in conceptualization of meanings of humanness. Two proposed dimensions of humanness were distinguished in each culture, the traits understood to compose each dimension were consistent, and traits believed to compose human nat..