Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences - Theses
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ItemConceptions about humanness across cultures( 2011)What it means to be human is a fundamental question in psychology. Research on lay theories of the concept has recently emerged from two lines of work on dehumanization processes. Leyens et al. initiated a systematic approach to the concept by suggesting secondary human emotions as the human essence. Haslam’s theory proposes two independent senses of humanness: human nature and human uniqueness. However, neither approach has examined how concepts of humanness vary across cultures. The current thesis aimed to take a cultural psychological approach to extend their understandings. First, I questioned whether there is basic agreement or disagreement in understanding what it means to be human across cultures, in terms of the relationships between human nature and human uniqueness and in terms of how they related to dimensions of self-construal. Results showed that Australians, Japanese, and Koreans were not dramatically different in understanding the basic concept and that a relationism-reflecting aspect of self-construal was universally central to concepts of human nature. Second, I investigated whether people’s attributions of humanness in interpersonal relations are consistent or different across cultures. Results indicated that the basic tendency of self-humanizing exists in all three countries. Finally, I attempted to examine effects of empathy on interpersonal attributions of humanness in a controlled setting. Results implied that empathy tended to reduce self-humanizing effects in both Australia and Japan, but the degree was greater in Japan than in Australia. On the basis of these findings, I conclude that to some extent, cultures share basic views of what it means to be human as well as the ways of applying the concept in interpersonal perceptions, although some differences in specific aspects exist.