Culture, self, and development: Are cultural templates useful or stereotypic?

In this paper it is asserted that dichotomous cultural templates such as independence and interdependence, as well as individualism and collectivism, do not accurately reflect the complexity of social life in Western and non-Western cultures and often result in stereotypic, rather than actual, characterizations of the social orientations of individuals and of cultures. Viewpoints that (a) promote the use of dichotomous labels, (b) espouse dualities for some aspects, but not other aspects of cultures, and (c) critique the notion of broad templates used to describe cultures are discussed. In general, it is concluded that acknowledging the limitations of cultural dichotomies is Incompatible with proposing the notion of an individualistic American self. (C) 1997 Academic Press.