Towards Understanding Self Motives in a Collectivist Culture

The pattern of self-construal, and various self motives i.e. self-esteem, self-liking and competence, in relation to gender and collectivism among young adults (n=194) were investigated. The results indicated high collectivist participants evinced high interdependent self-construal and positive self-esteem. The high and low collectivists shared similar pattern on other measures. The female participants showed strong independent self construal, high positive self-esteem, self-liking and self-competence than the males. Collectivism operated as a more crucial variable among males than females. The results seem to indicate that the influence of gender reflected social class variations. Future work needs to focus on patterning of self construal, understanding of cross situational variations in self construal and collective self esteem.