Interesting topic, especially in America today. I am currently reading a fascinating book on culture in America, 'The World Turned Inside Out: American Thought and Culture at the End of the 20th Century,' by James Livingston. It discusses the complex topic of the transition from the frontier American to industrial American to now. Americans like to think of themselves as independent individuals, it follows then that where ever you are in society, you are the agent of the place. With that in mind consider the quote below on Asian attitudes towards self.
This idea of individual autonomy is so deeply embedded in Americans (especially on the right) that Paul Ryan could deliver at CPAC a speech, that while untrue, was believed and repeated. Its propaganda fit the republican cultural idea of dependency, and thus it works if you exist in that cultural frame. Culture can be a circle in which ideas are not examined but instead fit into a preconceived context. So the answer to the OP is it is very hard to change these notions. Can they be changed, of course they can, consider only the changes after the Great Depression, a situation which challenged all people to take another look. Also think of race and homosexuality and how they have changed in the minds of many people.
'Cultural Models of Self in North American and East Asian Contexts'
"In a seminal paper, cultural psychologists Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama proposed that previously observed differences in individualism and collectivism translated into different models of the self (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Specifically, they argued that in North American contexts, the dominant model of the self is an independent one, in which being a person means being distinct from others and behaving similarly across situations. In East Asian contexts, however, the dominant model of the self is an interdependent one, in which being a person means being fundamentally connected to others and being responsive to situational demands. For example, in a classic study (Cousins, 1989), American and Japanese students were asked complete the Twenty Statements Test, in which they were asked to complete the sentence stem, I am ______ twenty times. Whereas US participants were more likely to complete the stem with psychological attributes (e.g., friendly, cheerful) than Japanese, Japanese participants were more likely to complete the stem with references to social roles and responsibilities (e.g., a daughter, a student) (Cousins, 1989). These different models of the self result in different desired ways of interacting with others. An independent model of self teaches persons to express themselves and to influence others (i.e., change their environments to be consistent with their own beliefs and desires). In contrast, an interdependent model of self teaches persons to suppress their own beliefs and desires and to adjust to others (i.e., change their own beliefs and desires to fit in with their environments (Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999; Morling, Kitayama, & Miyamoto, 2002; Weisz, Rothbaum, & Blackburn, 1984)."
http://psych.stanford.edu/~tsailab/PDF/Culture and Emotion Chapter.pdf
Above was sourced from:
Stanford University Culture and Emotion Lab
Livingston's blog:
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