Autonomy of the Self in South Korea, Japan and Canada: Investigating the Role of Values on Autonomous Self-Construal

There has been much research on autonomy of the self across cultures. Yet, its conceptualizations as well as measurements have varied, and there is often confusion that autonomy is analogous to independence or separateness. The current study examined autonomy of the self with Kagitcibasi’s measure of autonomous self-construal, investigating cultural differences across South Korea, Japan and Canada employing values to explain for some of these cultural differences. Research evidence has varied depending on how autonomy was conceptualized and measured, with some suggesting Japan to be more individualistic than previously believed, while others suggest it shares the similar cultural traditions as other East Asian countries where group harmony, conformity and collectivistic ideals are valued. Furthermore, we aimed to explain for the possible differences in the endorsement of autonomous self-construal in the three cultures through Schwartz’ values, as attempts to explain the endorsement of the autonomous self with regards to values have been rare. Moving beyond the popular cultural orientation of individualism-collectivism, we employed values to predict the level of autonomy in these cultures, hypothesizing that the goals and motivations individuals hold within a society would influence beliefs about the self and autonomy. The study included 431 university students from the three countries as participants. We found that there are cultural differences in autonomous self-construal, with Japanese scoring the highest. We also found that some of the values predicted the level of autonomy, where the relationships were more similar between South Korea and Japan, with the values that predict autonomy of the self differing slightly for Canadians. Our findings seem to suggest that young people in Japan strongly value autonomy of the self, and yet, that their autonomous self-construal was still linked closely with values in a similar way as for Koreans. The current study and its findings suggest that further research is needed, where each culture and its unique historical trajectories and socio-cultural values are examined further.