ere also received from the international Asians, but, as the results suggest, to a much lesser degree. The results conform to the findings of Markus and Kitayama (1995) that non-Western cultures develop personal orientations very different from those of Americans and Europeans. The notion of the self in different ethnic groups exerts differing influences on the individual’s personality development. The American society appears to be based on the independent self-system, which contrasts with the inter-dependent group oriented cultures of Asia as indicative from the results of this experiment.Although this study had reliable conclusions, there were some aspects of the experiment that could be improved. The first one is the size of the participants’ pool. A larger number of subjects would greatly enhance the credibility of the conclusions drawn by insuring reliability and reproducibility in the results. Moreover, all the participants were undergraduate students from Amherst, Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges. International Asians in colleges in the US might be inclined to interact with people from similar backgrounds and become part of international organizations on campus, which can deepen their tendencies of identifying themselves as being part of a group. On the other hand, white Americans might perceive college education as a base to launch their individualistic endeavors and thus might become more inclined towards defining themselves using self-focused words. A more diverse group of participants of a broader cross-section of adult population and interests would have improved the accuracy and validity of the results. It is very possible that adult International Asians who are working as career professional might not be able to find similar International groups to become a part of, and therefore, are likely to give relatively less group-based responses and more self-oriented ones in comparison with undergraduate Inter...
