How much has Western psychology influenced the idea of individuality?

Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., says, "I don't think we ought to lay it all on the doorstep of anybody in particular. It's much broader than that. The German sociologist Max Weber wrote a classic book at the beginning of the century on the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. It's about how what have become the dominant religious and economic systems, particularly in northern and western Europe and the U.S., are all built on quite individualistic egos. The prominence of individualistic views in psychology is another example of that, but it's really quite a pervasive phenomenon that cuts across religion, politics, economics - all aspects of human life. I think that the globalization of the world is now making people much more aware of the fact that other people think about and do things rather differently, down to the level where some of the things we once thought were fundamental, inherent properties of human beings turn out to be social and cultural variables.

"There is some quite interesting and powerful stuff coming out of comparative social psychology. For example, it suggest that in a whole range of ways, people in the U.S. and in western European countries are much more individualistic in the way we process information and in the way that we think about relationships. For example, in Asian societies, things are almost immediately considered not just from the perspective of the individual but also from the perspective of the group."

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