Hazel Rose Markus
British-born American social and cultural psychologist
Stanford social and cultural psychologist known for self-schemas (1977), possible selves (1986) and, with Shinobu Kitayama, the contrast between independent and interdependent self-construals (1991).
Why this person matters
Markus helped move social psychology from asking how people think about themselves to asking how culture shapes the self. Her collaborators include Paula Nurius, Shinobu Kitayama and Alana Conner. She co-directs Stanford SPARQ, which applies social psychology to real-world inequity.
Main contributions
Self-schemas and possible selves
Her dissertation treated self-views as cognitive structures, called self-schemas, that direct attention, shape memory and guide behaviour. With Paula Nurius (1986) she described possible selves, meaning what people might become, want to become or fear becoming.
Independent and interdependent self
In Culture and the self (Psychological Review, 1991) with Shinobu Kitayama, she contrasted the independent self-construal, the default in Western psychology, with an interdependent self-construal described for East Asian contexts, and linked both to cultural variation in cognition, emotion and motivation.
Culture cycle and race
In Clash! (with Alana Conner) she describes culture as cycles of individuals, interactions, institutions and ideas. In Doing Race (with Paula Moya) she argues that race is a set of actions people do, individually and collectively.
Context and limits
The independent and interdependent selves are described as patterns found in particular cultural contexts, not as traits fixed in every individual. Her work on race and social class is more recent. The sources read do not report replications or critiques of the 1991 paper, so its claims are best read as a framework for cross-cultural comparison.
In your introductory course
Social psychology.Markus appears in social psychology (self, culture) and in culture and diversity chapters. Students meet independent and interdependent self-construals as a standard cross-cultural framework.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 12.1. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1977
Published Self-schemata and processing information about the self.
- 1986
Published Possible selves with Paula Nurius.
- 1991
Published Culture and the self with Shinobu Kitayama.
- 1994
Moved to the Stanford psychology department.
Sources
- Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Hazel Markus (Heritage Wall)Society or association. Institutional biography inspected.
- National Academy of Sciences, Hazel R. Markus directory entrySociety or association. Institutional biography inspected.
- American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Hazel Rose MarkusSociety or association. Institutional biography inspected.
- Wikipedia, Hazel Rose MarkusReference work. Reference article inspected.