Pattern of social interaction in societies of the Asia-Pacific region.

The authors developed an 18-item Social Interaction Inventory that yielded a factorial structure based on the 3 domains of social interaction: interpersonal, personal, and extrapersonal. They administered the inventory to samples from 15 countries of the Asia-Pacific region (N = 146). The participants in the different cultural groups preferred to interact more within the interpersonal (in-group) domain as compared with the personal (individual) and extrapersonal (out-group) domains. The findings reflect a collective pattern, rather than an individualistic pattern, of social interaction in the societies of the Asia-Pacific region.