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Throughout the 1990s, I had the opportunity to lead Dance/Movement Therapy (DMT) group workshops in Europe and in Asia. In this paper I will report on two adult DMT group workshops I conducted with Western European and Taiwanese dance and mental health professionals in Zurich and Taipei, respectively. The organizations that sponsored these workshops requested that I introduce workshop participants to “American Dance/Movement Therapy.” Since these workshops were attended by diverse cultural groups, when I returned to Los Angeles, I became interested in reading the notes I had written at the conclusion of each workshop about the participants’ expressive behavior and their verbalized comments about it. Since participants from both workshops were asked to respond to the same initial movement task, I thought it might be possible for me to compare the expressive behavior of these two groups during the introductory phase of the groups’ process. In attempting to make sense of my observations, I reviewed the research conducted by cross-cultural psychologists and anthropologists on the kinds of self constructions culturally divergent groups possessing differing worldviews create. I found the construct of “self” to be a particularly useful one to account for the expressive behavioral differences observed between participants holding divergent cultural worldviews, since it is an experiential concept that refers to the subjective view a person holds about who she or he is, and once formed and incorporated by the person, it acts as an experiential anchor and an emotional filter for all perceptions, values and attitudes held by the person about the nature of the world and the nature of human relationships Hallowell 1955, Kohut 1971 and Rogers 1961. Descriptions of DMT workshop groups The two DMT workshop groups consisted of 20–25 self-selected dance or mental health professionals. With the exception of two Americans who had lived in Zurich for many years, all of the participants in the Zurich workshop were Western European, while all of the participants in the Taipei workshop were Taiwanese. In both workshops the majority of the participants were females in their mid-20s to early 30s. I had to limit my comparisons of the groups’ expressive behavior to the initial introductory phase of the workshops’ process because it was only during this particular phase that both groups were asked to respond to the same movement task. In two other respects, the two group workshops were structured differently: (a) the Zurich workshop lasted 5 days and was advertised as “an intensive” DMT workshop, while the Taipei workshop lasted 1 day and was publicized as “an introductory” DMT workshop; and (b) the movement structures or movement tasks provided to the participants in each group varied over time due to the fact I attempted to make the forms offered relevant to the evolving interpersonal and individual psychodynamics manifested by the participants in each group. The introductory or beginning phase of both workshops began with participants standing in a circle facing each other. As a way of introducing participants to one another through the medium of movement, I suggested that one at a time, participants state their names, tune in to how they experienced themselves and then through some gesture or movement express how they felt in the moment. (This opening movement task is similar to one I might use with beginning DMT groups composed of functional adults in the U.S.) Because the instructions and movement task were the same for both groups, I would be able to observe similarities and differences in the expressive responses of the participants in these groups. At the conclusion of the Zurich workshop, I made the following notes about the expressive behavior demonstrated by the participants during the introductory phase of the workshop (to protect the identity of individual participants, their names have been eliminated): Participants showed little hesitation in displaying their emotions in front of a group of relative strangers. They exhibited a wide range of emotional expressiveness (from extremely positive to extremely negative). One participant took up much of the group’s time, unexpectedly challenging me through a display of some rather aggressive movement gestures (approaching me, she came very close to me, growled at me while displaying her canine teeth; much in the manner of an aggressive cougar seeking to dominate and intimidate a potential pray). The aggressive behavior she directed towards me sent an air of fear through the group. I sensed that she enjoyed asserting her power through her aggressive behavior and that she was testing me to see how I would respond to her challenge. I growled back at her, both to show my acceptance of her aggressive display and also to demonstrate that I was not intimidated by it. Group participants carefully watched the way that I responded to the challenge posed by her. My response seemed to free others to respond in more playfully assertive ways. It seemed to me that generally participants in this workshop were far more comfortable with the display of negative emotions than their American counterparts, who do not typically express anger so early in the process of a group. Participants also exhibited a great deal of individual expressive variability from one another. They readily shared their movement experience verbally with the group, though they did not all agree with the interpretations offered by some individual participants about their movement. The following are notes I made at the conclusion of the Taipei workshop about participants’ behavior during the initial phase of the Taipei workshop: Participants showed great hesitation in expressing their emotions publicly (even though many were acquainted socially with one another prior to the workshop). They watched each other carefully and frequently imitated each others’ movement patterns while adding something of their own or doing the pattern slightly different from the way it had been performed by the original mover. The person whose movement was being imitated seemed to enjoy the fact that another person would select their movement pattern for imitation. Participants showed great restraint in the emotions they exhibited outwardly and the emotions they did display were all very positive and pleasant in nature. The display of humor was something everyone seemed to enjoy (I appreciated this, since it permitted some of the tension which was present in the group regarding what might happen next, to be dissipated). When I asked if anyone would care to share verbally with the group what their experience had been for them, there was an awkward moment when no one spoke. So I simply stated that “there is no right or wrong in what we do here, so no one has to speak who does not want to.” Participants treated me as a “teacher” and extended to me the kind of respect accorded one (as soon as there was a break in the group’s activity, several participants came up to me to inquire whether I would like a cup of tea; this solicitous behavior continued throughout the entire workshop). Cross-cultural research on self construal Before proceeding to discuss the psychological significance of the expressive behavior exhibited by the participants in these two culturally divergent groups, I think it is important to summarize the research findings of cross-cultural psychologists and anthropologists who have studied the experience of persons possessing culturally divergent worldviews, with respect to how they construe themselves and others, the emotions they feel free to express in different social contexts and the attributions they make about theirs and others’ behavior Bond 1986, Cousins 1989, DeVos 1985, Geertz 1975, Gilligan 1986, Hallowell 1955, Hsu 1985, Lykes 1985, Markus and Kitayama 1991, Marsella et al 1985, Shweder and Bourne 1984, Triandis 1989 and Weisz et al 1984. A growing body of supportive evidence comes from these researchers indicating that once formed, self construals continue to play a significant role in determining the way people perceive themselves and others, the motives they attribute to themselves and others, the emotions they feel free to express or inhibit in different social situations, and I would add, the kinds of body-selves, body-images and movement metaphors they create about themselves and others Dosamantes 1993 and Dosamantes-Beaudry 1997. Cross-cultural researchers have tended to assume the existence of a high degree of homogeneity in the self construals created by people sharing a similar worldview (the relative stability and modifiability of these self construals once internalized by members of a particular cultural group are discussed in a later section of this paper entitled Homogeneity and Hybridization). Cross-cultural researchers have also tended to use dichotomous behavioral descriptive categories such as “individualist” and “collectivist” to encompass the broad array of behavioral and emotional factors that characterize the divergent self construals constructed by members of western and nonwestern societies. For example, cross-cultural research indicates that Western Europeans living in modern, industrial urban settings tend to conceive of themselves as autonomous, independent beings, possessing a unique configuration of attributes and feelings. They tend to view their thoughts and behaviors as motivated by these internal attributes and feelings. Some key motivating factors that influence their behavior include the enhancement of self-esteem and self-actualization, quest for control and avoidance of cognitive dissonance. Persons holding an “individualist” sense of self seem to find it culturally acceptable to express private or internal feelings publicly in most social settings. The expression of such emotions as anger (at least within the bounds of certain contexts, such as therapeutic ones) is construed by them as acceptable and healthy, particularly when followed by cognitive deliberation; furthermore, the expression of an emotion such as anger is believed to lead to a more expanded and mature sense of self Hsu 1985, Lykes 1985, Marsella et al 1985, Markus and Kitayama 1991, Shweder and Bourne 1984 and Triandis 1989. By contrast, persons possessing a “collectivist” sense of self (more prevalent among traditional Asian, Hispanic and African groups) tend to perceive themselves as more connected and less differentiated from others. They appear to be highly motivated to find a way to fit in with relevant others and to fulfill and create a sense of obligation with them. Members of these cultural groups tend to regard the inhibition of innermost feelings as the norm and as a sign of maturity, while regarding emotional outbursts of any kind as a sign of immaturity. They are motivated to validate and actualize those public qualities of themselves which they value in social relationships (e.g., respectability and responsibility) (Bond, 1986; Hsu, 1995; Lykes 1985, Markus and Kitayama 1991, Marsella et al 1985, Triandis 1989 and Weisz et al 1984). Expressive behavior as enactment of cultural self construal In an earlier paper, I described the manner in which members of culturally different groups developmentally come to embody and to create self construals that reflect their cultural group’s worldview (Dosamantes-Beaudry, 1997). I stressed the importance of viewing expressive behavior as a symbolic representation of a person’s incorporated worldview: