Cultural psychologists often treat binary contrasts of West versus East, individualism versus collectivism, and independent versus interdependent self-construal as interchangeable, thus assuming that collectivist societies promote interdependent rather than independent models of selfhood. At odds with this assumption, existing data indicate that Latin American societies emphasize collectivist values at least as strongly as Confucian East Asian societies, but they emphasize most forms of independent self-construal at least as strongly as Western societies. We argue that these seemingly “anomalous” findings can be explained by societal differences in modes of subsistence (herding vs. rice farming), colonial histories (frontier settlement), cultural heterogeneity, religious heritage, and societal organization (relational mobility, loose norms, honor logic) and that they cohere with other indices of contemporary psychological culture. We conclude that the common view linking collectivist values with interdependent self-construal needs revision. Global cultures are diverse, and researchers should pay more attention to societies beyond “the West” and East Asia. Our contribution concurrently illustrates the value of learning from unexpected results and the crucial importance of exploratory research in psychological science.

文化心理学家经常将西方与东方、个人主义与集体主义、独立与相互依存的自我解释的二元对比视为可互换的，因此假设集体主义社会提倡相互依赖而不是独立的自我模式。与这一假设相反，现有数据表明，拉丁美洲社会强调集体主义价值观至少与儒家东亚社会一样强烈，但它们强调大多数形式的独立自我建构至少与西方社会一样强烈。我们认为，这些看似“反常”的发现可以用生存方式（放牧与水稻种植）、殖民历史（边境定居）、文化异质性、宗教遗产和社会组织（关系流动性、松散的规范、荣誉逻辑），并且它们与当代心理文化的其他指标相一致。我们得出结论，将集体主义价值观与相互依存的自我解释联系起来的共同观点需要修正。全球文化是多元的，研究人员应该更多地关注“西方”和东亚以外的社会。我们的贡献同时说明了从意想不到的结果中学习的价值以及探索性研究在心理科学中的重要性。