摘　要

现今，随着经济的快速发展，中西方的跨文化交际变得日益重要。在文化交流中，不同文化价值观念的人有着不同的信仰，时常会导致文化上的冲突，因此研究中西方之间的价值差异，找到正确的交流方式成为了必然。个人主义和集体主义是理解东西方文化的一个重要因素，双方强调个人主义和集体主义的原则是完全不同的，两者的交流模式、行为和风格也是不同的，缺乏文化差异的意识和了解是引起东西方文化冲突的原因所在。由于美国个人主义是西方个人主义的代表, 本文以分析美国个人主义来研究西方个人主义，进而通过介绍中国集体主义和美国个人主义的根源和定义分析两者之间的不同之处。同时采用比较研究法阐述美国个人主义与中国集体主义之间差异的表现。本文的研究认识了中西方不同文化观念所体现的不同的价值信仰的异同处，为中西方之间的文化交流提供了切实可行的交流方式。

关键词：美国；个人主义；中国；集体主义

Abstract

With the rapid economic development, intercultural communications between western and eastern countries become increasingly important in the cultural exchanges. People with different values hold different beliefs, which very often leads to the culture conflicts. In this case, the study on the value varies of the western and eastern cultures and the right way to communicate become necessary. The individualism and the collectivism are the key elements to understand the western and eastern cultures. Both cultures emphasize the individualism and the collectivism in different ways and further more on the behaviors and styles, too. The lack of the awareness and understanding of the culture differences is the root cause of the conflicts. Since the American individualism is the representative of the western individualism, this paper is to analyze the American individualism and its differences from the Chinese collectivism through the introduction of the roots and identifications introspectively. This paper tries to get the different points of views on the western and eastern cultures which account for different values and religions so as to provide a realistic and possible communication way for the western and eastern culture exchanges.

Key words: America; individualism; China; collectivism

1 Introduction
1.1 Research background
In recent years, under the background of globalization, intercultural communication has been more and more frequent. When people come across strange people from different cultures, they always experience cultural shock. That is because people from different cultures are endowed with different values, like western culture and Chinese culture. After the world entered the new millennium, globalization has accelerated the flow of cultural communication. The ongoing process of globalization has been promoting the interdependence between China and the United States, the two important countries in the world. Since the end of the Cold War, especially in 1993, when American sociologist Samuel P. Huntington stated in his book The Clash of Civilization that the clash on civilizations “between the west and several Islamic-Confucian States” will be “a central focus of conflict for the immediate future”, the clash of civilization and culture in the West and East, instead of ideology’s clash has triggered off a new attention all over the world and reached a climax. Mutual impacts between the Eastern and Western cultures are beginning to be recognized as a fundamental force directing the international life pattern.