The analysis above serves to show how individual behavior must be understood in its
relational contexts, how varied interpersonal relationships may be formed or dissolved, and how
the cultural definition of interpersonal relationships imposes limits on behavioral variation due
to personality and situational factors. It also illustrates that a social psychology predicated on
methodological individualism is fundamentally ill-equipped to analyze social behavior. Thus the
bias toward methodological individualism in psychology has profound consequences. It impedes
the development of a psychological science capable of accounting for the complexity of human
behavior.
A relational perspective of human existence leads to an explicit recognition of how
individual volition is circumscribed in the network of social relations; it tempers the view of the
individual as being autonomous, seeking to gain mastery over the environment and his or her
own psychic life and destiny. However, the portrayal of the autonomous individual with
unbound freedom of choice represents only an idealized, predominantly Western, version of
human existence. In actuality, much of the time people are subject to the constraint of social
relations, to a greater extent than what individualism would lead us to appreciate.
A modest step has been taken in the explication of Asian social psychology. A legion of
possibilities awaits its development and application into diverse domains of human behavior.