Is there evidence that "people in Eastern societies are more in touch with their communities while Western societies value uniqueness more"?

Question

In a lecture, a prof claimed that in Western societies, people tend to value independence and uniqueness, whereas Eastern cultures tend to value helping each other and living harmoniously. In a nutshell, people in Eastern cultures think of the community more than themselves, whereas in Western cultures people tend to think about what makes themselves unique.

Are there any studies that relate to these claims?

Answer 1

While I can't, and won't make any comment on the accusations of racism (I think the comments below your question answer that quite well), the Western/Analytic vs. Eastern/Holistic dichotomy is pretty well established and supported by studies in cognitive and social psychological literatures.

This may be a little different to what you had in mind, as your question is more about social notions like 'valuing independence' versus 'coexisting in harmony', which are harder to empirically demonstrate (I'm not a social psychologist). What I'm referring to here is more like 'logic, rules, and working details out step by step' versus 'taking everything into account, and seeing the bigger picture'.

However, the idea is a bit more complicated than what I'm able to explain in a few sentences. Nisbett et al's (2001) review (free preprint copy here) is the Rolls-Royce of reviews when it comes to this, and that paper will address most of the questions you might have (note the racial diversity of the authors). You can also find more work by the same authors here.

References

(just the one)

Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I., & Norenzayan, A. (2001). Culture and systems of thought: holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychological review, 108(2), 291.

Answer 2

The difference between collectivistic and individualistic cultures is one of the recurring topics in introductory lectures in Social Psychology, I-O Psychology and related fields.

The most widely cited book on culture is Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind by Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov (2010), originally published by Hofstede and Hofstede in 1991. In addition, here are two basic and popular publications on the topic, available online:

• Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind: Intercultural cooperation and its importance for survival (3rd ed.). New York: Mcgraw Hill.
• Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224. Available online at http://www.iacmr.org/v2/Conferences/WS2011/Submission_XM/Participant/Readings/Lecture8A_JiaLin/Markus%20et%20al%20%281991%29%20Culture%20and%20Self%20-%20Implications%20for%20Cognition%20Emotion%20and%20Motivation-8a.pdf
• Suh, E., Diener, E., Oishi, S., & Triandis, H. C. (1998). The shifting basis of life satisfaction judgments across cultures: Emotions versus norms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(2), 482. Available online at http://web.yonsei.ac.kr/suh/file/The%20shifting%20basis%20of%20life%20satisfaction%20judgments%20across%20cultures_Emotions%20versus%20norms.pdf

There's more, of course, but these and the references in Hofstede et al. will keep you busy for years.