Does Circling feel the same, and help as much, where people disclose less and ask for support less directly?
Circling grew up in the United States and asks people to say what they feel, often to near strangers. How much people disclose, and how they like to be supported, differs between cultures.
Builds on seven works
Circling got its name in San Francisco, and much of the practice rests on saying aloud what you feel, often to people you have just met. Circling and Authentic Relating are now practised in Finland and Sweden, among other places (Silvennoinen (2025), Gärdenfors & Jönsson (2022)), but no study has compared how they work in different cultures.
People in Japan reported disclosing less to close friends than people in the United States, a gap that tracked relational mobility: how freely people can form new relationships and leave old ones (Schug et al. (2010)). A survey in 39 societies found more self-disclosure, support and trust where relational mobility was high (Thomson et al. (2018)). In the studies reviewed by Kim et al. (2008), Asian and Asian American participants were more reluctant to ask close others for help, and gained more from support that needed no disclosure.
Culture also shapes what people notice in themselves. Across five countries, reports of sensing a spiritual presence went with a culture’s picture of the mind and with a person’s tendency to become absorbed (Luhrmann et al. (2021)). The one ethnography of the practice (Nica (2022)) asks what its communities mean to their members, not how the practice changes from place to place.
Run the same short programme of circles in two or more countries that differ in relational mobility, with local facilitators. Measure closeness and comfort before and after with carefully translated measures, and pair the numbers with fieldwork on how each group adapts the practice: what it renames, softens or drops.
People who seek out Circling where disclosure is rare may be unusual there, so compare them with people from the same place who haven’t. Translation reaches the practice’s own words too: “being met” or “owning your experience” may have no neat equivalent.
Cautions: Self-report only
Japanese participants reported disclosing less to close friends than Americans, and the gap, like differences within Japan, tracked relational mobility: how freely people around them can form new relationships and leave old ones.
Cautions: Self-report only
A survey in 39 societies found more self-disclosure, support, trust and intimacy where relationships are easy to form and leave; this mobility was lower where farming was settled and interdependent, as with rice, or threats were greater.
Reviews studies in which Asian and Asian American participants were more reluctant than European Americans to ask close others for help, wary of the strain on the relationship, and gained more from support that asks for no disclosure.
Cautions: Self-report only
In four studies across five countries, people more often reported sensing gods or spirits when their culture saw the mind as open to the world and when they themselves tended to become absorbed in inner experience.
An ethnography of Authentic Relating and Circling communities, from interviews and participant observation: how they cultivate emotional intimacy and respond to social isolation.
A practical guide for volunteer peer facilitators of Authentic Relating “connection games”, written as a social-services thesis with the Finnish association Autenttiset ry.
Cautions: Small sample · Self-selected participants · Self-report only
After a two-day Authentic Relating course, participants felt markedly closer to a fellow participant. Ratings of a close friend who hadn’t attended didn’t change two to four weeks later.