1. Mediation Effects of Self-Construal on Chinese-English Differences in Cognition, Emotion and Motivation
Shengyu Yang & Vivian L Vignoles
Method
Introduction
Self-Construal
- How people in different cultures define and make meaning of the self (independence/ interdependence).
Traditional research
- Treating Self-Construal as two separate and unitary dimensions.
- Using the Twenty Statements Test (TST, Kuhn & McPartland, 1954), the Self-Construal Scale (SCS; Singelis, 1994), and the Gudykunst et al. (1996) scale.
- Lack of support for the mediation of Self-Construal on cultural differences (Kitayama et al. 2009) .
What we do
- Treating Self-Construal as multifaceted and believing there are different ways of being independent and interdependent in various cultures.
- Applying the 7-dimension model of Self-Construal to study individual and cultural differences in cognition, emotion and motivation in China and the UK.
Participants
Chinese participants, mainly undergraduates from the Nanjing Normal University in China.
- 97 British participants, mainly undergraduates from the University of Sussex.
Measures
- 7-dimension Self-Construal Scale (Vignoles et al., 2016)
- Sociogram Task (Duffy et al., 2008)
- Dispositional Vs Situational Attribution Task (Na et al., 2010)
- Social Closeness Task (Aron et al., 1992)
- Socially Engaging and Disengaging Emotions Task (Kitayama et al., 2009)
- Achievement Motivation and Face Motivation Task (Tao & Hong, 2013; Hwang, Francesco & Kessler, 2003)
Results 1.
The 7-dimensional model of Self-Construal
- With the item selection procedures, there are 4 or 5 indicators for each factor.
Chi-square = , df = 267, p < .001,
RMSEA = .050 (95% CI: .040, .060), SRMR = .032, CFI = .949.
Cronbach’s α from .61 to .85
- Chinese participants were significantly more interdependent and less independent than British participants in 6 dimensions. 2.
Mediation model in cognition, emotion and motivation tasks
(1) Social Closeness Task
(2) Socially Engaging and Disengaging Emotions Task
- Compared to British participants, Chinese participants had more feelings of connection to others. Consequently, Chinese participants rated more differential closeness between ingroup and outgroup relationships than British participants.
- Compared to British participants, Chinese participants showed more variability across context. Hence, Chinese participants rated less difference between experiencing engaging and disengaging emotions than British participants.
(3) Achievement Motivation Task
(4) Face Motivation Task
- Compared to British participants, Chinese participants had a preference for maintaining harmony. Hence, Chinese participants rated more difference between Social-oriented and Individual-oriented Achievement Motivation than British participants.
- Compared to British participants, Chinese participants had a preference for being similar to others and maintaining harmony. Hence, Chinese participants showed more motivation towards fear of losing face and less motivation for the desire of gaining face than British participants.
*There is no significant result in Sociogram Task, and some other significant results are not shown here due to limited space.
Main Findings
Discussion
Selected References
1. Aron, A., Aron, EN, Smollan, D. (1992). Inclusion of other in the self scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness. J Pers Soc Psychol, 63:596–612.
2. Duffy, S., Uchida, Y., & Kitayama, S. (2008). Symbolic self-inflation: A cross-cultural comparison. Unpublished manuscript, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, University College-Camden.
3. Gudykunst, W. B., Matsumoto, Y., Ting-Toomey, S., Nishida, T., Kim, K., & Heyman, H. (1996). The influence of cultural individualism-collectivism, self-construals, and individual values on communication styles across cultures. Human Communication Research, 22, doi: /j tb00377.x.
4. Hwang, A., Francesco, A., Kessler, E. (2003). The Relationship Between Individualism-Collectivism, Face, and Feedback and Learning Processes in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34(1), doi: /
5. Kitayama, S., Park, H., Sevincer, A. T., Karasawa, M., & Uskul, A. K. (2009). A cultural task analysis of implicit independence: Comparing North America, Western Europe, and East Asia. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, doi: /a
6. Kuhn, M. H., & McPartland, T. S. (1954).  An empirical investigation of self-attitudes.  American Sociological Review, 19(1),
7. Na, J., Grossmann, I., Varnum, M., Gonzalez, R., Kitayama, S., & Nisbett, R. E. (2010). Cultural differences are not always reducible to individual differences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(14),
8. Singelis, T. M. (1994). The measurement of independent and interdependent self-construals. Social & Personality Psy- chology Compass, 20,
9. Tao, V., Hong, Y. (2013). When Academic Achievement Is an Obligation: Perspectives From Social-Oriented Achievement Motivation. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology,45(1), doi: /
10. Vignoles, V. L., Owe, E., Becker, M., Smith, P. B., Easterbrook, M. J., & Brown, R., et al. (2016). Beyond the ‘East–West’ Dichotomy: Global Variation in Cultural Models of Selfhood. Journal of Experimental Psychology General, 145.
- There are significant differences for Chinese and English participants in various aspects of cognition, emotion and motivation.
- The new 7-dimension model shows an expected pattern that Chinese participants are more inclined to be interdependent in 6 out of 7 dimensions than British participants.
- Explicit Self-Construals significantly mediated Chinese and English cultural differences in social closeness, engaging (vs disengaging) emotions, achievement motivation and face motivation.
- Previous research using the traditional 2-dimension model has usually failed to show a mediating role of Self-Construal, whereas the 7-dimension model in the current study indicates significant mediation effects of Self-Construal, suggesting that the new model more adequately captures cultural differences.
- Differences in above psychological processes are mediated by different combinations of the 7 dimensions, showing the importance of distinguishing different ways of being independent and interdependent in cross-cultural research.