Self-construal priming does not shift self-descriptions, value endorsement, or social obligation judgment: A preregistered replication and extension of Gardner, Gabriel, & Lee (1999)

Humans from different cultures define the self differently, but how cultures influence self-construal—beliefs about the self—remains elusive. Do cultures mold our way of perceiving, thinking, feeling, and acting, much into a habit through cultural practices and daily routines (habit mechanism)? Or do cultures merely modify the accessibility of a certain way of perceiving, thinking, feeling, and acting, just as one’s thoughts constantly change on a daily basis based on the current motive and situation (access mechanism)? A highly influential line of work in cultural priming—self-construal priming—suggests that reading different story primes (reflecting either independent or interdependent thought processes) or circling different types of pronouns in word-search primes (either independent [e.g., I, mine] or interdependent [e.g., we, ours] pronouns) can shift self-descriptions, value endorsement, and social obligation judgment (Gardner, Gabriel, & Lee, 1999). In this preregistered replication and extension study, despite efforts to maximize priming and to identify moderators, we found that self-construal priming, either through story primes or word-search primes, did not change the relative independence or interdependence of one’s self-construal in Chinese participants. Priming was also not modulated by gender, experience living aboard, rice vs. wheat farming legacy, or self-reported earnestness in answering the questions. Thus, the predominant access afforded by cultures is much less malleable than previously assumed, consistent with the habit but not access mechanism of cultural influences. To build a cumulative and reproducible cultural psychology, we call for direct replications of key findings in cultural priming and related literature.

Self-construal priming reconsidered: Comparing effects of two commonly used primes in the UK and China

Self-construal priming was devised to mimic the effects of chronic cross-cultural differences. Primes designed to activate independent/interdependent self-construals have been found to affect numerous culturally relevant outcomes. However, researchers have rarely checked precisely what these primes activated, nor tested their cross-cultural equivalence. We compared two common priming tasks, Similarities vs. Differences with Family and Friends (SDFF) and Sumerian Warrior Story (SWS), across seven dimensions of independence/interdependence among 118 British and 178 Chinese participants. The two tasks activated different combinations of self-construal dimensions. SWS showed a similar pattern of effects across cultures, whereas SDFF more strongly affected Chinese participants. Neither manipulation closely mimicked the pattern of pre-existing cross-cultural differences between samples. We propose researchers should develop more precisely targeted self-construal primes.

The dynamic influence of culture on variation in consumers’ attachment of value to a product

Purpose Cross-cultural research based on the means-end chain (MEC) theory tends to overestimate the stability of the dominant chains of a cultural group; at the same time, it pays insufficient attention to the influence of the context on an individual’s cultural anchorage. This study aims to adopt the dynamic constructivist approach to culture to show that, for the same product, differences in MEC for consumers from different cultures can be voluntarily reduced under certain conditions and to a certain extent. Design/methodology/approach The authors adopted an inter-subject experimental design: two cultures (French vs Korean) × three self-construal primings (independent vs interdependent vs control). Participants in the experimental group were randomly assigned to one of the three priming conditions. The no-priming control group made it possible to verify the effect of priming by measuring the difference in responses with respect to the two experimental groups. Findings The results highlight the effect of self-construal priming that contradicts the culture of origin. Cross-cultural independence and interdependence priming foster convergence between dominant chains of French and Korean participants by considerably reducing the cultural differences that are observed when there is no priming. It appears that a consumer’s cultural anchoring can be shaped by priming a specific dimension of self-construal, which, in turn, illustrates that cultural influence is a discontinuous process. Originality/value It is the first attempt to study variation in the dominant chains of a cultural group, rather than adopting the preconceived notion of their permanence or stability in different contexts. The methodological contribution is characterized by the combination of a method to record chains and a priming method applied in different cultural environments.

Investigating the effects of cultural-mindset priming on evaluation of job performance behaviors

Recent reviews of performance evaluation process and practices indicate that there is substantial variability in the structure and formalization of performance evaluations in organizations across cultures and call for further exploration of the role of cultural variables on the performance evaluation process. In the current study, we use self-construal priming procedures to evaluate the effects of cultural mindset on the performance evaluation process. Specifically, the effects of independent (individualistic) and interdependent (collectivistic) mindset priming on relative importance given to performance behaviors when making judgments of overall job performance was investigated. Participants first completed either independent (n = 87) or interdependent (n = 87) priming tasks by circling either I/me/my or we/us/our in a paragraph of text. Following this, they completed a managerial role-play exercise in which they read employee performance vignettes (manipulated on task, citizenship and counterproductive performance behaviors) and rated the overall performance of each employee. Rater policies were captured using regression analyses and relative weights placed on each performance behavior were computed. Results suggest that when making judgments of overall performance, as compared to raters primed with interdependence, raters primed with independence placed less weight on citizenship behaviors and higher weights on counterproductive performance behaviors. No significant differences were observed in the weights placed on task performance behaviors. Study limitations and implications for research are discussed.