Research question/goal:

An individual’s self-concept and personality can predict important life outcomes, such as prosocial behaviours (civil engagement, volunteering) and ideologies (religiosity, political attitudes). Yet, these effects vary across different cultural contexts. For example, past research found a strong relationship between communion-/femininity and higher religiosity in Turkey, but this relationship was totally absent in Sweden. Cross-cultural variations of this kind have been described as major threats to the predictive validity of self-concept and personality. This project was funded by the DFG’s (German Research Foundation) Emmy-Noether program and developed a theory to explain such cross-cultural variations.

More precisely, the developed “sociocultural motives perspective” (SMP) assumes that certain dimensions of self-concept and personality (e.g., communion, agreeableness) evoke the desire to swim with the sociocultural tide (sociocultural assimilation motivation). Thus, these dimensions should predict important life outcomes particularly strongly if those life outcomes are culturally common. Similarly, they should predict important life outcomes particularly weakly (or even negatively) if those life outcomes are culturally uncommon. The SMP further assumes that other dimensions of self-concept and personality (e.g., agency, openness) evoke the desire to swim against the sociocultural tide (sociocultural contrast motivation). Accordingly, these dimensions should predict important life outcomes particularly strongly if those life outcomes are culturally uncommon. At the same time, they should predict important life outcomes particularly weakly (or even negatively) if those life outcomes are culturally common.

Over the course of the project, we conducted a variety of studies that tested the SMP. Many were experimental in nature and thus allowed for causal conclusions as well as tight control over the involved variables. Other studies relied on large-scale cross-cultural panel data and thus allowed for ecologically most valid conclusions. Despite the diverse methodology (experiments in a single culture vs. cross-cultural panel data), the results were extremely homogeneous and strongly supported the SMP.
The SMP’s added value is that the it can explain cross-cultural differences in the effects of self-concept and personality. Therefore, the SMP contributes to restoring the crippled predictive validity of the self-concept and of personality.