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69
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Introduction
relational mobility; social ecology; cross-cultural differences; interpersonal relationships; group behavior; etc.
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Publications
Publications (69)
A review of the theoretical and empirical literature suggests that social identity theory does not account well for collectivistic behaviors among East Asians. I hypothesize that the central theme of East Asian group behavior is cooperation within a group; this is represented cognitively as an interpersonal network among the members, with the empha...
This article reviews how behaviors and psychological tendencies in close relationships differ between cultures, and proposes a socioecological framework to understand those differences. Our review of the literature finds that paradoxically, people in individualistic cultures are more actively engaged in close relationships (e.g., higher levels of s...
Significance
Biologists and social scientists have long tried to understand why some societies have more fluid and open interpersonal relationships—differences in relational mobility—and how those differences influence individual behaviors. We measure relational mobility in 39 societies and find that relationships are more stable and hard to form i...
Relational mobility is a socio-ecological variable that represents how much freedom and opportunity a society affords individuals to select and replace interpersonal relationships based on their personal preferences. As a socio-ecological dimension of variation in human societies, relational mobility can vary between countries, regions, and differe...
Contrary to traditional cultural psychological theories, cross-cultural studies have found that East Asians are not more interdependent than North Americans. Addressing this anomaly, Hashimoto and Yamagishi (2013) proposed that, from an institutional approach, cross-cultural differences should exist in rejection avoidance rather than harmony-seekin...
Collective rituals, particularly those characterized by synchrony and pain, have been shown to yield positive social and emotional outcomes. The question arises as to whether these findings extend to low-arousal, family-centered rituals and how spiritual beliefs factor into these communal practices. This study set out to examine the interplay betwe...
We investigate whether the social cure properties of groups vary across cultures, testing hypotheses that the associations between multiple group memberships (MGM) and depressive symptoms will (a) be mediated by social support and uncomfortable normative pressures, and (b) vary systematically with sample-level relational mobility. Analyses of data...
A new manipulation method of relational mobility
The current study examines whether the prevalence of COVID-19 cases and cultural flexibility correlate to one's use of acceptance coping across 26 cultures. We analyzed data from 7476 participants worldwide at the start of the first outbreak from March 2020 to June 2020. Results showed that cultural flexibility moderated the relationship between CO...
The current study examines whether the prevalence of COVID-19 cases and cultural flexibility correlate to one's use of acceptance coping across 26 cultures. We analyzed data from 7476 participants worldwide at the start of the first outbreak from March 2020 to June 2020. Results showed that cultural flexibility moderated the relationship between CO...
Previous research has found that, in successful situations, East Asians tend to feel less pride and greater embarrassment than Westerners. From a socio-ecological perspective, we propose that these cultural differences in self-conscious emotions after success could be due to cross-societal differences in the expected reward or punishment that other...
The extent to which culture moderates the effects of need for approval from others on a person's handling of interpersonal conflict was investigated. Students from 24 nations rated how they handled a recent interpersonal conflict, using measures derived from face‐negotiation theory. Samples varied in the extent to which they were perceived as chara...
Given that mask-wearing proved to be an important tool to slow the spread of infection during the COVID-19 pandemic, investigating the psychological and cultural factors that influence norms for mask wearing across cultures is exceptionally important. One factor that may influence mask wearing behavior is the degree to which people believe masks po...
Evolutionary models and empirical evidence suggest that outgroup threat is one of the strongest
factors inducing group cohesion; however, little is known about the process of forming such cohesive
groups. We investigated how outgroup threat galvanizes individuals to affiliate with others to form
engaged units that are willing to act on behalf of th...
This study compares the individual-level and sample-level predictive utility of a measure of the cultural logics of dignity, honor, and face. University students in 29 samples from 24 nations used a simple measure to rate their perceptions of the interpersonal cultural logic characterizing their local culture. The nomological net of these measures...
Sex differences in aspects of independent versus interdependent self-construal and depressive symptoms were surveyed among 5,320 students from 24 nations. Men were found to perceive themselves as more self-contained whereas women perceived themselves as more connected to others. No significant sex differences were found on two further dimensions of...
Relational mobility is a socio-ecological construct quantifying how much freedom and opportunity a society affords individuals to choose and dispose of interpersonal relationships. Past research has confirmed that relational mobility varies across nations, but no large-scale study has examined the degree to which relational mobility may vary within...
Rituals that involve painful, frightening, or other unpleasant elements are found across across the world in a diverse range of contexts, from firewalking festivals to college hazings. This paper examines the psychological and social impact that such experiences have on individual participants and their relationships with the groups involved. We pr...
Although monogamy, the exclusive bonding with a specific partner, is one characteristic of modern human mating, long-term romantic relationships inherently possess the commitment problem, which is the conflict between maintaining a relationship with a certain partner and seeking attractive alternatives. Frank has argued that love and passion help s...
Self-continuity – the sense that one’s past, present, and future are meaningfully connected – is considered a defining feature of personal identity. However, bases of self-continuity may depend on cultural beliefs about personhood. In multilevel analyses of data from 7287 adults from 55 cultural groups in 33 nations, we tested a new tripartite theo...
Previous studies have shown that the maximizing orientation, reflecting a motivation to select the best option among a given set of choices, is associated with various negative psychological outcomes. In the present studies, we examined whether these relationships extend to friendship selection and how the number of options for friends moderated th...
Variations in acquiescence and extremity pose substantial threats to the validity of cross-cultural research that relies on survey methods. Individual and cultural correlates of response styles when using 2 contrasting types of response mode were investigated, drawing on data from 55 cultural groups across 33 nations. Using 7 dimensions of self-oth...
Markus and Kitayama's (1991) theory of independent and interdependent self-construals had a major influence on social, personality, and developmental psychology by highlighting the role of culture in psychological processes. However, research has relied excessively on contrasts between North American and East Asian samples, and commonly used self-r...
Recent cross-cultural research shows that North Americans feel greater intimacy toward their relationship partner than East Asians. The purpose of the current study was to: 1) attempt to replicate this difference; and 2) investigate whether the difference could be explained by a socio-ecological factor, namely relational mobility. In particular, we...
Despite ongoing interest in cross-cultural differences in Internet privacy concern (concern over unauthorized third-party access to self-disclosures on the Internet), predictors of between-country variance in online privacy concern are yet unclear. This paper proposes a novel theoretical account from a socio-ecological perspective, focusing on the...
Social and behavioral scientists have delineated a diverse array of cultural variation in thinking, feeling, and behavior. This chapter summarizes an effort to clarify the sources of cultural variation from a socioecological perspective, focusing on two key factors: residential mobility and relational mobility. Residential mobility refers to the fr...
Does a change in the nature of surrounding social context affect the strength of association between self-esteem and happiness? This paper aims to answer this question from a socio-ecological perspective, focusing on the role of relational mobility. Recent research has shown that this association is stronger in societies that are higher in relation...
The authors propose that cross-cultural differences in sensitivity to social rejection, or the extent to which one is alert to potential rejection from significant others, can be understood as an adaptation to different social ecological contexts varying in the degrees of relational mobility. In societies low in relational mobility, such as East As...
Previous research has found cross-cultural differences in the strength of the association between self-esteem and happiness. We propose that this difference can be explained by relational mobility, or the degree to which options exist in the given socio-ecological context for relationship formation and dissolution. In Study 1, we found that the ass...
Beliefs about personhood are understood to be a defining feature of individualism-collectivism (I-C), but they have been insufficiently explored, given the emphasis of research on values and self-construals. We propose the construct of contextualism, referring to beliefs about the importance of context in understanding people, as a facet of cultura...
Beliefs about personhood are understood to be a defining feature of individualism-collectivism
(I-C), but they have been insufficiently explored, given the emphasis of research on values and
self-construals. We propose the construct of contextualism, referring to beliefs about the importance
of context in understanding people, as a facet of cultura...
Beliefs about personhood are understood to be a defining feature of individualism-collectivism (I-C), but they have been insufficiently explored, given the emphasis of research on values and self-construals. We propose the construct of contextualism, referring to beliefs about the importance of context in understanding people, as a facet of cultura...
A recent review of empirical evidence disconfirmed the widely-held view that North Americans are less collectivistic than East Asians. However, previous research has proposed that the motivations underlying group behaviours differ across cultures: North Americans are more strongly motivated to acquire and maintain higher in-group status relative to...
In the current research, we tested a novel explanation for previously demonstrated findings that East Asians disclose less personal information to other people than do Westerners. We propose that both between- and within-culture differences in self-disclosure to close friends may be explained by the construct of relational mobility, the general deg...
Recent research has suggested that two distinct psychological processes lead to ingroup favoritism in the minimal group paradigm (MGP): the motivation to gain positive intergroup distinctiveness, and the motivation to maintain intragroup cooperation. In this study, we tested a hypothesis based on the adaptationist perspective, that different situat...
Several studies have demonstrated that similarity between friendship partners is higher in the West than in East Asian countries. We hypothesized that these differences could be explained by relational mobility, or the number of opportunities to form new relationships in a given society. Through two studies, we confirmed that whereas the preference...
Much research finds that Westerners self-enhance more than East Asians, with the exception of studies using the implicit associations test for self-esteem (IATSE). We contrasted Japanese and Canadians on a new measure of self-enhancement under low- and high-attentional load to assess whether cultural differences vary across controlled and automatic...
Previous evidence suggests that, compared with females, male psychology and behavior is more strongly oriented toward intergroup conflict and competition. This study tested whether male coalitional psychology is so deeply ingrained that it could be activated even by subtle cues in the environment suggesting intergroup conflict. We used a priming me...
Although the role of trust in group processes has been well established, less is known about the role of trust in social network processes. Trust, conceptualized to have generalized and particularistic aspects, was measured by generalized trust (people can be trusted in general) and relationism (people can be trusted if one has relationships), and...
Although the role of trust in group processes has been well established, less is known about the role of trust in social network processes. Trust, conceptualized to have generalized and particularistic aspects, was measured by generalized trust (people can be trusted in general) and relationism (people can be trusted if one has relationships), and...
Previous research has demonstrated that although North Americans are typically seen as highly individualistic, they are actually no less group-oriented than "collectivistic" East Asians. However, this may be the case because group-orientations of East Asians and North Americans are qualitatively different: the former are more intragroup-relationshi...
The "ripple effect" refers to a robust cultural difference in how individuals make social judgments regarding the consequence of events, with East Asian individuals perceiving a greater distal impact of events than Western individuals (Maddux & Yuki, 2006). The present research offers the first investigation into the underlying psychological nature...
The current research investigated the hypothesis that, depending on an individual’s cultural background, facial cues in different parts of the face are weighted differently when interpreting emotions. Given that the eyes are more difficult to control than the mouth when people express emotions, we predicted that individuals in cultures where emotio...
The interindividual-intergroup discontinuity effect is the tendency for relationships between groups to be more competitive than the relationships between individuals. It has been observed robustly in studies conducted in the United States, which is a society characterized as "individualistic." In this study, it was explored whether the effect was...
This study examined whether self-reports on general self-views and on own behaviors would show the same cross-cultural differences in cultural self-construal. We asked Japanese, Australian, and Canadian University students to complete an independent and interdependent cultural self-construal scale and, a week later, to rate their past behaviors. Th...
In this paper we developed a scale to measure relational mobility, or the general amount of opportunities there are to form new relationships, when necessary, in a given society or social context. Depending on the nature of the particular society, network, or organization into which one is embedded, the number of opportunities individuals have to f...
Previous research has demonstrated that people from East Asian cultural backgrounds make broader, more complex causal attributions than do people from Western cultural backgrounds. In the current research, the authors hypothesized that East Asians also would be aware of a broader, more complex distribution of consequences of events. Four studies as...
Are human individuals universally seen to be more real entities (or more entitative, to use Campbell's, 1958, term) than social groups? Although the individual may be seen to be more entitative than social groups in the West, it is unclear whether this is the case in other cultures, especially in East Asia. Two aspects of perceived entitativity are...
Social representations of world history were assessed using the open-ended questions, “What are the most important events in world history?” and “Who are the most influential persons in world history in the last 1,000 years?”Data from six Asian and six Western samples showed cross-cultural consensus. Historical representations were (a) focused on t...
Two experiments explored differences in depersonalized trust (trust toward a relatively unknown target person) across cultures. Based on a recent theoretical framework that postulates predominantly different bases for group behaviors in Western cultures versus Eastern cultures, it was predicted that Americans would tend to trust people primarily ba...
The cross-cultural generality of terror management theory was examined in Australia and Japan. Based on previous research suggesting that individualism is stronger in Australia than in Japan, mortality salience was predicted to enhance individualism in Australia, but to reduce it in Japan. The results supported this prediction. Consistent with the...
Self-concepts change from context to context. The experience that one's self is context-sensitive may be universal, however the amount and meaning of context-sensitive self vary across cultures. Cross-cultural differences in the amount and meaning of context-sensitive self were investigated in three Western cultures (Australia, Germany, and UK) and...
Individualism and collectivism are often equated with independent vs. interdependent, agentic vs. communal, and separate vs. relational self-construals. Although these same concepts have been used to characterize both cultural and gender differences, a perspective of cultural evolution suggests it is unlikely. A division of labor within society may...
Self-concepts change from context to context. The experience that one's self is context-sensitive may be universal, however the amount and meaning of context-sensitive self vary across cultures. Cross-cultural differences in the amount and meaning of context-sensitive self were investigated in three Western cultures (Australia, Germany, and UK) and...
