Self-Monitoring in Individualist and Collectivist Cultures

The current study investigated the influence of cultural orientation on self-monitoring. Participants were 40 female undergraduate students from Brescia University College who completed four questionnaires including a demographic questionnaire, Snyder’s (1974) SelfMonitoring scale, the Individualism and Collectivism Scale (Triandis & Gelfland, 1998), and the Self-Consciousness Scale (Scheier, M.F., & Carver, C. S. 2013). It was predicted that cultures that were more collectivist in orientation would score higher on the self-monitoring scale and that public self-conscious would facilitate these results. The results indicated that cultural orientation did not significantly relate to self-monitoring, however, public self-consciousness was found to have a positive significant relation to self-monitoring. SELF-MONITORING IN INDIVIDUALISTS AND COLLECTIVISTS 3 Self-Monitoring in Individualist and Collectivist Cultures Culture has been referred to as “the software of the mind” (Hofstede, 1994). In fact, its importance to society is almost as memory is to an individual (Triandis, 2001) ⎯ a kaleidoscope of experiences that shape them. Therefore, culture is seen to be a key factor when defining an individual's identity and, to some extent, their personality. Although there is no question that individuals differ in personality characteristics, it is argued that these characteristics are influenced and motivated by the surrounding culture (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, &Nisbett, 1998; Triandis, 2001). However, the extent to which culture influences personality characteristics and thereby behaviour is a topic of interest for many researchers today. Therefore, much research has been done to investigate various personality and behavioral differences across cultures in an attempt to illustrate the influence that culture has on personality and behaviour. For example, research has indicated that individuals from individualistic cultures such as Western Europe and North America tend to explain social behaviour through personal attributions and emphasize uniqueness and independence. In contrast, the identity of individuals from collectivist cultures such as East Asia, stem from their social groups with values pertaining to homogeny and community. Furthermore, past literature has revealed that the psychological processes of individuals from different cultural orientations appear to vary (Fiske et al., 1998). One such psychological process that individuals from different cultures tend to differ on is the frequency of engaging in and responding to social comparisons. Social comparison refers to the tendency of individuals to use comparisons to others as a means of judging the self (White & Lehman, 2005). Individuals can either participate in upwards social comparison or downwards social comparisons. Upwards social comparisons occur when comparisons are made with those who are better off or more highly skilled than the individual. In contrast, downward social SELF-MONITORING IN INDIVIDUALISTS AND COLLECTIVISTS 4 comparisons refer to when individuals compare themselves to those who are in a less positive situation than they are. Both forms of social comparisons may be useful to the individual, either inspiring the individual to do better through self-improvement or motivating them to avoid the fate of those who are less fortunate (Lockwood, Marshall, & Sadler, 2005). White and Lehman (2005) examined the effect of cultural background on seeking social comparison information using European Canadians, who held individualist predispositions and Asian Canadians who held collectivist perspectives. The authors hypothesized that those individuals from cultures that are more interdependent (i.e. collectivist cultures) would seek more social comparisons, arguing that interdependence exists through creating social comparisons. Twenty-Three European Canadians and twenty-eight Asian Canadians took part in a spatial reasoning task after which their responses were graded and then recorded. All participants received a score that was average and told that they could then compare their scores with 0 to 7 others from a list of eighty-eight rankings which consisted of scores that were either better or worse than theirs. Results indicated that individuals from collectivist cultures tended to seek more social comparisons than those from individualist cultures due to a heightened desire for self-improvement (White & Lehman, 2005). Similarly, another study conducted by Lockwood et al. (2005) investigated cultural differences in responding to social comparison information by examining European and Asian Canadians. The findings indicated that Asian Canadians were more motivated by downward social comparisons (i.e. a student who failed). In contrast, European Canadians were found to be more responsive to upwards social comparisons (i.e. a student who succeeded). These findings suggest that people from individualist cultures tend to be motivated by success whereas those from collectivist cultures have stronger prevention orientations; they are SELF-MONITORING IN INDIVIDUALISTS AND COLLECTIVISTS 5 motivated by other people’s failures (Lockwood et al., 2005). Therefore, this may explain why individuals from collectivist cultures seek and attend to social comparison information more (White & Lehman, 2005) than individualists, as fear tends to be a greater motivational factor for them (Lockwood et al., 2005). Furthermore, the tendency to engage in social comparisons can also help explain conformity difference across cultures. Conformity is defined as a change in behaviour due to the influence of another person or group (Barrett, Wosinska, Butner, Petrova, Gornik-Durose, &Cialdini, 2004). As with social comparisons, in order for conformity to occur, the individual must be open and attentive to social cues in scenarios where the instruction or request is not explicitly provided (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). Bond and Smith (1956) reported in their meta-analysis that collectivists in general conform more than individualists. In fact, collectivists also tend to emphasize conformity in their child rearing practices (Triandis, 2001). Cialdini, Wosinska, Barrett, and Gornik-Durose (1999) investigated whether individuals from collectivist or individualist cultures conformed more in response to self-comparisons (commitment/consistency factor) or in response to social comparisons (social proof factor). That is, they were examining whether an individual’s decision to comply with the task (completing a 40-minute survey) was based on information from their own individual compliance history or from their peers. The findings indicated that American participants conformed more in response to commitment/consistency factors. In contrast, Polish individuals, who are more collectively oriented, conformed more in response to social proof factors (Cialdini et al., 1999). This finding is further supported by Barrett et al.’s (2004) study in which collectivist participants were more likely to report that their motivation to comply was other-oriented whereas individualists described their motivation as self-oriented. SELF-MONITORING IN INDIVIDUALISTS AND COLLECTIVISTS 6 Furthermore, an extensive Cialdini et al. (1999) study found that in a situation where no conformity factors (commitment/consistency or social proof) were used, collectivist participants were still more likely than individualistic participants to comply with the researchers’ request. Based on those research findings, the authors of the research reported that not only dispositional factors affect compliance but also situational factors such as whether the individual asking for help appeared to be dependent on them for aid. This suggests that individuals from collectivist cultures may be more sensitive to situational factors and thereby are more attuned to the social environment than those people from individualist cultures. Triandis (2001) found the attributes of collectivists and individualists to be corresponding to the attributes of allocentric and idiocentric individuals. The term allocentrism refers to the personality attribute in which individuals focus more attention on others rather than themselves (usually a collectivist trait). On the contrary, idiocentrism describes when individuals focus more on themselves than others and are usually attributed to members of individualistic cultures (Yamaguchi, Kuhlman, & Sugimori, 1995). Therefore, allocentric individuals are described as internalizing the norms of their in-group more than idiocentric individuals and thus do what their in-group expects them to do, bringing back the idea of homogeny amongst collectivists (Triandis, 2001). Moreover, Triandis (2001) describes allocentric individuals as viewing the environment as stable and therefore, the self as willing to change (i.e. fit in to the environment) whereas idiocentric individuals see the self as stable and the environment as changeable. Moreover, these cultures also seemed to vary in public and private self-consciousness. Those who are high in private self-consciousness attend to their inner thoughts frequently, whereas those who are low in this trait do so less often. Those who are high in public selfconsciousness are very attuned to the social environment, whereas those who are low in this trait SELF-MONITORING IN INDIVIDUALISTS AND COLLECTIVISTS 7 frequently fail to attend to other peoples’ perspectives and are less sensitive to the reactions of others (Lalwani, Shrum, and Chiu, 2009). Moreover, not only can individuals who are high in public self-conscious imagine others’ reactions by adopting other people’s perspective, but they are also able to shape their own behaviour to appeal to other people. In a study examining how several variables, including public and private self-consciousness, were related to related to individualistic or collectivistic orientation, it was found that public self-consciousness significantly p