Assessing the Importance of Internal and External Self-Esteem and Their Relationship to Honor Concerns in Six Countries

Abstract

We assessed empirical support for (a) the widely held notion that across so-called “honor, dignity, and face cultures,” internal and external components of self-esteem are differentially important for overall self-esteem; and (b) the idea that concerns for honor are related to internal and external components of self-esteem in honor cultures but not in dignity and face cultures. Most importantly, we also set out to (c) investigate whether measures are equivalent, that is, whether a comparison of means and relationships across cultural groups is possible with the employed scales. Data were collected in six countries ( N = 1,099). We obtained only metric invariance for the self-esteem and honor scales, allowing for comparisons of relationships across samples, but not scale means. Partly confirming theoretical ideas on the importance of internal and external components of self-esteem, we found that only external rather than both external and internal self-esteem was relatively more important for overall self-esteem in “honor cultures”; in a “dignity” culture, internal self-esteem was relatively more important than external self-esteem. Contrary to expectations, in a “face” culture, internal self-esteem was relatively more important than external self-esteem. We were not able to conceptually replicate earlier reported relationships between components of self-esteem and the concern for honor, as we observed no cultural differences in the relationship between self-esteem and honor. We point toward the need for future studies to consider invariance testing in the field of honor to appropriately understand differences and similarities between samples.

Psychometric Properties and Correlates of Precarious Manhood Beliefs in 62 Nations

“…This issue is similar to the argument that Big Five inventories capture common aspects of personality, but may underrepresent or miss non-Western aspects of personality (see Cheung et al, 2001Cheung et al, , 2011). It will be critical in future studies to address both the scalar equivalence of the PMB and the breadth of the underlying construct, to avoid potentially problematic misinterpretations (see Hambleton et al, 2005;van Osch et al, 2020).…”

Is an Emphasis on Dignity, Honor and Face more an Attribute of Individuals or of Cultural Groups?

“…Both types of measures have been employed separately in studies relevant to cultural logics. Mean scores on the measure of self-reported honor values developed by Rodriguez Mosquera et al (2002b) have been compared across students from eight nations (Guerra et al, 2012), across students from USA, the Netherlands and Turkey (Novin et al, 2015), and across students from six nations (van Osch et al, 2019). Guerra et al found the measure of person-integrity honor more strongly endorsed in dignity cultures and the measure of family honor more strongly endorsed in their other samples.…”

“…As predicted, relational mobility has been shown to be high in individualistic cultures and low in collectivistic cultures, as permeability of group membership is a crucial aspect of a dignity cultural logic. Finally, our survey includes the measure of self-reported honor values (Rodriguez Mosquera et al, 2002b) that was included in preceding cross-national comparisons of honor (Guerra et al, 2012; Novin et al, 2015; van Osch et al, 2019).…”

Exploring active and passive interactions in social networking services: a psychological needs perspective

“…The current studies just examine the effects of certain needs such as need to belong (Reich and Vorderer, 2012) on some of the interaction patterns or certain specific use such as posting or disclosure (Pagani et al, 2011;Winter et al, 2014;Zhao et al, 2021), and are scattered in several articles.Furthermore,the classification ofsocial interactions is not comprehensive, for example, selective public interaction is not identified (Gerson et al, 2017;Macrynikola and Miranda, 2019). And as one of the important psychological factors, the need for externalesteem is not tested as well (Van Osch et al, 2020). Thus, there is a need for research on systematical exploration of the relationships between multiple psychological needs and multiple social interaction pattern under a unified theoretical framework, by which we can comprehensively explain the motivation of all social interactions from the perspective of multiple psychological needs.…”

“…3.1 Research model Maslow's hierarchy of needs and extant studies provide insights for us to identify the main dimensions of psychological needs to be fulfilled by social interactions.We use "need to belong," "need for social contact," and "need for emotional expression" to reflect social needs, "need for self-esteem" and "need for external esteem" to reflect esteem needs (Wu et al, 2020;Van Osch et al , 2020;Zhao et al, 2021;Kr€ amer et al, 2022). Physiological needs and safety needs have limited relevance with social interactions, thus they are excluded in the research model.Self-realization need is more associated with individual's subjective active efforts rather than social interaction.…”