Choosing Your Mother or Your Spouse

Abstract

People in Western cultures tend to assume that the marriage relationship is the most important relationship in life. Does this assumption apply in other cultural contexts? Three studies compared Taiwanese and European American beliefs about the priority of family relationships, using hypothetical life-or-death and everyday situations. In all three studies and in both situations, Taiwanese participants were more likely than European Americans to choose to help their mothers instead of their spouses. Furthermore, Taiwanese were more likely than European Americans to choose to help their mothers instead of their sibling or their own child. Mediation analyses indicated that obligation and closeness accounted for the association between culture and certainty of saving the mother or the spouse in the life-or-death situation. In the everyday situation, obligation alone accounted for this association. These findings have implications for Western theories of close relationships, such as attachment theory.

Dilemma Tales as African Knowledge Practice: An Example From Research on Obligations of Support

“…Accordingly, conventional wisdom in many African settings is that people should trust and prioritize obligations to kinship connections over mating connections (e.g., Fortes, 1950Fortes, /1987. More generally, research suggests a similar pattern of relative preference for mother over spouse in other Majority-World settings, outside WEIRD enclaves, where interdependent selfways are prominent (Wu et al, 2016;Zhao et al, 2020).…”

“…Faced with dilemmas involving allocation of scarce care resources, people in a variety of West African settings-but especially outside large cities-tend to prioritize care to mother over spouse (Salter and Adams, 2012;Esiaka, 2019;Osei-Tutu et al, 2020). This pattern contrasts with responses of participants in a variety of settings in the United States, who tend to respond to the same research tasks by prioritizing care to spouse over mother (Salter and Adams, 2012;Wu et al, 2016;Esiaka, 2019;Zhao et al, 2020). The current study extends our previous research in four ways.…”

Basic themes of Chinese indigenous psychology

“…Výzkumu xiaodao se věnovali Wu et al (2016), kteří zkoumali ochotu Taiwanců a Američanů pomoci matce a životnímu partnerovi v různých situacích -buďto život ohrožující nebo obyčejné. Měli si představit situaci, kdy oba potřebují pomoc, ale je možné stihnout pomoci jenom jednomu.…”

Close Relationships and Happiness across Cultures

“…First, studies show that individuals do not always see their romantic partners as the primary source of social support in East Asian cultures (Goodwin, 1999;Li & Cheng, 2015). Moreover, in both East Asian and West African cultures romantic partners are not the primary target for support provision when compared with parents (Salter & Adams, 2012;Wu, Cross, Wu, Cho, & Tey, 2016). In line with these findings, Turkish wives (vs. husbands) in arranged marriages perceived lower levels of responsiveness from their spouse, possibly due to traditional gender roles ascribing a greater expectation of being responsive to wives as compared to husbands (Imamoğlu & Selcuk, 2018).…”