The Cultural Construction of Self and Well-Being

Plaut, Victoria C.; Markus, Hazel Rose; Treadway, Jodi; Fu, Alyssa S.

doi:10.1177/0146167212458125

Cited by 46 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The majority of cultural psychological research on happiness has focused on relatively stable cultural differences (Diener & Diener, ; Uchida & Kitayama, ; Uchida et al., ). Recent research however has shown that there are important regional as well as temporal variations within a given culture (Plaut, Markus, & Lachman, ; Plaut, Markus, Treadway, & Fu, ). For instance, an understanding of happiness as the consequence of good luck and fortune prevailed in the U.S. until around 1920, wherein Americans used happiness to describe lucky occurrences (e.g., a “happy coincidence”).…”

Section: Future Directions For Happiness Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Happiness of Individuals and the Collective

Uchida

Oishi

2016

Jpn Psychol Res

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Happiness and well-being are often defined as internal feelings or states of satisfaction. As such, research on well-being has focused on the long-term happiness and life satisfaction of individuals. But recently, psychological researchers have also begun to examine the effects that group-level functions (e.g., nation-level economic status) have on happiness. The present article: (a) overviews measures of individual and collective happiness and the validity of these measurements; (b) explicates the role of culture in understanding the long-term happiness and life satisfaction of individuals; and (c) explores the possibility and importance of studying the happiness of collectives (e.g., work groups, organizations, cities, nations). We then discuss future directions for happiness research, proposing several methodological and theoretical areas for progress in: (a) cross-temporal analyses to examine historical changes; and (b) multilevel analyses to identify the units of culture that affect happiness. Additionally, this paper argues that policy-making and interdisciplinary approaches can make important contributions to happiness studies.

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Section: Future Directions For Happiness Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Happiness of Individuals and the Collective

Uchida

Oishi

2016

Jpn Psychol Res

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“…Importantly, cultural tightness is correlated in expected ways with ecological variables, such as population density and natural-disaster vulnerability, and with socio-political variables, such as a history of territorial conflicts and openness of media (for details on these analyses, see Gelfand et al, 2011). Emerging research is beginning to link Gelfand and colleagues' cultural-tightness data in theoretically meaningful ways to organizational outcomes, such as emergence of female leadership (Toh and Leonardelli, 2012), and to psychological outcomes, such as subjective well-being (Plaut et al, 2012). We are confident that the cultural-tightness measure is well validated and reliable.…”

Section: Key Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Culture on Creativity

Chua

Roth

Lemoine

2014

Administrative Science Quarterly

272

117

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This paper advances a new theoretical model to understand the effect of culture on creativity in a global context. We theorize that creativity engagement and success depend on the cultural tightness-the extent to which a country is characterized by strong social norms and low tolerance for deviant behaviorsof both an innovator's country and the audience's country, as well as the cultural distance between these two countries. Using field data from a global online crowdsourcing platform that organizes creative contests for consumerproduct brands, supplemented by interviews with marketing experts, we found that individuals from tight cultures are less likely than counterparts from loose cultures to engage in and succeed at foreign creative tasks; this effect is intensified as the cultural distance between the innovator's and the audience's country increases. Additionally, tight cultures are less receptive to foreign creative ideas. But we also found that in certain circumstances-when members of a tight culture do creative work in their own or culturally close countriescultural tightness can actually promote creativity success. This finding implies that some degree of convergent thinking as engendered by tight cultures could be beneficial for creativity, challenging the dominant view in creativity research that divergent thinking is a prerequisite for creative performance.

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“…A burgeoning literature suggests that city-level sociocultural context can have psychological implications over and above country-level sociocultural context (Kashima et al, 2004;Levine et al, 2001;Plaut et al, 2012;Rentfrow, 2011). There are other reasons to presume that the social motives for assimilation and contrast, in particular, are relevant to citylevel sociocultural context.…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Agency‐Communion and Interest in Prosocial Behavior: Social Motives for Assimilation and Contrast Explain Sociocultural Inconsistencies

Gebauer

Sedikides

Lüdtke

et al. 2013

Journal of Personality

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Identifying the "prosocial personality" is a classic project in personality psychology. However, personality traits have been elusive predictors of prosocial behavior, with personality-prosociality relations varying widely across sociocultural contexts. We propose the social motives perspective to account for such sociocultural inconsistencies. According to this perspective, a focal quality of agency (e.g., competence, independence, openness) is the motive to swim against the social tide-agentic social contrast. Conversely, a focal quality of communion (e.g., warmth, interdependence, agreeableness) is the motive to swim with the social tide-communal social assimilation. We report two cross-sectional studies. Study 1 (N = 131,562) defined social context at the country level (11 European countries), whereas Study 2 (N = 56,395) defined it at the country level (11 European countries) and the city level (296 cities within these countries). Communion predicted interest in prosocial behavior comparatively strongly in sociocultural contexts where such interest was common and comparatively weakly where such interest was uncommon. Agency predicted interest in prosocial behavior comparatively strongly in sociocultural contexts where such interest was uncommon and comparatively weakly where such interest was common. The results supported the social motives perspective. Also, the findings help to reestablish the importance of personality for understanding prosociality.

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The Cultural Construction of Self and Well-Being

Cited by 46 publications

References 41 publications

The Happiness of Individuals and the Collective

The Happiness of Individuals and the Collective

The Impact of Culture on Creativity

Agency‐Communion and Interest in Prosocial Behavior: Social Motives for Assimilation and Contrast Explain Sociocultural Inconsistencies

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