When guiding principles do not guide: The moderating effects of cultural tightness on value‐behavior links

Abstract

Objective Ample research documented the effects of guiding principles in people's lives, as reflected in personal values, on a variety of behaviors. But do these principles universally guide behaviors across all cultural contexts? To address this question, we investigated the effect of cross‐cultural differences in the strength of social norms (i.e., tightness‐looseness) on value‐behavior relationships. Method Using the archival data from the World Value Survey for 24 nations (N = 38,924; 51.40% female; Mage = 44.98, SD = 16.87), a multi‐level analysis revealed that cultural tightness moderated the effects of individual differences in personal values on behaviors from different life‐domains. Results As hypothesized, the relationships between self‐transcendence values with civic involvement and pro‐environmental behaviors, and between conservation values with religious behavior were significantly stronger in loose cultures that have weak norms and were almost nonexistent in tight cultures that have strong norms, even when controlling for individualism‐collectivism or GDP. Conclusions Thus, despite the common belief that people behave in line with their guiding principles, our findings suggest this might not be the case in cultural contexts that put a strong emphasis on norms.

Moral Messaging in a Time of COVID-19

“…It could be that messages referring to peoples' personal moral values had a better effect on their intentions in the 'loose' culture, as it is more permissible to realise personal motivations, rather than motivations that align with the group interest. This finding is in line with the recent observation that the link between personal values and behaviour is much more prominent in loose cultures, as in these cultures people are less restricted by social norms and are more likely to be driven by their personal norms (Elster & Gelfand, 2021).…”

Self-Interest Bias in the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Cultural Comparison between the United States and China

“…Research in samples from the United States, Australia, and Japan suggests a strong tendency to evaluate the self more favorably than others (Haslam et al, 2005;Sedikides et al, 2003;Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2008); here, we highlight that cultural dynamics, especially how people understand themselves in relation to social others, might influence the magnitude of self-interest bias and mitigate self-favorable judgments in normative behavioral domains. The findings may help illuminate factors that influence the magnitudes of self-other discrepancies (e.g., Haslam et al, 2005;Sedikides et al, 2003) and attitude-behavior gaps (e.g., Dong et al, 2020;Elster & Gelfand, 2020) in self-interest-related judgments.…”

How Do Values Affect Behavior? Let Me Count the Ways

“…The moderating effect of cultural tightness/looseness on the relationship between values and behavior has been recently investigated empirically (Elster & Gelfand, 2020). The researchers investigated the moderating effect of cultural tightness/looseness (as reported in Gelfand et al, 2011) on relationships between personal values and self-reported behaviors, as assessed in archival data.…”