Cross-Situational Self-Consistency in Nine Cultures: The Importance of Separating Influences of Social Norms and Distinctive Dispositions

College

Br. Andrew Gonzalez FSC College of Education

Department/Unit

Counseling and Educational Psychology

Document Type

Article

Source Title

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Volume

43

Issue

7

First Page

1033

Last Page

1049

Publication Date

7-1-2017

Abstract

© 2017, © 2017 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc. We assessed self-consistency (expressing similar traits in different situations) by having undergraduates in the United States (n = 230), Australia (n = 220), Canada (n = 240), Ecuador (n = 101), Mexico (n = 209), Venezuela (n = 209), Japan (n = 178), Malaysia (n = 254), and the Philippines (n = 241) report the traits they expressed in four different social situations. Self-consistency was positively associated with age, well-being, living in Latin America, and not living in Japan; however, each of these variables showed a unique pattern of associations with various psychologically distinct sources of raw self-consistency, including cross-situationally consistent social norms and injunctions. For example, low consistency between injunctive norms and trait expressions fully explained the low self-consistency in Japan. In accord with trait theory, after removing normative and injunctive sources of consistency, there remained robust distinctive noninjunctive self-consistency (reflecting individuating personality dispositions) in every country, including Japan. The results highlight how clarifying the determinants and implications of self-consistency requires differentiating its distinctive, injunctive, and noninjunctive components.

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Digitial Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1177/0146167217704192

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