Today’s most pressing social challenges require people to recognize their shared fate and work together—to think and act interdependently. In the three studies reported here, we found that appeals for increased interdependence may undermine the very motivation they seek to inspire. We examined the hypothesis that invoking interdependent action undermines motivation for chronically independent European Americans but not for bicultural Asian Americans who are both chronically independent and chronically interdependent. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that priming interdependent rather than independent action undermined European Americans’ motivation to perform challenging mental and physical tasks. Study 3 showed that framing an appeal for environmental sustainability in terms of interdependent rather than independent action led to decreased motivation and resource allocation among European Americans. Motivation was not undermined for Asian Americans, which reveals how behavior is divergently shaped, in the land of the free, by foundational sociocultural schemas of independence and interdependence. This research has the novel implication that it may be necessary to invoke independent behaviors in order to successfully motivate interdependence.
AdamsG.AndersonS. L.AdonuJ. K. (2004). The cultural grounding of closeness and intimacy. In MashekD. J.AronA. (Eds.), Handbook of closeness and intimacy (pp. 321–342). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
2.
BarghJ. A.MorsellaE. (2008). The unconscious mind. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 73–79.
3.
BarghJ. A.RaymondP.PryorJ. B.StrackF. (1995). Attractiveness of the underling: An automatic power→sex association and its consequences for sexual harassment and aggression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 768–781.
4.
BaumeisterR. F.VohsK. D. (2007). Self-regulation, ego depletion, and motivation. Social & Personality Psychology Compass, 1, 115–128.
5.
BrimO. G.RyffC. D.KesslerR. C. (2004). How healthy are we? A national study of well-being at midlife. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
6.
CohenA. B.SiegelJ. I.RozinP. (2003). Faith versus practice: Different bases for religiosity judgments by Jews and Protestants. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 287–295.
7.
CohenD. (2007). Methods in cultural psychology. In KitayamaS.CohenD. (Eds.), Handbook of cultural psychology (pp. 196–236). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
8.
CrossS. E.BaconP. L.MorrisM. L. (2000). The relational-interdependent self-construal and relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 791–808.
9.
DevosT. (2006). Implicit bicultural identity among Mexican American and Asian American college students. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 12, 391–402.
10.
FarwellL.WeinerB. (2000). Bleeding hearts and the heartless: Popular perceptions of liberal and conservative ideologies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 845–852.
11.
FulmerC. A.GelfandM. J.KruglanskiA. W.Kim-PrietoC.DienerE.PierroA.HigginsE. T. (2010). On “feeling right” in cultural contexts: How person-culture match affects self-esteem and subjective well-being. Psychological Science, 21, 1563–1569.
12.
GalinskyA. D.GruenfeldD. H.MageeJ. C. (2003). From power to action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 453–466.
13.
HamedaniM. G.MarkusH. R.FuA. S. (2011). My nation, my self: Divergent framings of America influence American selves. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 350–364.
14.
HeineS. J. (2001). Self as cultural product: An examination of East Asian and North American selves. Journal of Personality, 69, 881–905.
15.
HenrichJ.HeineS. J.NorenzayanA. (2010). The weirdest people in the world?Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 33, 62–83.
16.
HigginsE. T. (2000). Making a good decision: Value from fit. American Psychologist, 55, 1217–1230.
17.
HodginsH. S.WeibustK. S.WeinsteinN.ShiffnamS.MillerA.CoombsG.AdairK. C. (2010). The cost of self-protection: Threat response and performance as a function of autonomous and controlled motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 1101–1114.
18.
HongY.MorrisM. W.ChiuC.Benet-MartìnezV. (2000). Multicultural minds: A dynamic constructivist approach to culture and cognition. American Psychologist, 55, 709–720.
19.
ImadaT.YussenS. R. (2012). Reproduction of cultural values: A cross-cultural examination of stories people create and transmit. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 114–128.
20.
IyengarS. S.LepperM. R. (1999). Rethinking the value of choice: A cultural perspective on intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 349–366.
21.
JiL.PengK.NisbettR. E. (2000). Culture, control, and perception of relationships in the environment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 943–955.
22.
KarauS. J.WilliamsK. D. (1993). Social loafing: A meta- analytic review and theoretical integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 681–706.
23.
KatoK.MarkusH. R. (1994). Independence-interdependence scale. In HatfieldE.CacioppoJ. T.RapsonR. L. (Eds.), Emotional contagion (p. 153). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
24.
KitayamaS. (2002). Culture and basic psychological processes: Toward a system view of culture: Comment on Oyserman et al. (2002). Psychological Bulletin, 128, 89–96.
25.
KitayamaS.DuffyS.UchidaY. (2007). Self as cultural mode of being. In KitayamaS.CohenD. (Eds.), The handbook of cultural psychology (pp. 136–174). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
26.
KitayamaS.IshiiK.ImadaT.TakemuraK.RamaswamyJ. (2006). Voluntary settlement and the spirit of independence: Evidence from Japan’s “Northern Frontier.”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 369–384.
27.
LammersJ.StokerJ. I.StapelD. A. (2009). Differentiating social and personal power: Opposite effects on stereotyping, but parallel effects on behavioral approach tendencies. Psychological Science, 20, 1543–1549.
28.
MarkusH. R.ConnerA. (2013). Clash! 8 cultural conflicts that make us who we are. New York, NY: Hudson Street Press.
29.
MarkusH. R.KitayamaS. (2003). Models of agency: Sociocultural diversity in the construction of action. In Murphy-BermanV.BermanJ. J. (Eds.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation: Vol. 49. Cross-cultural differences in perspectives on the self (pp. 18–74). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
30.
MarkusH. R.KitayamaS. (2010). Cultures and selves: A cycle of mutual constitution. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 420–430.
31.
MesquitaB. (2001). Emotions in collectivist and individualist contexts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 68–74.
32.
MullerD.JuddC. M.YzerbytV. Y. (2005). When moderation is mediated and mediation is moderated. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 852–863.
33.
MuravenM.TiceD. M.BaumeisterR. F. (1998). Self-control as limited resource: Regulatory depletion patterns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 774–789.
OishiS.DienerE. (2001). Goals, culture, and subjective well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 1674–1682.
36.
OysermanD. (2009). Identity-based motivation: Implications for action-readiness, procedural-readiness, and consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 19, 250–260.
37.
OysermanD.LeeS. W. (2007). “Priming” culture: Culture as situation cognition. In KitayamaS.CohenD. (Eds.), Handbook of cultural psychology (pp. 255–282). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
38.
PreacherK. J.HayesA. F. (2008). Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 879–891.
39.
SassenbergK.JonasK. J.ShahJ. Y.BrazyP. C. (2007). Why some groups just feel better: The regulatory fit of group power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 249–267.
40.
SingelisT. (1994). The measurement of independent and interdependent self-construals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 580–591.
41.
SrullT. K.WyerR. S. (1979). The role of category accessibility in the interpretation of information about persons: Some determinants and implications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1660–1672.
42.
TriandisH. C. (1989). The self and social behavior in differing cultural contexts. Psychological Review, 96, 506–520.
43.
TsaiJ. L.YingY.LeeP. A. (2000). The meaning of “being Chinese” and “being American”: Variation among Chinese American young adults. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 31, 302–322.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
