Contextualism as an Important Facet of Individualism-Collectivism: Personhood Beliefs Across 37 National Groups
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2013
Abstract
Beliefs about personhood are understood to be a defining feature of individualism-collectivism (I-C), but they have been insufficiently explored, given the emphasis of research on values and self-construals. We propose the construct of contextualism, referring to beliefs about the importance of context in understanding people, as a facet of cultural collectivism. A brief measure was developed and refined across 19 nations (Study 1: N = 5,241), showing good psychometric properties for cross-cultural use and correlating well at the nation level with other supposed facets and indicators of I-C. In Study 2 (N = 8,652), nation-level contextualism predicted ingroup favoritism, corruption, and differential trust of ingroup and outgroup members, while controlling for other facets of I-C, across 35 nations. We conclude that contextualism is an important part of cultural collectivism. This highlights the importance of beliefs alongside values and self-representations and contributes to a wider understanding of cultural processes.
Recommended Citation
Owe, E., Vignoles, V. L., Becker, M., Brown, R., Smith, P. B., Lee, S. W., ... & Baguma, P. (2013). Contextualism as an important facet of individualism-collectivism: Personhood beliefs across 37 national groups. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 44(1), 24-45.
