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From Culture To Priming Conditions

Self-Construal Influences on Life Satisfaction Judgments

Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, esuh{at}yonsei.ac.kr

ED Diener

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

John A. Updegraff

Kent State University, Ohio

Existing cross-cultural research often assumes that the independent versus interdependent self-construal process leads to different cultural behaviors, although few studies directly test this link. Extending from prior cross-cultural findings, two studies were conducted to explicitly test whether self-construal is linked with the differential use of emotions versus social information in judgments of life satisfaction. Study 1 confirmed the prediction that even among Americans, those who view themselves in interdependent terms (allocentrics) evaluate their life satisfaction in a more collectivistic manner (strong reliance on social appraisal) than those who view themselves in independent terms (idiocentrics). Study 2 replicated these findings in two cultural settings (United States and Korea) by using experimental primes of independent versus relational self-construal. Results strongly suggest that differences in self-construal processes underlie cross-cultural differences in life satisfaction judgments.

Key Words: self-construal • culture • priming • life satisfaction • well-being

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