Malia, a middle-class American girl, prefers cash for gifts at the holidays; that way, she can pick out whatever she wants. Myriam, a working-class woman from Ecuador, warmly accepts any gift her family gives her, because “their presents are given with love.”
Sarah, a student from Michigan, is excited to make some new friends in her third year at college. Abina, a student from Ghana whose closest friends are cousins who live nearby, will stay vigilant that none of her friends will secretly harm her.
When Emi takes a fitness class, she adjusts to the instructor and tries to exercise exactly the way the instructor is leading. Jackie does not always do what her fitness class instructor is leading; she likes to change the exercises to fit her own preferences.
These examples illustrate some of the motivational differences we will be discussing in this chapter. Motivation—what people need and want to do—is a target of research in both personality and cultural psychology. While all humans seek to fulfill a core set of needs, people also want different things in different cultural contexts.
Our chapter will proceed in four sections. First, we will explain culture’s motivational power. As cultural animals, humans are motivated to use specific cultural meaning systems; in turn, specific cultural meaning systems shape what people want. Second, we briefly point to research illustrating how culture shapes some fundamental human drives for food, sleep, self-protection, and attachment. Third, we review psychological motivation systems that are dramatically shaped by culture. Finally, we speculate about the different mechanisms through which culture might shape human motivation.
Culture and motivation are inextricably linked: humans are fundamentally motivated by culture, and culture’s content has motivation power for humans. Humans are “cultural animals”: we need culture in order to survive and thrive as fully functioning persons. Our weak, hairless bodies do not stand a chance at survival without the accumulated knowledge passed down by people who lived before us (Bruner, 1990; Geertz, 1973; Richerson & Boyd, 2005). Humans evolved to operate within cultural meaning systems; they need specific cultural “software” to run their biological “hardware” (Geertz, 1973). People become fully human through downloading information structures of “already-there” cultural tools, languages, practices, values, and procedures.
As cultural animals, humans evolved certain drives to ensure that they absorb cultural content (Henrich, 2015). The need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), for example, ensures that humans maintain ties to people who will not only share resources with them but also transmit cultural content through teaching (Tomasello, 2016). In addition, the Meaning Maintenance Model (MMM) proposes that humans are driven to seek connections and patterns in the world. The need for meaning is an evolved motive of the cultural animal, and “human beings are meaning-makers, driven to make connections, find signals in noise, identify patterns, and establish associations in places where they may not inherently exist” (Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006, p. 89). As a cultural species, Heine et al. argue that people “live in socially constructed environments,” which frame their actions in many potential “layers of meaning” (p. 91). The MMM argues that meaning-making is a universal, higher order human need that evolved because it ensures that humans are eager to consume the cultural content that enables their survival (Henrich, 2015).
Thus, culture and motivation are intertwined because seeking meaning from culture is a general motivation that unifies us as a species. Culture and motivation are also intertwined because specific cultural content—the “stuff” that differs across cultural contexts (meanings, texts, procedures, and values)—has a motivational function (Shweder, 1995). Cultural content not only cognitively informs people how to catch fish, shop online, or treat mosquito bites but also motivationally informs people what they should want to do. People in one culture do not just behave, think, and feel differently from people in another. People also want to do, think, or feel different things, because cultures teach us what to want by describing what is “good,” “bad,” “beautiful,” or “dirty” (Shweder, 1995). Indeed, common definitions of culture specify its motivational force; for example, D’Andrade defined culture as “learned systems of meanings, communicated by means of natural language and other symbol systems, having representational, directive, and affective functions, and capable of creating cultural entities and particular senses of reality” (1984, p. 116). Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1963) wrote that cultural systems “may, on the one hand, be considered products of action, on the other hand as conditioning elements of further action” (p. 357). Thus, prominent definitions specify that cultural meaning systems are motivational systems.
Recently, some researchers have identified potential psychological mechanisms through which humans’ need for cultural meaning might operate. One fascinating candidate is shared attention, a state in which people perceive that they are simultaneously attending to some object with another person (Shteynberg, 2015). Shared attention might happen when two friends watch a sporting contest or gaze together at an object on the table; it is the sense that “we are attending” (p. 581). When sharing attention with ingroup members, people focus greater cognitive resources on the object of that attention. In turn, people have better motivation related to the object, as well as better memory, and stronger feelings about it (e.g., Walton, Cohen, Cwir, & Spencer, 2012). For example, when an ingroup partner has a goal, shared attention with that partner increases people’s motivation toward that same goal (Shteynberg & Galinsky, 2011).
Shared attention could be a mechanism through which culture exerts its motivational force. “Shared systems of meaning” are the core element of most definitions of culture (Adams & Markus, 2004; Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1963). So, if humans adapted to use shared systems of meaning, then it makes sense that they evolved psychological mechanisms that would “prioritize the knowledge that is coordinated with their social group” (Shteynberg, 2010, p. 683). Motivationally, sharing attention with relationally close others makes us want to do what others are doing. Thus, shared attention provides an example of how culture motivates us: when other people are looking at the same thing, we are more motivated to do it.
In sum, humans are motivated for culture, and cultural content is motivating. First, as cultural animals, people are motivated to seek and absorb specific meanings from their environments. Second, the specific “stuff” in a cultural meaning system motivates people because cultural schemas inform what is proper, good, and right to do. Shared attention may be a mechanism that directs people’s attention to cultural meaning systems.
Humans everywhere undoubtedly strive to satisfy certain basic physiological and psychological needs, such as the need for food, the need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), and as already reviewed, the need to find meaning (Heine et al., 2006). Indeed, many authors have nominated lists of other basic human psychological needs, such as needs to self-enhance, care for offspring, and find a mate (e.g., Fiske, 2008; Kenrick, Li, & Butner, 2003), as well as needs for autonomy and competence (Deci & Ryan, 2000). However, cultural content may shape the expression even of “core” motives. Culturally specific meaning structures describe how people should fulfill basic drives (see Markus, 2016; Morling & Kitayama, 2008 for recent reviews).
For example, while all humans need to consume food, cultures differ in the types and amount of food they eat, and the values they associate with food. For example, people in modern French settings serve less food overall, take longer to enjoy it, and associate it with more positive meanings compared to Americans (e.g., Rozin, Kabnick, Pete, Fischler, & Shields, 2003). Similarly, all humans need sleep; however, cultures differ with regard to where and with whom they deem sleep appropriate. People in India might forbid teenage girls to sleep unaccompanied in separate rooms (Shweder, Balle-Jensen, & Goldstein, 2003). Most cultures in the world cannot fathom the North American practice of having infants sleep separate from their caregivers (Rogoff, 2003).
Besides influencing the expression of basic physical needs, culture also shapes the expression of psychological needs such as attachment, which supports both biological and psychological development. For example, infant-adult attachment systems protect and nurture human infants to ensure their survival, but cultures differ in how adults interpret and respond to an infant’s attachment-seeking behaviors (Rothbaum, Weisz, Pott, Miyake, & Morelli, 2000). North American caregivers may respond slower to an infant’s cries and encourage older babies to explore their environment with the goal of developing autonomy. Enacting a somewhat different set of goals of the attachment process, Japanese caregivers anticipate infants’ needs before they cry and encourage empathy and physical closeness, with the goal of interdependence with the infant.
The previous section referred to ways in which culture shapes the expression of universal human physical needs. Next, we review examples of how cultures motivate us for different psychological states. Motivational processes such as self-enhancement, self-consistency, personal control, and self-regulation may not represent universal human processes. However, to past theorists operating from a strictly Western-centric viewpoint, these needs have sometimes been assumed to be universal. All of these motivational processes are grounded in well-known differences in how cultures construe the self-concept, so it makes sense to provide an overview of cultural differences in self-construal. Because these different definitions of “self” take place within a matrix of value-laden meanings and moral tones, the self-concept has important implications for motivation.
Before going further, however, there are two caveats. First, the models we review here could be limited because they mainly contrast—particularly in empirical studies—middle-class Western (usually American and Canadian) cultural contexts with middle-class East Asian ones (such as Japan, Korea, and China), and largely rely on undergraduate student samples. Increasingly, researchers study other regions, other economic classes, and within-country diversities, so we review this research where possible. Second, cultural psychologists sometimes write as though countries (e.g., Japan) within these world regions (e.g., East Asia) are culturally homogenous. Like many cultural psychologists, we acknowledge that within each country, people may participate in subcultures and that individuals do not always buy in to dominant discourse. But we also argue that certain world regions share key ideological and social patterns, such as collectivism. Even as people engage with local cultural contexts, these contexts are embedded in, and informed by, higher order ideologies, institutions, and histories.
Cultural contexts differ in their shared understandings of what the “self” is and should be. Is the self autonomous and independent, separable from others psychologically? Or is the self embedded and interdependent, engaged psychologically with important other people? One frequent target of cultural contrasts is middle-class, European-heritage, Canadian or U.S. culture, in which the self is presented as an autonomous, context-free, independent entity whose actions presumably reflect one’s internal and separate thoughts, feelings, and motivations (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, 2010; Triandis, 1988). This independent view of the self is supported and maintained through a variety of practices (such as democratic free speech, merit pay metrics, and individualized educational practices), as well as publicly shared meanings that are carried in texts, songs, and advertisements (Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martínez, 2000; Markus, Uchida, Omoregie, Townsend, & Kitayama, 2006; Snibbe & Markus, 2005). This independent view of self is continuously displayed and bolstered in social life, so people may take it for granted and think of it as “natural,” rather than culturally crafted. Indeed, in some textbooks of personality psychology, this independent model of the self is presented as the primary, baseline model of personhood.
In contrast to this independent model of self, other cultural contexts (including those found in communities in East Asia, Central Asia, South America, and Africa) support a more interdependent model of self (Greenfield, Keller, Fuligni, & Maynard, 2003; Markus & Kitayama, 1991, 2010). In this model, the self is seen as deeply and inherently connected to other people in relationships. People’s thoughts, feelings, and motivations are embedded in relationships and in specific contexts, settings, and roles. Interdependent self-views may be supported when people participate in transactions (Rogoff, 2016) such as cosleeping, cohesive school learning groups, or working within salient social hierarchies. Interdependent views are reinforced through cultural products such as texts and advertisements (Markus et al., 2006). For people participating in these cultures, the self is explicitly allowed to change, depending on whom one is with, what role a person is fulfilling, and who else is around. Practices highlight the moral value of duty, obligation, social connection, and flexibility.
These different models of self-concept shape the content and structure of motivation. In cultural contexts that emphasize an independent self-concept, people may be relatively more motivated to pursue their own internal desires and to act according to their internal preferences. People in independent cultural contexts may prioritize their own choices over the desires and choices of others and may be especially motivated to show that their own attitude is consistent with their own behavior (e.g., Festinger, 1964; Heine & Lehman, 1997). In contrast, people in interdependent cultural contexts may be especially motivated to fulfill the desires of close others, such as the achievement goals of one’s family (Bond & Hwang, 1986) or to behave in ways consistent with other people’s values (Hoshino-Browne et al., 2005). In the next subsections, we will review specific examples of how models of self can shape self-related motives.
One consistently established motivation in North American and Western European cultural contexts is the motivation for self-esteem. To seek high self-esteem (holding a view of oneself as especially positive, competent, and worthy) can be described as a motivation. Even though it can be hazardous to pursue high self-esteem for its own sake (Crocker & Park, 2004), American lay discourse presents self-esteem as a natural striving and an antidote to social problems (e.g., Twenge & Campbell, 2009). High self-esteem, especially of the type in which people see themselves as better than others, may be especially relevant in cultural contexts that emphasize the independent self. In independent cultural contexts, people may focus on their unique strengths and evaluate the self from an internal frame of reference (Heine, 2005; Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999). They see the self as better than most others. In contrast, a dynamic of self-criticism fits better in the context of an interdependent self-concept. When others set the frame of reference for evaluation, people do not have the liberty of using flexible internal standards. Instead, they need to identify their shortcomings in order to improve upon them (Heine, 2005). Therefore, self-criticism may be both a product and a facilitator of social harmony. Self-enhancing people may stand out from others in negative, socially disruptive ways, so self-criticism may be more adaptive when people need to get along (Kitayama, Mesquita, & Karasawa, 2006; Paulhus, 1998).
Cultural differences in self-esteem are empirically established in cultural psychology. For example, in one study, North Americans tended to attribute their successes to their internal abilities and their failures to external forces (a self-enhancing attributional pattern), but Japanese did not (Kitayama, Takagi, & Matsumoto, 1995). When reading a variety of self-relevant situations penned by people in both North America and Japan, North Americans, compared to Japanese, tended to see more situations as relevant for self-esteem and reported that success situations would cause their self-esteem to increase more (Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto, & Norasakkunkit, 1997). In most methods of research, North Americans are shown to self-enhance more than Japanese, according to meta-analyses that review multiple methods (Hamamura, Heine, & Takemoto, 2007), although one paradigm shows less cultural difference (Sedikides, Gaertner, & Vevea, 2007).
These different emphases on self-enhancement versus self-criticism have been empirically linked to independence versus interdependence, respectively (Heine & Renshaw, 2002). In addition, self-enhancing or self-critical patterns of action may be learned and maintained in specific, daily practices. For example, when teachers, parents, and students interact through academic practices, they pass along cultural meaning systems. According to cross-cultural education researchers (J. Li, Fung, Bakeman, Rae, & Wei, 2014), American parents and children were more likely to make ability attributions after success, while East Asian parents and children were more likely to make effort attributions. In the classroom, teachers in American schools pass over children’s errors and do not always explain why a child is incorrect to avoid calling attention to some assumed lack of ability. In contrast, East Asian teachers teach as though they assume all children can learn the material through effort or refined strategy. They may dwell on an individual child’s errors in class, explaining the child’s mistakes (Stevenson & Stigler, 1992). East Asian parents, as well, may spend more time talking about errors in a child’s performance than the child’s successes. These social practices are consistent with the documented East Asian focus on self-criticism rather than self-enhancement.
Indeed, when experiencing success and failure, cultural schemas about academic performance lead to subsequent effort. In a series of laboratory studies, North American and Japanese college students were assigned to work on hard puzzles (leading to a failure experience) or easy ones (leading to success). After viewing their own failure or success feedback, participants had a chance to keep working on more of the same puzzles. North Americans worked longer on puzzles after they had done well on them, whereas Japanese worked longer on puzzles after they had done poorly on them (Heine et al., 2001). North Americans gave up after failures because they did not believe the effort would pay off; in contrast, Japanese worked harder because they believed that effort would work. Indeed, people in the United States tend to endorse that only certain people can become highly intelligent; in South-Asian Indian contexts, people believe that most people have this potential (Rattan, Savani, Naidu, & Dweck, 2012). Such schemas motivate self-esteem. It feels good to do things you are good at, and Americans may maintain positive self-feelings by choosing to specialize in their strengths. In contrast, although Japanese may not enjoy working at a task they have failed, the ability to attend to and correct such errors “feels right.” Self-critical habits reflect humility and may make it more likely that people will meet the group’s standards and maintain group harmony.
The development and maintenance of a coherent self-identity is usually seen as vital to psychological health in Western cultural contexts (e.g., Rogers, 1961). This fundamental need for self-consistency has been famously demonstrated in cognitive dissonance research (Festinger, 1964). Inconsistencies in attitudes or behavior lead to feelings of discomfort, and ultimately, people change either their initial attitudes or their behavior to make them consistent with one another. The motivation for self-consistency is also evident from studies showing how people actively seek out information that confirms the self-conceptions they already hold (Swann, Rentfrow, & Guinn, 2003). People maintain coherent self-views by preferring the company of others who give them self-verifying feedback, while ignoring feedback that is discrepant from their self-conceptions (see Swann et al., 2003 for review).
However, this need for self-consistency may be more characteristic in North American cultural contexts, because the independent self-concept is expressed consistently and persistently across all contexts. On the other hand, East Asian cultural contexts emphasize the situational impact on self-concept. Thus, the interdependent self-concept is highly context dependent and can be malleable across differing situations based on differing roles and responsibilities (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, 2010).
As an example, Americans rated themselves as being more consistent in personality traits across differing interaction partners and situations (close friends, professor, stranger) than Koreans (Suh, 2002). In a modified version of the Twenty Statements Task, Japanese self-descriptions varied greatly, depending on whom they were taking the test with (a friend, a professor, alone), whereas Americans’ responses were stable (Kanagawa, Cross, & Markus, 2001). Furthermore, the relationship between cross-role consistency and well-being (Suh, 2002) or adjustment indices (Church et al., 2008) was stronger for Americans than East Asians.
Another study examined cultural differences in the motivation to reduce cognitive dissonance in a choice-justification paradigm (Heine & Lehman, 1997). After being offered a choice between two CDs and selecting one of them to keep, Canadians, as predicted, rated their chosen CDs as more desirable (spreading of alternatives), while Japanese participants did not. Similar patterns of results were found when people made food menu decisions for oneself (Hoshino-Browne et al., 2005). Compared to people in East Asian cultural contexts, those in Western cultural contexts are more uncomfortable when their personal attitudes and behavior are not aligned, and thus may be more motivated toward achieving self-consistency.
Naïve dialecticism might explain cultural differences in self-consistency. Naïve dialecticism, defined as the expectation of change and a tolerance for inconsistencies and contradictory beliefs, is endorsed more frequently in East Asian cultural contexts (Peng & Nisbett, 1999). For example, East Asians tend to agree that “I often find that my beliefs and attitudes will change under different contexts” more than European American (Spencer-Rodgers, Boucher, Peng, & Wang, 2009). Acceptance of inconsistencies is also apparent in cultural messages; Chinese preferred dialectical proverbs such as “Too humble is half proud” and “Beware of your friends not your enemies” (Peng & Nisbett, 1999).
Compared to North Americans, East Asians are more accepting of oppositional aspects of themselves. When Koreans and Americans rated their own personality traits (e.g., “I am outgoing, but somewhat shy”) and value judgments (e.g., “Equality is more important to me than ambition”), Koreans showed greater fluctuation in their self-concept than Americans (Choi & Choi, 2002). Naïve dialecticism mediated these cultural differences in ambivalent ratings of their personalities and self-esteem (Hamamura, Heine, & Paulhus, 2008). Endorsement of dialectical thinking styles also explained cultural differences in self-concept consistency (Church, Alvarez, et al., 2012) and self-verification. European-Americans seemed motivated to achieve a consistent self-view by accepting information confirming their personal beliefs and discounting inconsistent information, while Chinese did not show the same pattern (Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2009).
While East Asian cultural contexts may be more tolerant of inconsistent self-conceptions, East Asians may strive for consistency within a relationship context. For example, although East Asians show more inconsistencies in how they view themselves across different relationships (e.g., with friends vs. parents), they do show consistencies within relationships and situations to the same level as European-Americans (English & Chen, 2007). In all, it seems that European-Americans are motivated to hold a relatively consistent, global self-concept. While East Asians may strive for consistency within a relationship, they more readily shift their self-conceptions across relationships.
Perceived control, people’s belief that they can influence outcomes in the environment, is perhaps one of the most intensively studied motives in personality psychology (for a historical review, see Reich & Infurna, in press). Many constructs fit under the umbrella term “control,” including internal locus of control, self-efficacy, primary control, perceived control, and agency (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995; Markus et al., 2006; Rotter, 1990; Strickland, 1989). Prototypical examples of personal control would be a student who believes her efforts at school will result in good grades, a person who thinks taking vitamins will prevent illness, or an employee who believes effort at work will lead to a promotion. At least as originally studied in North American contexts, when people feel they can personally influence their environments, they tend to feel and act better. Their sense of well-being is high. They are motivated for action (Rotter, 1990).
However, cultural psychologists have lately expanded the definition of perceived control. Rather than limiting the definition of control to a motive in which people influence their environment (a definition and practice that foregrounds the individual, independent self), they use broader, more inclusive definitions of the construct. Do people make the environment fit their own needs? Or do people adjust their attitudes, preferences, or behavior to better fit into the environment? The first process, which has been called “internal locus of control,” “primary control,” “influence,” or “disjoint agency,” is the process most studied in middle-class, European-American contexts. The second process, which has been called “external locus of control,” “secondary control,” “adjustment,” or “conjoint agency,” is the process practiced in working-class American and some East Asian and Central Asian contexts (Morling & Evered, 2006, 2007). Some researchers (e.g., Stephens, Fryberg, & Markus, 2011) use the inclusive term “agency” for processes formerly considered “control.” This new view of control has fuzzier boundaries (Skinner, 2007) but is better able to include all of the ways people in all cultures negotiate their alignment with their environment.
Research supports using a broader definition for control that incorporates both influencing and adjustment modes. When humans experience repeated failure, causal uncertainty, or perceived chaos, they compensate for this so-called threat to control. They might reassert their ability to choose (Brehm, 2000), see patterns that are not really there (Kay & Sullivan, 2013; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008), endorse social systems in the status quo (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004), adjust the self (Tobin & Raymundo, 2010), and so on. Kay and Sullivan (2013) suggested that perceived individual control is one (probably culturally specific) form of the higher level motive to see the world as orderly and nonrandom.
What is the evidence that cultural contexts shape how people act in the world? The body of evidence is becoming quite consistent. First, a variety of self-report data has demonstrated cultural differences. Scores on Rotter’s original locus of control (LOC) scales show Americans scoring higher in “internal” LOC than Japanese (Bond & Tornatzky, 1973; Evans, 1981; McGinnies, Nordholm, Ward, & Bhanthumnavin, 1974; Parsons & Schneider, 1974). Asian-Americans in California endorsed secondary control solutions to daily problems (“I would accommodate to my parents’ beliefs”) over primary solutions (“I would try to convince them that she is okay”) compared to European-American counterparts (Lam & Zane, 2004). People’s self-reported independent versus interdependent self-concept mediated these cultural differences. Other studies have also found that European-Americans want to assert, while Hong Kong Chinese want to suppress, their personal needs (Tsai, Miao, Seppala, Fung, & Yeung, 2007).
Importantly, cultural differences in agency are documented in ways other than self-report scales. In one such study (Morling, Kitayama, & Miyamoto, 2002), college students from America were able to come up with more examples of times when they had influenced the environment, whereas Japanese were able to come up with more examples of times when they had adjusted to the environment. And the situations were judged to have qualitatively different affordances. The influence situations from the United States were especially potent in evoking feelings of efficacy. In contrast, while adjustment situations made people feel closer, more interdependent with others, the Japanese adjustment situations were especially potent in evoking this feeling. This study demonstrates that cultures provide different situation-scapes—the types of settings people encounter in Japan and America are different in both quantity and quality.
At least two other studies have replicated the finding that situations in America and Japan provide different opportunities to feel efficacy versus relatedness, respectively; one in the context of social support (Morling, Uchida, & Frentrup, 2015) and one in the context of emotional action styles (Boiger, Mesquita, Tsai, & Markus, 2012). One study even found control differences in exercise classes—Americans, like Jackie in the chapter opening, tended to choose an exercise class based on their own time preference, and then felt comfortable modifying (influencing) the moves in the class to make it suit their own goals. In contrast, Japanese exercisers, like Emi, tended to choose a class based on its advertised fitness level, and then adjusted their moves to match what the instructor was leading (Morling, 2000).
Different cultural patterns of influence and adjustment have also been found to apply in Indian cultural contexts (Savani, Morris, Naidu, Kumar, & Berlia, 2011). For example, when Indians wrote about times they had influenced other people, they were more likely to mention that they had others’ interests at heart. In turn, influence in India tended to strengthen relationships. In contrast, Americans’ influence situations were motivated by a concern for personal freedom. In a study by the same researchers, people read situations written by people in India and America about when another person tried to influence them. When new people read situations authored by people in India, they felt more likely to accommodate and go along with the other person’s influence (Savani et al., 2011). But when people read situations authored by people in America, they were less likely to accommodate. The pattern supports two conclusions: first, influence situations are more interpersonally sensitive in India, and second, situations that require people to accommodate are framed more positively in India than in America.
Making a choice among alternatives is an action that reliably invokes feelings of perceived control, at least in North America. When people make choices, they can enact change on the environment, influencing it according to their internal, personal wishes (e.g., Brehm, 2000). However, this model of choice seems more prevalent in North American cultural settings. For example, in American cultural contexts, people tend to construe basic actions, such as buying a present or selecting something to eat, as choices, much more than people in Indian cultural contexts (Savani, Markus, Naidu, Kumar, & Berlia, 2010). When asked to reflect on their day, Americans indicated that more of such actions were “choices” than Indians did. For example, to an American but not an Indian, reading a magazine is a choice—a chance to influence one’s outcomes and express the self. This study suggests that making choices is a cultural practice that encourages Americans’ sense of independent agency; Americans also co-opt the language of choice in their everyday actions, perhaps to align themselves with culturally valued frames on agency.
Culturally different control orientations have downstream consequences for cognition and emotion. For example, planning to exert influence or adjustment impacts the emotions people want to feel. Accommodation settings foster a preference for muted, low-arousal emotional states (calm, peaceful), because these allow people to restrain their preferences and go along more easily with others. In contrast, influence fosters high-arousal emotional states (excitement, anger), because these states gear people up to act, lead, and do things (Tsai, 2007; Tsai, Knutson, & Fung, 2006). Similarly, the relationship between external LOC and depression and anxiety is significantly stronger in individualistic cultural contexts than collectivistic ones. In collectivistic cultural contexts, external control beliefs are part of the cultural discourse, so people feel freer to endorse them and do not suffer from believing them (Cheng, Cheung, Chio, & Chan, 2013).
The psychological process of adjusting to the environment also promotes attention to relationships, contexts, and external influences on people’s behavior—the type of cognition that has been termed “holistic.” In contrast, the psychological process of influencing the environment promotes attention to figure over ground—termed “analytic” cognition (Miyamoto, 2013; Zhou, He, Yang, Lao, & Baumeister, 2012).
Although much of the time our focus on cultural differences takes place across political borders, cultural contexts exert influence within a country, too. One line of research documented how the motivation for agency is enacted differently in middle- and working-class contexts (Stephens et al., 2011). The “disjoint agency” model, in which people perform actions, including choices, that highlight their independent motives and preferences, predominates as the best, healthiest form of agency in middle-class American contexts. Middle-class people have the material resources to get what they want. In contrast, “conjoint agency,” in which people perform actions that highlight their ability to adjust to circumstances and roles and to focus on other people, predominates as the healthiest form of agency in working-class American contexts. Working-class people have fewer material resources or chances for social mobility and fewer opportunities to express themselves through choices. They may be socialized to focus on other people and not be “selfish” (Lareau, 2011).
These models of agency are reflected in how people from the two social class backgrounds respond behaviorally and emotionally to situations regarding choice. Like Malia in the chapter-opening anecdote, middle-class American contexts communicate that it is good to choose your own things. In contrast, working-class American contexts communicate, as Myriam illustrates, it is good to accept the gifts of others. Whereas middle-class people experience reactance when their choices are thwarted (e.g., rating a preferred item even higher when they learn it is unavailable) (Brehm, 2000), working-class Americans tend to accept the choices presented to them (Snibbe & Markus, 2005). In one study, working-class Americans simply accepted a pen they were offered as a gift; in contrast, many middle-class Americans asked to see the other options. In another study, middle-class Americans reported greater liking for a shirt that a person independently chose for herself. In contrast, working-class participants most preferred a shirt that a person was assigned to wear (Stephens et al., 2011).
The cultural practices of accepting gifts and shopping may be relatively superficial, so it is important to note that these models of agency permeated people’s explanations for more serious actions as well. A study interviewed survivors and aid workers who lived through Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (Stephens, Hamedani, Markus, Bergsieker, & Eloul, 2009). They documented that working-class people did not always have the material resources to evacuate, so they stayed behind. Those who stayed explained their actions in terms of their personal strength, religious faith, and care and concern for others. However, when asked about the actions of the folks who stayed, middle-class observers appeared to derogate their “choice” to stay, characterizing them as lazy or passive (Stephens et al., 2009). Class-associated models of agency, then, remind us that the disjoint model, while it predominates in middle-class contexts in the West, is not universally applicable to contexts in which people have fewer resources and options. In working-class settings, agency is construed conjointly and people adjust to others and maintain focus on the community.
As reviewed here, the evidence on control motivation is consistent with two conclusions. First, the motive to influence the world has a complementary motive—the motive to adjust and fit in with the social and material environment. Second, cultural settings afford different opportunities to practice one type of control more than the other. If the independent self is the center of attention and the social-material world is amenable, then influence, choice, and internal control are both possible and motivating. But if the self is interdependently embedded in social roles and relationships or the social-material world is unyielding, then adjustment, acceptance, and external control are more prevalent approaches.
Perhaps the most influential theory of self-related motivations, self-determination theory (SDT) argues that well-being is determined by fulfilling basic psychological needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 2000). SDT argues that these innate, universal needs may be satisfied differently across cultural contexts (Deci & Ryan, 2000). The universality of the need for competence (feeling effective in one’s environment) and relatedness (feeling a sense of belonging and connectedness) has been largely accepted (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Some argue that autonomy (feeling like the originator of one’s actions) may not be as important in collectivistic cultural contexts. For example, Asian-American children showed greater motivation for a task that was not chosen autonomously (Iyengar & Lepper, 1999), and autonomy-like motives predicted life satisfaction more strongly in individualistic than collectivistic countries (Oishi, Diener, Lucas, & Suh, 1999). However, another study found that autonomous actions predicted well-being in diverse cultures (Chirkov, Ryan, Kim, & Kaplan, 2003), and while Asian cultural contexts reported lower achievement of autonomy and competence, the relationship between these needs and well-being was similar in magnitude across eight countries (Church et al., 2013).
A chapter on motivation would not be complete without touching on the concept of self-regulation, which has been studied both as a set of skills and a type of motivated behavior (Trommsdorff, 2009). It is a set of skills because by one common definition, self-regulation involves the ability to override a dominant emotion or impulse (Gailliot et al., 2007) as in the examples of trying to resist eating a cookie or trying to be polite to a disliked person. It is also a goal-directed behavior (Trommsdorff, 2009), because people may employ self-regulation to change their behavior, to do better at a task, or get along better with other people. A vast literature has famously documented how children learn to resist a tempting pretzel or marshmallow (Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989). Other models detail people’s focus on preventing negatives or promoting positives (e.g., Higgins, 2000) or how self-regulation fails after repeated use in a short time period (Gailliot et al., 2007). Despite the potential for cultural differences in these processes, the literature has not yet been fully colonized by cultural psychologists. Here we review some initial forays into this territory.
First, self-regulation processes are potentially shaped by culture, as illustrated by the literature on delay of gratification. As Mischel first noted, children are able to delay gratification much longer in cultural contexts that foster trust (e.g., Mischel, 1961), including situations in which the experimenter has previously been reliable and trustworthy (Kidd, Palmeri & Aslin, 2013). If self-regulation ability responds to situational forces, then it seems likely that culture shapes it, too. Indeed, children in some cultures can delay longer, perhaps because of their local environmental contingencies (e.g., Mischel, 1961).
Second, it appears that culture shapes people’s preferences for approach versus avoidance motivations. Approach goals try to obtain some positive outcome or state, as in “I am trying to do well in school” or “I am trying to get emotionally closer to my girlfriend.” Avoidance goals try to stay away from some negative outcome or state, as in “I am trying not to fail biology” or “I am trying to keep my girlfriend from leaving me.” Originally, researchers found that people with approach orientations had higher well-being and were more physically healthy (e.g., Elliot, Sheldon, & Church, 1997). However, the idea that approach is healthier than avoidance was primarily conceived and tested in Western samples. In collectivistic cultural contexts such as Korea and Russia, researchers found that people endorsed avoidance goals more than those in individualistic contexts. Furthermore, endorsing avoidance goals was associated with lower well-being for Americans, but not for Russians or Koreans (Elliot, Chirkov, Kim, & Sheldon, 2001). In another study, culture shaped which types of actions (approach or avoidance) people would attend most to. Americans were better at recalling positive events that either had or had not happened (e.g., “I found a 20-dollar bill” or “the movie I wanted to watch was not playing anymore”), whereas Japanese were better at recalling negative events that had or had not happened (e.g., “I found a zit on my nose” or “my least favorite class got cancelled”). The different focus on positive versus negative outcomes was also documented in online book reviews on Amazon.com. American reviews (at least the ones rated “helpful”) contained more approach than avoidance content, but Japanese reviews contained approximately equal amounts (Hamamura, Meijer, Heine, Kamaya, & Hori, 2009).
Another line of research documented approach versus avoidance goals in friendship, comparing college students in Hong Kong, Ghana, and North America (Adams & Plaut, 2003; L. M. W. Li, Adams, Kurtiş, & Hamamura, 2015). In North American settings, young adults pursue “promotion-oriented relationality” in their friendships. Like Sarah in the opening anecdote, approach-oriented relationality means wanting to make new friends and become closer to existing ones. In contrast, in Ghanaian and Hong Kong settings, young adults may pursue “prevention-oriented relationality”: they may be cautious in friendship and vigilant that their friends are not really enemies in disguise. Researchers have linked these orientations to the relational mobility in different cultural contexts. In North America, making and breaking friendships is fairly easy, and people may frame relationships as transactions between independent individuals. In high relational mobility settings, people feel free to form new friendships and to exit problematic ones. In contrast, in Ghana and Hong Kong, people are more embedded in their relationships and duty bound to fulfill each others’ material needs. People cannot freely exit existing relationships; starting a new friendship would add burdens to them. In low relational mobility settings, people are more cautious about forming new friendships and about protecting themselves from conflicts in their existing friendships (L. M. W. Li et al., 2015). This line of research documents cultural differences in approach and avoidance motivations in a relational context. And it also specifies a mechanism for these differences—these approaches to friendship are reactions to differences in relational mobility. In other words, the fluidity of social settings of different cultures makes approach versus avoidance goals more adaptive.
Another explanation for why cultures differ in their focus on approach versus avoidance goals explains that these goals are congruent with other motivations tied to self-construals. For example, Hamamura et al. (2009) tied these motivations to culturally different foci on enhancing the self, as Westerners seem to do when they pursue high self-esteem. In contrast, East Asians may be focused on protecting face, defined as the respect a person can hold for him or herself that is acquired from others viewing how well they occupy their social category (Ho, 1976). Face is fragile, in part because it is not within the person’s own control. Therefore, face might be best maintained through a vigilant, avoidance-focused self-regulatory strategy. Hamamura’s logic is reflected in the different motivational response to failure by Japanese. For example, Heine et al. (2001) found that Japanese were more motivated to work on a task they had recently failed at, compared to Americans.
In an integrated model of culture and self-regulation, Trommsdorff (2009) traces a path from the independent model of self, to a disjoint model of agency, to approach motivations and a promotion focus. The goal is the regulation of the self, by itself (Trommsdorff, 2009, Figure 1). In contrast, there is a meaningful path from the interdependent model of self, to a conjoint model of agency, to avoidance motivations and a prevention focus. Here, the self regulates itself with an interpersonal focus—not just to regulate itself, but to regulate with others in mind.
Finally, cultural contexts may shape the process of ego depletion. Ego depletion refers to the hypothesis that after an act of self-control, people become less able to exert self-control on a subsequent, demanding task. For example, after an exhausting task such as crossing out the e’s in a long text passage, Americans become less able to squeeze a handgrip, control their gaze, or solve difficult puzzles. The ego-depletion literature is lately in flux: while one meta-analysis concluded that there is a significant ego-depletion effect of moderate size (Hagger, Wood, Stiff, & Chatzisarantis, 2010), a recent, registered replication report found no effect of ego depletion, at least on one pair of tasks (Hagger, 2016).
Another challenge to the ego-depletion literature is its potential culture-centric status. According to a series of recent studies (Savani & Job, 2016), people in India endorse the belief that self-control tasks are energizing, not tiring. In turn, in Indian cultural contexts, people actually show a reversal of ego-depletion effects. That is, after a tedious clerical task, they perform faster and more accurately at Stroop tasks. The cultural dynamics of self-regulation in general, and ego depletion in particular, are clearly a fruitful area for future research.
This section has discussed three ways culture might influence the process of goal pursuit. First, cultural contexts appear to influence the ways in which children interpret and behave in a delay of gratification task. Second, people’s goals, whether to approach positive outcomes or avoid negative ones, are differently emphasized in independent and interdependent cultural contexts. Third, culture may shape, and even reverse, the dynamics of ego depletion.
This chapter has reviewed several examples of cultural differences in motivation. In this section, we speculate about mediators of these cultural differences. Why do people develop these cultural differences in motivation? While cultural researchers once assumed that cultural differences in cognition, emotion, and motivation could be traced back to differences in self-concept (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), research has recently identified other potential mechanisms.
One of the earliest and most-cited papers in the emerging discipline of cultural psychology was Markus and Kitayama’s (1991) review of independent and interdependent self-concepts. In that paper, they not only brought together a variety of evidence defining these two self-construals; they also specified that the self-concept has “consequences for cognition, emotion, and motivation” (p. 224). The implication, and common interpretation, of this paper was that (a) cultures shape the self-concept to be relatively independent versus interdependent and (b) the self-concept is a causal force on other psychological outcomes, including motivation.
But where is the “self-concept” that Markus and Kitayama described? The self-concept in their paper was sometimes described as a cognitive structure, inside a person’s head, which frames itself and its actions as either independent from others or interdependent with them. Other times, Markus and Kitayama implied that the self-concept is a socially shared construal, whose qualities are promoted in specific cultural messages and practices that are primarily outside of the person’s head. As the argument has developed (Markus & Kitayama, 2010), it has become more and more clear that self-concepts are both inside and outside the head. But which part of the self—the cognitive structure or the shared cultural representation—is the most important?
Perhaps because psychology at the time was steeped in social cognitive models, the first cultural psychology studies emphasized the self-concept inside the head. They began by assuming that the primary mediator of cultural differences would be self-concept differences. Early studies would administer self-report measures of independence or interdependence, often followed by proposed behavioral, motivational, or cognitive outcomes, such as primary and secondary control motivations (e.g., Lam & Zane, 2004). They would then test whether cultural differences in motivation could be explained by differences in self-concept. This was sometimes called the “unpackaging” model of research (Singelis, Bond, Sharkey, & Lai, 1999). Theorists at the time argued that if cultural effects were real, they should be mediated by individual differences in self-concepts endorsed by people in a culture.
However, while it was possible to find fascinating cultural differences in behavior, emotion, and cognition, these effects were not always mediated by self-concept differences. The culprit was that there was apparently no link between culture and self-concept (at least as measured by self-report scales). Self-report measures usually did not show the predicted cultural difference (Matsumoto, 1999; Takano & Osaka, 1999) or at least only a small one (Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002). Without this crucial research outcome, mediator models fail. In response to the surprising finding that self-report scales of self-construals do not mediate culturally different behavior, some psychologists proposed methodological refinements (e.g., Heine, Lehman, Peng, & Greenholtz, 2002; Schimmack, Oishi, & Diener, 2005) and alternative mediators, such as dialecticism (Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2009; Spencer-Rodgers, Williams, & Peng, 2010). However, other researchers proposed new mechanisms that were not self-concept based.
One promising additional mediator of cultural differences in motivation is a construct variously known as “perceived consensus” (Zou et al., 2009), “intersubjective culture” (Chiu, Gelfand, Yamagishi, Shteynberg, & Wan, 2010), or “intersubjective consensus.” The intersubjective approach reminds us people often act according to their perceptions about what most other people in their culture value or believe, rather than acting strictly on their personal beliefs (Zou et al., 2009). According to this perspective, cultural differences in motivation, emotion, or cognition can be explained by people’s perceived cultural consensus.
The intersubjective culture model has been generative and influential. One important class of results from this model documents that people in two cultures do not typically differ in their privately held self-concepts; however, they do differ greatly in their perceptions of what most others will do. For example, although individual Koreans do not see themselves as interdependent or collectivistic, they perceive that most other Koreans will act collectivistically (Shteynberg, Gelfand, & Kim, 2009). Although Americans and Poles do not differ in their personally endorsed views of collectivism, Americans are more likely than Poles to report that other Americans will act independently rather than collectively (Zou et al., 2009). In studies of this type, cultural differences are usually more pronounced at the perceived consensus level than at the level of privately held beliefs.
More importantly, these perceived consensus beliefs actually mediate cultural differences in behavior. For example, Poles were more likely to comply with social pressure than Americans, and this cultural difference was mediated by perceived consensus (Zou et al., 2009). That is, Poles were more likely than Americans to perceive that people in their country would “consult their family before making an important decision” (as well as other collectivistic behaviors) and this perception was associated with being more influenced by social pressure in a marketing task. In contrast, Poles’ personal beliefs about collectivism did not correlate with the social pressure task. Another study found that perceived consensus about approach and avoidance motivations mediated Chinese-American differences in counterfactual thinking. Intersubjective views about dialecticism, tightness, and individualism-collectivism also mediated cultural differences in the use of traits in people perception (Church, Willmore, et al., 2012).
The intersubjective culture model shows great promise for explaining how cultural differences in behavior come about. It reminds us that people do not necessarily internalize cultural messages and then act accordingly. Instead, people are focused outward, motivated to act in accordance with what others in their culture believe.
It seems likely that perceived cultural consensus mediates the cultural differences we see in behavior, motivation, cognition, and emotion. But how does such knowledge get transmitted and shared?
One source of information people use to inform perceived consensus judgments is cultural products: public, tangible manifestations of culture such as texts, songs, art, and advertising. A growing number of cultural psychologists are investigating such cultural products in their work, often to accompany behavioral, emotional, or motivational measures of cultural behavior. For example, one study coded Japanese and U.S. media coverage of the Olympic Games, reporting how athletes, coaches, and reporters described athletes’ performance (Markus et al., 2006). Japanese discourse reflected a conjoint agency model in which other people contribute to an athletic performance; in contrast, American press reflected a disjoint agency model in which the athlete’s performance was attributed to independent traits and motivations. Popular songs are another cultural product (Snibbe & Markus, 2005). One study showed that the lyrics of songs preferred by working-class Americans were consistent with conjoint agency themes, in which people find integrity in accepting one’s position (e.g., “Stand by your Man”); in contrast, the lyrics of songs preferred by middle-class Americans fit the disjoint model, in which people act independently on their environment (“Take this job and shove it”). Bestselling children’s books in Taiwan and the United States depict different intensities of emotions, with Taiwanese bestsellers more likely to depict low-intensity affect (such as calmness or sadness) and American books depicting higher intensity affect (such as excitement or anger; Tsai, Louie, Chen, & Uchida, 2007).
A meta-analysis collected studies that had included cultural products measures of cultural differences in individualism and collectivism (Morling & Lamoreaux, 2008). The effect sizes comparing East-Asian to Western cultural products were significantly larger (individualism g = .73, collectivism g = −.63) than effect sizes for self-report measures of the same traits. Cultures differ, sometimes a great deal, in the types of cultural products they expose their citizens to. In turn, these products potentially teach children what to want, serve as models for people in the culture about what is “normal,” and provide the type of information needed to build cultural schemas. Through exposure to these publicly visible, tangible messages, people learn what their culture expects. We suggest that cultural products are one of the forces that shape intersubjective culture. Future studies might investigate how exposure to a setting’s cultural products influences people’s perceived cultural consensus and cultural behavior.
Another way cultural differences might develop is through situational and individual differences in residential mobility—the frequency of moving to a new residence (Oishi, 2010). Residential mobility exists at the personal level (some people have moved more than others) and at the level of a community (some communities have a higher percentage of people who have moved). Residential mobility is associated with more transient social networks and this mobility has implications for people’s psychological well-being, preferences, and motives. For example, people lower in residential mobility value loyalty in friends and invest more in friendships and those high in residential mobility value egalitarian norms and pursue friendships based on common interests.
Residential mobility may contribute to perceived consensus because cities high in residential mobility expose residents to tangible, public representations of social transience, such as a higher percentage of national brand stores and franchises. And when people literally do move in and out of a community with higher frequency, friendships will, by necessity, become visibly transient. Future research could directly test whether tangible signals of residential mobility influence intersubjective culture perceptions.
Cultural products and residential mobility, the forces proposed here, are not the only factors that could provide a basis for perceived consensus and the spread of culture. The size of a nation, existing social structures, heritable individual differences, migration, physical ecologies, and economies all play important roles (see Cohen, 2001; Oishi, 2010, for reviews). Indeed, cultural psychologists are blessed with a wealth of potential hypotheses to test about the origins, and motivational impacts, of cultural variation.
Motivation is a central component of personality psychology, but one that is culturally variable. People want different things. Some people are motivated to see themselves as better than their neighbors and others attend to their shortcomings in order to live up to their neighbors’ high standards. Some want to be self-consistent and others flexibly adapt to social contexts. Some want to be personally in control by influencing the environment and others are motivated to align with a social group. Some people focus on gaining positives and others on avoiding negative outcomes. People in different cultural contexts are motivated to do different things.
These specific variations in motivation, however, confirm that certain motivations are universal. As evolved cultural animals, humans are universally motivated to seize meanings provided by already-there cultural environments. The phenomenon of shared attention demonstrates that people are wired to prioritize goals that they think their friends are pursuing. Culturally shared schemas, reflected and endorsed in cultural products such as songs, texts, and media, provide powerful anchors for human behavior, specifying what our culture says we should want to do. When we believe that most others in our cultural group consensually do, think, or feel a certain way, then we are more likely to want, think, or feel those things as well, regardless of what we individually believe. These motivational meta-processes (seeking meaning, sharing attention, and developing consensus models) seem common to all cultural groups. To understand human motivation in all of its rich complexity, we must attend both to culturally different motivations and to universal human motivations that are the evolved strength of our cultural species.
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