Contextualism as an important facet of individualism-collectivism: Personhood beliefs across 37 national groups

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 2013. Vol. 44. No. 1. P. 24–45.

Owe E., Vignoles V. L., Becker M., Brown R., Smith P. B., Lee S. W., Tatarko A.

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.

Keywords: cross-cultural differences, individualism-collectivism, measurement invariance, personhood beliefs