article · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Members of Mediterranean societies display a distinctive blend of independent and interdependent social orientations, self-construals, and cognitive styles. By assessing participants from eight Mediterranean nations alongside groups from East Asia and Anglo-Western countries, the research evaluates how cultural values shape psychological functioning. Across six implicit social orientation indicators, an eight-dimensional self-construal scale, and four cognitive style measures, Mediterranean populations uniquely highlighted specific aspects of independence. These included emotional disengagement, dispositional attribution, and viewing the self as self-reliant, self-expressive, and consistent. Concurrently, these societies strongly emphasised interdependence through distinct closeness to in-group members over out-group members and deep commitment to close others. These dynamics separate Mediterranean communities from conventional East Asian and Western frameworks, demonstrating that cultural patterns of honour generate a unique profile combining personal agency with deeply rooted group connection.
Understanding regional variations in social behaviour is critical for international communication, diplomacy, and multicultural collaboration. By showing that Mediterranean societies balance personal self-worth and community commitment in ways distinct from Anglo-Western or East Asian cultures, this work provides a more nuanced understanding of human values. It helps multinational teams and researchers avoid oversimplified assumptions about cultural independence and interdependence.
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Social science research has highlighted "honor" as a central value driving social behavior in Mediterranean societies, which requires individuals to develop and protect a sense of their personal self-worth and their social reputation, through assertiveness, competitiveness, and retaliation in the face of threats. We predicted that members of Mediterranean societies may exhibit a distinctive combination of independent and interdependent social orientation, self-construal, and cognitive style, compared to more commonly studied East Asian and Anglo-Western cultural groups. We compared participants from eight Mediterranean societies (Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus [Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities], Lebanon, Egypt) to participants from East Asian (Korea, Japan) and Anglo-Western (the United Kingdom, the United States) societies, using six implicit social orientation indicators, an eight-dimensional self-construal scale, and four cognitive style indicators. Compared with both East Asian and Anglo-Western samples, samples from Mediterranean societies distinctively emphasized several forms of independence (relative intensity of disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, happiness based on disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, dispositional [vs. situational] attribution style, self-construal as different from others, self-directed, self-reliant, self-expressive, and consistent) and interdependence (closeness to in-group [vs. out-group] members, self-construal as connected and committed to close others). Our findings extend previous insights into patterns of cultural orientation beyond commonly examined East-West comparisons to an understudied world region. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
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DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000342
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