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Attachment dimensions and contingencies of self-worth: The moderating role of culture
Personality and Individual Differences 45 (2008) 509–514
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Attachment dimensions and contingencies of self-worth: The moderating role of culture Sheung-Tak Cheng *, Karen W.K. Kwan Department of Applied Social Studies, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong
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Article history: Received 13 June 2007 Received in revised form 3 June 2008 Accepted 4 June 2008 Available online 22 July 2008 Keywords: Contingencies of self-worth Attachment Individualism–collectivism
a b s t r a c t This study examined the relationship between attachment dimensions and contingencies of self-worth (CSWs), and whether individualism would moderate the relationship between them. A sample of 154 university students (67 from individualistic and 87 from collectivistic cultures) completed questionnaires assessing attachment dimensions (anxiety and avoidance) and CSWs (physical appearance, others’ approval, outdoing others in competition, academic competence, support from family and friends, and virtue). Collectivists were more likely than individualists to report both attachment anxiety and avoidance, and anxiety and avoidance were both related to basing self-esteem on appearance and social support. Anxiety was also related to the CSWs of competition and others’ approval, and avoidance to academic competence and virtue. However, the relationship between anxiety and appearance CSW, and that between avoidance and support CSW, were stronger among collectivists than among individualists. Findings were discussed in terms of cross-cultural differences in self-construal and cultural norms in harmony and social support. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Recently, Crocker and Wolfe (2001) introduced the concept of contingencies of self-worth (CSWs) to represent the areas in which the individual base their self-worth and consequently monitor their performance and strive to excel in order to regulate their sense of self-worth. They have identified seven CSWs among college students, namely others’ approval, appearance, family support, academic competence, virtue, competition, and God’s love (Crocker, Luhtanen, Cooper, & Bouvrette, 2003). Crocker and Wolfe (2001) explained that one’s sense of self-worth depends not only on perceived successes or failures in the CSWs, but also on the adherence to one’s standards for the CSWs, such as adherence to one’s moral standards for the virtue CSW. Although one’s CSWs are relatively stable over time (Park, Crocker, & Mickelson, 2004), they are subject to revision when demands of the environment or one’s abilities change; for example, when individuals who base self-esteem on academic competence face repeated disappointments in academic performance, they might substitute academic CSW with another CSW that will inevitably become more salient and achievable, and result in continued maintenance of one’s global self-esteem. It has been argued that the CSWs are partly determined by the responsiveness of the caregiving environment to the individual’s need for security (Park et al., 2004). This history of caregiver * Corresponding author. Tel.: +852 2788 8745. E-mail address: [email protected] (S.-T. Cheng). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2008.06.003
responsiveness leads to attachment styles that can be broadly represented along two orthogonal dimensions, namely anxiety and avoidance (Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998; Gillath, Bunge, Shaver, Wendelken, & Mikulincer, 2005; Mikulincer, Shaver, Gillath, & Nitzberg, 2005). People with attachment anxiety have developed a positive model of other and a negative model of self due to the inconsistent care provided by their caretakers when they were young. These individuals have an excessive fear of rejection and need approval from others. Conversely, those who have a positive model of self, but negative model of other develop attachment avoidance as a result of unresponsive caretakers. They fear intimacy and have an excessive need for independence. One may achieve a sense of security by using specific strategies according to his attachment history (e.g., by becoming self-reliant for avoidant individuals), which in turn have the effect of affirming one’s beliefs and feelings about the self. In other words, self-esteem and attachment style are interrelated in the sense that they both regulate the person’s sense of security. Hence, those who have developed attachment anxiety are likely to have low self-esteem as well as base their self-esteem on others’ approval; whereas those with attachment avoidance tend to base their self-esteem on personal competence and less on receiving social support. Indeed, a recent study indicates that CSWs vary according to individuals’ attachment style (Park et al., 2004). In this study, participants rated themselves along four attachment styles as well as the degree to which the seven CSWs were true to them. In a series of hierarchical regression analyses, the authors showed that those with a secure attachment style (low in anxiety and avoidance)
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were found to base their self-esteem more on family support; those with a preoccupied (high in anxiety and low in avoidance) or fearful (high in both anxiety and avoidance) attachment style, however, based their self-esteem on physical appearance; whereas those with a dismissing attachment style (low in anxiety but high in avoidance) depended less on approval from others, family support and God’s love for self-esteem. In this study, we are interested in examining the associations between CSWs and the attachment dimensions of anxiety and avoidance, and how these vary across cultures. 1.1. The moderating role of culture We believe that culture sensitizes individuals to using or foregoing certain CSWs in regulating their sense of security and, as such, moderates the relationship between CSW and attachment. Cross-cultural research suggests that people from individualistic cultures tend to perceive their selves as distinct from each other, whereas those in collectivistic cultures have selves that are seemingly interconnected and interdependent with one another (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Moreover, collectivists are concerned with fitting in the social group and maintaining social harmony (Kim & Markus, 1999). The expression of social disapproval is highly controlled and discouraged in collectivistic cultures due to its potential disruptive effect on social harmony, whereas its expression in individualistic cultures is commonplace and carries little or no penalties. This suggests that when social disapproval occurs, it has a stronger effect on collectivists than on individualists. Such cultural phenomena might explain why Asians or Asian– Americans report higher attachment anxiety than Westerners (Wei, Russell, Mallinckrodt, & Zakalik, 2004). The need for social approval in the former accentuates a negative model of self and a positive model of other, and consequently leads to higher attachment anxiety in Asians than in Westerners. It is therefore reasonable to assume that others’ approval as a CSW would have a stronger association with attachment anxiety in collectivistic than in individualistic cultures. Asians do not just report higher attachment anxiety, but also higher avoidance, compared with Westerners (Wei et al., 2004). This finding, which could not be explained by nonequivalence in cross-cultural measurement (Wei et al., 2004), was more difficult to understand. Wang and Mallinckrodt (2006) discussed this in terms of the behavioral norm against emotional disclosure in Asian cultures. For example, for collectivists, the ideal interpersonal style is one that holds a consistent external display without revealing inner emotions; conversely, Americans freely share their emotions with others (Tsai & Levenson, 1997). This may in part explain the seemingly divergent trends of attachment between these cultures. We also believe that the notion of CSW might help explain this apparently puzzling phenomenon. CSWs are essentially costs that one is prepared to pay in pursuing a sense of self-worth (Crocker & Park, 2004). As mentioned earlier, attachment avoidance should be negatively related to basing self-esteem on social support. At the same time, it has been argued that the norms of reciprocity and social harmony render support-seeking for personal needs a more costly behavior in collectivistic cultures (Taylor et al., 2004). It follows then that those who base their self-esteem on support from others would have to accept higher social costs in a collectivistic culture. Such costs, we believe, have substantial implications for avoidant individuals. Avoidant individuals have come to learn that their attachment figures are unresponsive to their needs and thus, they regulate their sense of security by avoiding intimacy. The optimal distance from their attachment figures would vary across cultures, being wider in collectivistic ones, due to the perceived costs of being close. It is therefore not surprising that collectivists score higher on the avoidance dimension than
their individualistic counterparts. It is conceivable that collectivists would be more sensitive than individualists to the interpersonal costs involved in basing their self-esteem on social support. As a result, we also expect that the negative relationship between attachment avoidance and support CSW would be stronger in collectivists than in individualists. In other words, given the same level of avoidance, collectivists would be less prepared to endorse social support as a CSW than individualists. In addition, research has shown that appearance CSW, or personal investment in body appearance, is associated with attachment anxiety (Cash, Thériault, & Annis, 2004; Park et al., 2004). We further explore whether cultures differ in the way appearance CSW relates to attachment anxiety. In the context of the prominence attached to physical appearance in the globalized world (Wardle, Haase, & Steptoe, 2006), which plays such an important role in social acceptance and popularity, we postulated that appearance CSW would be more strongly related to attachment anxiety in collectivists than in individualists. Compared with individualists with attachment anxiety (i.e., a positive model of other and a negative model of self), collectivists with attachment anxiety are more likely to endorse appearance CSW because of their sensitivity to interpersonal feedback on their appearance as a way of gauging their social acceptance and popularity. 1.2. The present study This study examines if culture moderates the relationship between CSWs and attachment anxiety and avoidance. The CSWs identified by Crocker et al. (2003) were used in this study, with the exception of the God’s love contingency, as the Chinese/Hong Kong culture does not emphasize spirituality. (For instance, in a survey involving 18 nations around the world, 77.1% of the Chinese said they were not at all or slightly religious, the highest percentage of all nations; Saxena, 2006.) We expected that attachment anxiety would be positively related to the CSWs of others’ approval and appearance, and that attachment avoidance would be negatively related to the CSW of support from family and friends. We also expected that these effects would be stronger in persons with a weaker individualistic orientation. 2. Method 2.1. Participants and procedure One hundred and fifty-four college students ranging in age from 19 to 30 (M = 21.8, SD = 1.99) were recruited on a convenience basis from three universities in Hong Kong to fill out a questionnaire individually containing demographic, geographic, and personal relationships information. The sample was gender-balanced (50.7% men) with slightly more Asians (55.4%) than Caucasians (43.2%) and other ethnic groups (1.4%). All except one Asian participant were Hong Kong Chinese. Other participants were international students from the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and various Western and Eastern European countries. One hundred and twenty-three (84.2%) of the participants had experienced romantic relationships. 2.2. Measures The equivalence of instruments in different cultural and linguistic contexts is critical for the validity of cross-cultural comparative research (Punnett & Shenkar, 1996; van de Vijver & Leung, 1997). In the current study, the techniques of back-translation (Werner & Campbell, 1973) and bilingual checking (Punnett & Shenkar, 1996) were used for each instrument to fulfill this methodological requirement. The imported instruments were translated into Chi-
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nese by the first author and then back-translated independently into English by a bilingual helper. The original and back-translated versions were compared. After carefully evaluating the connotative and semantic aspects of the differences identified, isolated minor adjustments were made. 2.2.1. Background information All participants were instructed to indicate their age, gender, year of study, major subject, place of birth, nationality, ethnic background, religion, places in which they had lived throughout their lives, and whether they have been in a romantic relationship or not.
ticipants recruited, 146 met this criterion. Four persons who had lived in several different countries since childhood, without a clearly dominant country of origin, were dropped from the study. Four others who had spent at least 50% of their lives in a single country were also included, by assigning them a score calculated on a prorated basis (e.g., for one who had spent 50% of the time in country A and 16.7% of time in country B, score = country A individualism .50 + country B individualism .17). The average percentage of time participants spent in the primary country was 98.10 (SD = 8.32, range = 50–100). 3. Results
2.2.2. Attachment The anxiety and the avoidance attachment dimensions were measured with a brief version of the experiences in close relationships scale (ECR; Brennan et al., 1998). The terms ‘‘my partner” or ‘‘my romantic partner” were changed to ‘‘close others” in the ECR since a significant proportion of the participants indicated they have never experienced any romantic relationships. The brief ECR contains eight items for each attachment dimension, using a seven-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Participants indicate how well statements describe their feelings. Internal consistency was acceptable with alpha coefficients of .66 and .77 for attachment avoidance and anxiety respectively. 2.2.3. Contingencies of self-worth With the exception of the God’s love subscale, the contingencies of self-worth scale (Crocker et al., 2003) was back-translated into Chinese, with five items measuring each of the remaining six subscales. Originally one of the subscales focused on family support CSW (Crocker et al., 2003), but was recently expanded to include support from family and friends in a Japanese version of the CSW scale (Jennifer Crocker, personal communication, Jan 13, 2006; Uchida, 2007). In the present sample, alpha coefficients equaled .75 for physical appearance, .77 for support from family and friends, .80 for outdoing others in competition, .83 for academic competence, .83 for virtue, and .80 for approval from others. 2.2.4. Individualism–collectivism Hofstede’s (2001) ranking of countries scale was used with higher scores indicating stronger individualistic orientation. Participants were asked to state their place of birth and their nationality. In addition, they were asked to indicate where they have lived throughout different periods of their lives up to the moment of completing the questionnaire. Participants were assigned a score of individualism on the basis of the single country in which they had spent at least two-thirds (66.7%) of their lives. Of the 154 par-
3.1. Intercorrelations Product–moment correlations among individualism, attachment and CSWs are shown in Table 1. Individualism was negatively associated with the anxiety and avoidance dimensions. These findings are in line with previous studies suggesting that Asians are higher in attachment anxiety and avoidance, compared with Westerners (see Wei et al., 2004). Moreover, individualism was also positively correlated with appearance, support from family/friends, and virtue CSWs, but these correlations were mild. 3.2. Attachment anxiety and CSWs: moderation by culture To determine whether culture moderated the relationship between attachment anxiety and appearance, we regressed attachment anxiety on, in order of entry, (a) individualism and the six CSWs, and (b) the product terms of individualism others’ approval CSW and individualism x appearance CSW. To minimize collinearity issues, product terms were created from standardized scores of the constituent variables (Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken, 2003). As can be seen in Table 2, 35% of the variance in attachment anxiety could be explained by individualism and the CSWs. As expected, individualism was negatively related, while appearance and others’ approval CSWs were positively related, to anxiety. Virtue, which showed no correlation with anxiety at the bivariate level, was also positively related to anxiety after the effects of the other predictors were taken into account. An additional 2% of the variance in anxiety was explained by the two interaction terms, but only the interaction between appearance CSW and individualism was significant. As expected, the nature of the interaction effect, as plotted in Fig. 1, shows that whereas there was no relationship between appearance and anxiety for those high in individualism, the relationship became strongly positive for those low in individualism. Thus, whereas collectivists had higher
Table 1 Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations Variables 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Individualism Anxiety Avoidance Appearance Support from family and friends Competition Academic competence Virtue Others’ approval
M SD *
p < .05. p < .01. *** p < .001. **
1
2 .37*** .14* .17* .16* .06 .09 .23** .12
47.45 27.18
3
.16* .20** .15* .14* .07 .06 .37*** 3.54 0.87
4
.20** .37*** .05 .15* .14* .01 3.14 0.89
.38*** .31*** .42*** .12 .40*** 4.73 0.92
5
.39*** .41*** .36*** .27*** 5.27 0.88
6
.54*** .23*** .19*** 5.08 0.82
7
8
.41*** .30*** 4.87 1.02
9
.11 4.78 1.06
3.93 1.13
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attachment anxiety than individualists, such differences were more pronounced in those who based their self-esteem on appearance.
3.2 Individualism = -1 SD Individualism = mean Individualism = +1 SD
3
3.3. Attachment avoidance and CSWs: moderation by culture
2.6
2.4
2.2
2 -1SD
mean
+1SD
Support from family and friends Fig. 2. Attachment avoidance as a function of support from family and friends as a CSW, with individualism at 1 SD, mean and +1 SD, controlling for the following CSWs: appearance, competition, academic competence, virtue, and others’ approval.
Individualism = -1 SD Individualism = mean Individualism = +1 SD
2.8
4. Discussion
2.6
2.4
Anxiety
2.8
Avoidance
The same regression was repeated for attachment avoidance as the dependent variable, but the interaction term entered at Step 2 was individualism support CSW (Table 2). As much as 46% of the variance in attachment avoidance could be explained by two CSWs – support from family and friends, and others’ approval, the former being a much stronger predictor. Avoidance was negatively related to support, but positively related to others’ approval. The interaction of support and individualism explained another 4% of the variance. This interaction effect is graphically displayed in Fig. 2, showing that whereas support was negatively related to avoidance, regardless of the level of individualism, the relationship was stronger for those low than for those high in individualism. This suggested that avoidant collectivists were less likely to base their self-esteem on social support than their individualistic counterparts.
2.2
2
1.8
1.6 -1SD
mean
+1SD
Appearance Fig. 1. Attachment anxiety as a function of appearance as a CSW, with individualism at 1 SD, mean and +1 SD, controlling for the following CSWs: support, competition, academic competence, virtue, and others’ approval.
Table 2 Hierarchical regression of anxious and avoidant attachment on contingencies of selfworth Anxiety
Individualism Appearance Support from family and friends Competition Academic competence Virtue Others’ approval Individualism appearance Individualism others’ approval Individualism support R2
Avoidance
Step 1
Step 2
Step 1
Step 2
.47** .15* .08 .00 .14 .14* .38**
.45** .13 .07 .00 .12 .14* .39** .15* .06
.03 .15 .39** .13 .03 .02 .16*
.04 .11 .48** .15 .04 .03 .18*
.37
.42
– –
– .35
.19* .46
Note. Figures shown were standardized regression coefficients. R2 underscored means significant change from the previous step. – = irrelevant for the model. * p < .05. ** p < .001.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study investigating how culture moderates the relationships between attachment dimensions and CSWs. Importantly, not only did we replicate known relationships between attachment dimensions and CSWs, but we also found that such relationships vary by culture. Our findings suggest that individualism was negatively associated with attachment anxiety. According to Markus and Kitayama (1991), individualists emphasize their uniqueness from others, whereas collectivists tend to see themselves as part of a social group. For individualists, their self-concept is valued on the basis of the degree to which they are independent, whereas for collectivists, it is their connectedness to others that provides import for their sense of self. As a result, attachment anxiety, which effectively means the reliance on others to fulfill one’s security needs, is lower among individualists than among collectivists. In other words, collectivists define themselves in terms that must include others, and therefore accentuate model of other as compared to model of self. As such, this dependence on a benevolent other to regulate security needs may give rise to attachment anxiety. Against this background, it should not be difficult to understand why the relationship between appearance CSW and attachment anxiety was moderated by individualism. Results of this study supported the prediction that the more individuals base their self-esteem on physical appearance, the more attachment anxiety they will experience, and that this relationship is stronger among those who are low in individualism. Collectivists, by virtue of their stronger reliance on others for the regulation of security, appear to be more concerned with the way they could use their appearance to improve social relations for the fulfillment of security needs. The findings suggest that basing self-esteem on approval from others significantly predicts attachment anxiety. This is consistent with the finding of Park et al. (2004) that preoccupied individuals (high anxiety) rely on social approval to validate self-worth. However, no moderation effect of culture was found on the relationship between approval and anxiety, indicating that individuals were equally likely to base their self-esteem on others’ approval when they have attachment anxiety, regardless of their cultural origin. Correlational analysis also showed that others’ approval CSW
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was not related to the degree of individualism, suggesting that those low in individualism are not more likely to base their self-esteem on others’ approval. These findings were counter-intuitive. Because this is the first study on individualism and CSWs, there are no data available for comparison. More research is necessary to see if these null findings are replicated in other samples. One possible reason may have to do with the characteristics of the present sample, which were purely college students. They might be developmentally disposed to value others’ opinion and approval highly, regardless of culture. If this is the case, the moderation effect of culture as well as the zero-order relationship between individualism and approval CSW should surface in an adult sample that is older than the present one. This can only be tested in future research. Furthermore, results showed that individualism was negatively related to attachment avoidance, thus replicating recent studies on cross-cultural differences in attachment avoidance (Wei et al., 2004). This finding can be explained in terms of cultural differences in intimate behaviors. For example, because collectivists are more concerned with fitting in and maintaining social harmony than with self-disclosure, they are more comfortable with less affectionate and frequent interactions than intense and intimate relationships; thus they are more likely to adopt an avoidant orientation in the way they relate to others (You & Malley-Morrison, 2000). According to Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton (1985), for individualists, romantic love provides new opportunities for self-exploration, sharing, and revealing. In contrast, for the collectivist, the closest bond is with one’s family, even after marriage (Hsu, 1981). In short, compared with collectivists, individualists place more emphasis on intimacy (Goodwin, 1995). Regardless of cultural orientation, basing self-esteem on social support was strongly and negatively related to attachment avoidance. However, as expected, this relationship was somewhat stronger in collectivistic than in individualistic cultures. It has been argued that seeking social support is a more costly behavior in collectivistic than in individualistic societies because imposing one’s needs on others may disrupt social harmony and obligates one to reciprocate support in ways that might strain one’s resources. We believe that avoidant individuals would behave differently in collectivistic than in individualistic cultures because of their fundamental orientation toward seeking support from others. Avoidant individuals are less likely to rely on intimacy and social support to regulate their sense of security. Because of differences in cultural norms regarding intimacy (Wang & Mallinckrodt, 2006), avoidant collectivists are therefore even less likely to base their self-esteem on social support than their individualistic counterparts. We did not find strong associations between CSWs and culture, and where there was an association, it was positively associated with individualism. As compared with collectivists, individualists were more likely to endorse appearance, social support, and virtue as CSWs. Such trends were small. On the whole, culture does not seem to have much association with CSWs. It should be cautioned, however, that these findings were based on a heterogeneous group of individualists (international students) and a homogeneous group of moderate collectivists (Hong Kong students). One limitation of this study is that the self-construal of participants was not directly measured, and participants’ levels of individualism were assessed according to the national group to which they belong. The inclusion of a measure to assess directly self-construal at the individual level would provide more definitive conclusions about the interconnections among culture, attachment and CSWs. Despite this limitation, the study extends the literature by examining how culture determines the way CSWs relate to attachment styles. We replicated previous studies suggesting that collectivists score higher than individualists on both attachment
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anxiety and avoidance, and that such attachment dimensions are related to CSWs. We further demonstrated that whereas attachment anxiety is related to basing self-esteem on appearance, this is not true for those with a strong individualistic orientation who may not see others’ reactions to their appearance as a basis for attachment. And whereas attachment avoidance is negatively related to basing self-esteem on social support, this is more so for the collectivists who see excessive use of social support as a deterrent to forming intimate attachments.
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Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
Attachment dimensions and contingencies of self-worth: The moderating role of culture Sheung-Tak Cheng *, Karen W.K. Kwan Department of Applied Social Studies, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 13 June 2007 Received in revised form 3 June 2008 Accepted 4 June 2008 Available online 22 July 2008 Keywords: Contingencies of self-worth Attachment Individualism–collectivism
a b s t r a c t This study examined the relationship between attachment dimensions and contingencies of self-worth (CSWs), and whether individualism would moderate the relationship between them. A sample of 154 university students (67 from individualistic and 87 from collectivistic cultures) completed questionnaires assessing attachment dimensions (anxiety and avoidance) and CSWs (physical appearance, others’ approval, outdoing others in competition, academic competence, support from family and friends, and virtue). Collectivists were more likely than individualists to report both attachment anxiety and avoidance, and anxiety and avoidance were both related to basing self-esteem on appearance and social support. Anxiety was also related to the CSWs of competition and others’ approval, and avoidance to academic competence and virtue. However, the relationship between anxiety and appearance CSW, and that between avoidance and support CSW, were stronger among collectivists than among individualists. Findings were discussed in terms of cross-cultural differences in self-construal and cultural norms in harmony and social support. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Recently, Crocker and Wolfe (2001) introduced the concept of contingencies of self-worth (CSWs) to represent the areas in which the individual base their self-worth and consequently monitor their performance and strive to excel in order to regulate their sense of self-worth. They have identified seven CSWs among college students, namely others’ approval, appearance, family support, academic competence, virtue, competition, and God’s love (Crocker, Luhtanen, Cooper, & Bouvrette, 2003). Crocker and Wolfe (2001) explained that one’s sense of self-worth depends not only on perceived successes or failures in the CSWs, but also on the adherence to one’s standards for the CSWs, such as adherence to one’s moral standards for the virtue CSW. Although one’s CSWs are relatively stable over time (Park, Crocker, & Mickelson, 2004), they are subject to revision when demands of the environment or one’s abilities change; for example, when individuals who base self-esteem on academic competence face repeated disappointments in academic performance, they might substitute academic CSW with another CSW that will inevitably become more salient and achievable, and result in continued maintenance of one’s global self-esteem. It has been argued that the CSWs are partly determined by the responsiveness of the caregiving environment to the individual’s need for security (Park et al., 2004). This history of caregiver * Corresponding author. Tel.: +852 2788 8745. E-mail address: [email protected] (S.-T. Cheng). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2008.06.003
responsiveness leads to attachment styles that can be broadly represented along two orthogonal dimensions, namely anxiety and avoidance (Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998; Gillath, Bunge, Shaver, Wendelken, & Mikulincer, 2005; Mikulincer, Shaver, Gillath, & Nitzberg, 2005). People with attachment anxiety have developed a positive model of other and a negative model of self due to the inconsistent care provided by their caretakers when they were young. These individuals have an excessive fear of rejection and need approval from others. Conversely, those who have a positive model of self, but negative model of other develop attachment avoidance as a result of unresponsive caretakers. They fear intimacy and have an excessive need for independence. One may achieve a sense of security by using specific strategies according to his attachment history (e.g., by becoming self-reliant for avoidant individuals), which in turn have the effect of affirming one’s beliefs and feelings about the self. In other words, self-esteem and attachment style are interrelated in the sense that they both regulate the person’s sense of security. Hence, those who have developed attachment anxiety are likely to have low self-esteem as well as base their self-esteem on others’ approval; whereas those with attachment avoidance tend to base their self-esteem on personal competence and less on receiving social support. Indeed, a recent study indicates that CSWs vary according to individuals’ attachment style (Park et al., 2004). In this study, participants rated themselves along four attachment styles as well as the degree to which the seven CSWs were true to them. In a series of hierarchical regression analyses, the authors showed that those with a secure attachment style (low in anxiety and avoidance)
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were found to base their self-esteem more on family support; those with a preoccupied (high in anxiety and low in avoidance) or fearful (high in both anxiety and avoidance) attachment style, however, based their self-esteem on physical appearance; whereas those with a dismissing attachment style (low in anxiety but high in avoidance) depended less on approval from others, family support and God’s love for self-esteem. In this study, we are interested in examining the associations between CSWs and the attachment dimensions of anxiety and avoidance, and how these vary across cultures. 1.1. The moderating role of culture We believe that culture sensitizes individuals to using or foregoing certain CSWs in regulating their sense of security and, as such, moderates the relationship between CSW and attachment. Cross-cultural research suggests that people from individualistic cultures tend to perceive their selves as distinct from each other, whereas those in collectivistic cultures have selves that are seemingly interconnected and interdependent with one another (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Moreover, collectivists are concerned with fitting in the social group and maintaining social harmony (Kim & Markus, 1999). The expression of social disapproval is highly controlled and discouraged in collectivistic cultures due to its potential disruptive effect on social harmony, whereas its expression in individualistic cultures is commonplace and carries little or no penalties. This suggests that when social disapproval occurs, it has a stronger effect on collectivists than on individualists. Such cultural phenomena might explain why Asians or Asian– Americans report higher attachment anxiety than Westerners (Wei, Russell, Mallinckrodt, & Zakalik, 2004). The need for social approval in the former accentuates a negative model of self and a positive model of other, and consequently leads to higher attachment anxiety in Asians than in Westerners. It is therefore reasonable to assume that others’ approval as a CSW would have a stronger association with attachment anxiety in collectivistic than in individualistic cultures. Asians do not just report higher attachment anxiety, but also higher avoidance, compared with Westerners (Wei et al., 2004). This finding, which could not be explained by nonequivalence in cross-cultural measurement (Wei et al., 2004), was more difficult to understand. Wang and Mallinckrodt (2006) discussed this in terms of the behavioral norm against emotional disclosure in Asian cultures. For example, for collectivists, the ideal interpersonal style is one that holds a consistent external display without revealing inner emotions; conversely, Americans freely share their emotions with others (Tsai & Levenson, 1997). This may in part explain the seemingly divergent trends of attachment between these cultures. We also believe that the notion of CSW might help explain this apparently puzzling phenomenon. CSWs are essentially costs that one is prepared to pay in pursuing a sense of self-worth (Crocker & Park, 2004). As mentioned earlier, attachment avoidance should be negatively related to basing self-esteem on social support. At the same time, it has been argued that the norms of reciprocity and social harmony render support-seeking for personal needs a more costly behavior in collectivistic cultures (Taylor et al., 2004). It follows then that those who base their self-esteem on support from others would have to accept higher social costs in a collectivistic culture. Such costs, we believe, have substantial implications for avoidant individuals. Avoidant individuals have come to learn that their attachment figures are unresponsive to their needs and thus, they regulate their sense of security by avoiding intimacy. The optimal distance from their attachment figures would vary across cultures, being wider in collectivistic ones, due to the perceived costs of being close. It is therefore not surprising that collectivists score higher on the avoidance dimension than
their individualistic counterparts. It is conceivable that collectivists would be more sensitive than individualists to the interpersonal costs involved in basing their self-esteem on social support. As a result, we also expect that the negative relationship between attachment avoidance and support CSW would be stronger in collectivists than in individualists. In other words, given the same level of avoidance, collectivists would be less prepared to endorse social support as a CSW than individualists. In addition, research has shown that appearance CSW, or personal investment in body appearance, is associated with attachment anxiety (Cash, Thériault, & Annis, 2004; Park et al., 2004). We further explore whether cultures differ in the way appearance CSW relates to attachment anxiety. In the context of the prominence attached to physical appearance in the globalized world (Wardle, Haase, & Steptoe, 2006), which plays such an important role in social acceptance and popularity, we postulated that appearance CSW would be more strongly related to attachment anxiety in collectivists than in individualists. Compared with individualists with attachment anxiety (i.e., a positive model of other and a negative model of self), collectivists with attachment anxiety are more likely to endorse appearance CSW because of their sensitivity to interpersonal feedback on their appearance as a way of gauging their social acceptance and popularity. 1.2. The present study This study examines if culture moderates the relationship between CSWs and attachment anxiety and avoidance. The CSWs identified by Crocker et al. (2003) were used in this study, with the exception of the God’s love contingency, as the Chinese/Hong Kong culture does not emphasize spirituality. (For instance, in a survey involving 18 nations around the world, 77.1% of the Chinese said they were not at all or slightly religious, the highest percentage of all nations; Saxena, 2006.) We expected that attachment anxiety would be positively related to the CSWs of others’ approval and appearance, and that attachment avoidance would be negatively related to the CSW of support from family and friends. We also expected that these effects would be stronger in persons with a weaker individualistic orientation. 2. Method 2.1. Participants and procedure One hundred and fifty-four college students ranging in age from 19 to 30 (M = 21.8, SD = 1.99) were recruited on a convenience basis from three universities in Hong Kong to fill out a questionnaire individually containing demographic, geographic, and personal relationships information. The sample was gender-balanced (50.7% men) with slightly more Asians (55.4%) than Caucasians (43.2%) and other ethnic groups (1.4%). All except one Asian participant were Hong Kong Chinese. Other participants were international students from the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and various Western and Eastern European countries. One hundred and twenty-three (84.2%) of the participants had experienced romantic relationships. 2.2. Measures The equivalence of instruments in different cultural and linguistic contexts is critical for the validity of cross-cultural comparative research (Punnett & Shenkar, 1996; van de Vijver & Leung, 1997). In the current study, the techniques of back-translation (Werner & Campbell, 1973) and bilingual checking (Punnett & Shenkar, 1996) were used for each instrument to fulfill this methodological requirement. The imported instruments were translated into Chi-
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nese by the first author and then back-translated independently into English by a bilingual helper. The original and back-translated versions were compared. After carefully evaluating the connotative and semantic aspects of the differences identified, isolated minor adjustments were made. 2.2.1. Background information All participants were instructed to indicate their age, gender, year of study, major subject, place of birth, nationality, ethnic background, religion, places in which they had lived throughout their lives, and whether they have been in a romantic relationship or not.
ticipants recruited, 146 met this criterion. Four persons who had lived in several different countries since childhood, without a clearly dominant country of origin, were dropped from the study. Four others who had spent at least 50% of their lives in a single country were also included, by assigning them a score calculated on a prorated basis (e.g., for one who had spent 50% of the time in country A and 16.7% of time in country B, score = country A individualism .50 + country B individualism .17). The average percentage of time participants spent in the primary country was 98.10 (SD = 8.32, range = 50–100). 3. Results
2.2.2. Attachment The anxiety and the avoidance attachment dimensions were measured with a brief version of the experiences in close relationships scale (ECR; Brennan et al., 1998). The terms ‘‘my partner” or ‘‘my romantic partner” were changed to ‘‘close others” in the ECR since a significant proportion of the participants indicated they have never experienced any romantic relationships. The brief ECR contains eight items for each attachment dimension, using a seven-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Participants indicate how well statements describe their feelings. Internal consistency was acceptable with alpha coefficients of .66 and .77 for attachment avoidance and anxiety respectively. 2.2.3. Contingencies of self-worth With the exception of the God’s love subscale, the contingencies of self-worth scale (Crocker et al., 2003) was back-translated into Chinese, with five items measuring each of the remaining six subscales. Originally one of the subscales focused on family support CSW (Crocker et al., 2003), but was recently expanded to include support from family and friends in a Japanese version of the CSW scale (Jennifer Crocker, personal communication, Jan 13, 2006; Uchida, 2007). In the present sample, alpha coefficients equaled .75 for physical appearance, .77 for support from family and friends, .80 for outdoing others in competition, .83 for academic competence, .83 for virtue, and .80 for approval from others. 2.2.4. Individualism–collectivism Hofstede’s (2001) ranking of countries scale was used with higher scores indicating stronger individualistic orientation. Participants were asked to state their place of birth and their nationality. In addition, they were asked to indicate where they have lived throughout different periods of their lives up to the moment of completing the questionnaire. Participants were assigned a score of individualism on the basis of the single country in which they had spent at least two-thirds (66.7%) of their lives. Of the 154 par-
3.1. Intercorrelations Product–moment correlations among individualism, attachment and CSWs are shown in Table 1. Individualism was negatively associated with the anxiety and avoidance dimensions. These findings are in line with previous studies suggesting that Asians are higher in attachment anxiety and avoidance, compared with Westerners (see Wei et al., 2004). Moreover, individualism was also positively correlated with appearance, support from family/friends, and virtue CSWs, but these correlations were mild. 3.2. Attachment anxiety and CSWs: moderation by culture To determine whether culture moderated the relationship between attachment anxiety and appearance, we regressed attachment anxiety on, in order of entry, (a) individualism and the six CSWs, and (b) the product terms of individualism others’ approval CSW and individualism x appearance CSW. To minimize collinearity issues, product terms were created from standardized scores of the constituent variables (Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken, 2003). As can be seen in Table 2, 35% of the variance in attachment anxiety could be explained by individualism and the CSWs. As expected, individualism was negatively related, while appearance and others’ approval CSWs were positively related, to anxiety. Virtue, which showed no correlation with anxiety at the bivariate level, was also positively related to anxiety after the effects of the other predictors were taken into account. An additional 2% of the variance in anxiety was explained by the two interaction terms, but only the interaction between appearance CSW and individualism was significant. As expected, the nature of the interaction effect, as plotted in Fig. 1, shows that whereas there was no relationship between appearance and anxiety for those high in individualism, the relationship became strongly positive for those low in individualism. Thus, whereas collectivists had higher
Table 1 Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations Variables 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Individualism Anxiety Avoidance Appearance Support from family and friends Competition Academic competence Virtue Others’ approval
M SD *
p < .05. p < .01. *** p < .001. **
1
2 .37*** .14* .17* .16* .06 .09 .23** .12
47.45 27.18
3
.16* .20** .15* .14* .07 .06 .37*** 3.54 0.87
4
.20** .37*** .05 .15* .14* .01 3.14 0.89
.38*** .31*** .42*** .12 .40*** 4.73 0.92
5
.39*** .41*** .36*** .27*** 5.27 0.88
6
.54*** .23*** .19*** 5.08 0.82
7
8
.41*** .30*** 4.87 1.02
9
.11 4.78 1.06
3.93 1.13
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attachment anxiety than individualists, such differences were more pronounced in those who based their self-esteem on appearance.
3.2 Individualism = -1 SD Individualism = mean Individualism = +1 SD
3
3.3. Attachment avoidance and CSWs: moderation by culture
2.6
2.4
2.2
2 -1SD
mean
+1SD
Support from family and friends Fig. 2. Attachment avoidance as a function of support from family and friends as a CSW, with individualism at 1 SD, mean and +1 SD, controlling for the following CSWs: appearance, competition, academic competence, virtue, and others’ approval.
Individualism = -1 SD Individualism = mean Individualism = +1 SD
2.8
4. Discussion
2.6
2.4
Anxiety
2.8
Avoidance
The same regression was repeated for attachment avoidance as the dependent variable, but the interaction term entered at Step 2 was individualism support CSW (Table 2). As much as 46% of the variance in attachment avoidance could be explained by two CSWs – support from family and friends, and others’ approval, the former being a much stronger predictor. Avoidance was negatively related to support, but positively related to others’ approval. The interaction of support and individualism explained another 4% of the variance. This interaction effect is graphically displayed in Fig. 2, showing that whereas support was negatively related to avoidance, regardless of the level of individualism, the relationship was stronger for those low than for those high in individualism. This suggested that avoidant collectivists were less likely to base their self-esteem on social support than their individualistic counterparts.
2.2
2
1.8
1.6 -1SD
mean
+1SD
Appearance Fig. 1. Attachment anxiety as a function of appearance as a CSW, with individualism at 1 SD, mean and +1 SD, controlling for the following CSWs: support, competition, academic competence, virtue, and others’ approval.
Table 2 Hierarchical regression of anxious and avoidant attachment on contingencies of selfworth Anxiety
Individualism Appearance Support from family and friends Competition Academic competence Virtue Others’ approval Individualism appearance Individualism others’ approval Individualism support R2
Avoidance
Step 1
Step 2
Step 1
Step 2
.47** .15* .08 .00 .14 .14* .38**
.45** .13 .07 .00 .12 .14* .39** .15* .06
.03 .15 .39** .13 .03 .02 .16*
.04 .11 .48** .15 .04 .03 .18*
.37
.42
– –
– .35
.19* .46
Note. Figures shown were standardized regression coefficients. R2 underscored means significant change from the previous step. – = irrelevant for the model. * p < .05. ** p < .001.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study investigating how culture moderates the relationships between attachment dimensions and CSWs. Importantly, not only did we replicate known relationships between attachment dimensions and CSWs, but we also found that such relationships vary by culture. Our findings suggest that individualism was negatively associated with attachment anxiety. According to Markus and Kitayama (1991), individualists emphasize their uniqueness from others, whereas collectivists tend to see themselves as part of a social group. For individualists, their self-concept is valued on the basis of the degree to which they are independent, whereas for collectivists, it is their connectedness to others that provides import for their sense of self. As a result, attachment anxiety, which effectively means the reliance on others to fulfill one’s security needs, is lower among individualists than among collectivists. In other words, collectivists define themselves in terms that must include others, and therefore accentuate model of other as compared to model of self. As such, this dependence on a benevolent other to regulate security needs may give rise to attachment anxiety. Against this background, it should not be difficult to understand why the relationship between appearance CSW and attachment anxiety was moderated by individualism. Results of this study supported the prediction that the more individuals base their self-esteem on physical appearance, the more attachment anxiety they will experience, and that this relationship is stronger among those who are low in individualism. Collectivists, by virtue of their stronger reliance on others for the regulation of security, appear to be more concerned with the way they could use their appearance to improve social relations for the fulfillment of security needs. The findings suggest that basing self-esteem on approval from others significantly predicts attachment anxiety. This is consistent with the finding of Park et al. (2004) that preoccupied individuals (high anxiety) rely on social approval to validate self-worth. However, no moderation effect of culture was found on the relationship between approval and anxiety, indicating that individuals were equally likely to base their self-esteem on others’ approval when they have attachment anxiety, regardless of their cultural origin. Correlational analysis also showed that others’ approval CSW
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was not related to the degree of individualism, suggesting that those low in individualism are not more likely to base their self-esteem on others’ approval. These findings were counter-intuitive. Because this is the first study on individualism and CSWs, there are no data available for comparison. More research is necessary to see if these null findings are replicated in other samples. One possible reason may have to do with the characteristics of the present sample, which were purely college students. They might be developmentally disposed to value others’ opinion and approval highly, regardless of culture. If this is the case, the moderation effect of culture as well as the zero-order relationship between individualism and approval CSW should surface in an adult sample that is older than the present one. This can only be tested in future research. Furthermore, results showed that individualism was negatively related to attachment avoidance, thus replicating recent studies on cross-cultural differences in attachment avoidance (Wei et al., 2004). This finding can be explained in terms of cultural differences in intimate behaviors. For example, because collectivists are more concerned with fitting in and maintaining social harmony than with self-disclosure, they are more comfortable with less affectionate and frequent interactions than intense and intimate relationships; thus they are more likely to adopt an avoidant orientation in the way they relate to others (You & Malley-Morrison, 2000). According to Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton (1985), for individualists, romantic love provides new opportunities for self-exploration, sharing, and revealing. In contrast, for the collectivist, the closest bond is with one’s family, even after marriage (Hsu, 1981). In short, compared with collectivists, individualists place more emphasis on intimacy (Goodwin, 1995). Regardless of cultural orientation, basing self-esteem on social support was strongly and negatively related to attachment avoidance. However, as expected, this relationship was somewhat stronger in collectivistic than in individualistic cultures. It has been argued that seeking social support is a more costly behavior in collectivistic than in individualistic societies because imposing one’s needs on others may disrupt social harmony and obligates one to reciprocate support in ways that might strain one’s resources. We believe that avoidant individuals would behave differently in collectivistic than in individualistic cultures because of their fundamental orientation toward seeking support from others. Avoidant individuals are less likely to rely on intimacy and social support to regulate their sense of security. Because of differences in cultural norms regarding intimacy (Wang & Mallinckrodt, 2006), avoidant collectivists are therefore even less likely to base their self-esteem on social support than their individualistic counterparts. We did not find strong associations between CSWs and culture, and where there was an association, it was positively associated with individualism. As compared with collectivists, individualists were more likely to endorse appearance, social support, and virtue as CSWs. Such trends were small. On the whole, culture does not seem to have much association with CSWs. It should be cautioned, however, that these findings were based on a heterogeneous group of individualists (international students) and a homogeneous group of moderate collectivists (Hong Kong students). One limitation of this study is that the self-construal of participants was not directly measured, and participants’ levels of individualism were assessed according to the national group to which they belong. The inclusion of a measure to assess directly self-construal at the individual level would provide more definitive conclusions about the interconnections among culture, attachment and CSWs. Despite this limitation, the study extends the literature by examining how culture determines the way CSWs relate to attachment styles. We replicated previous studies suggesting that collectivists score higher than individualists on both attachment
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anxiety and avoidance, and that such attachment dimensions are related to CSWs. We further demonstrated that whereas attachment anxiety is related to basing self-esteem on appearance, this is not true for those with a strong individualistic orientation who may not see others’ reactions to their appearance as a basis for attachment. And whereas attachment avoidance is negatively related to basing self-esteem on social support, this is more so for the collectivists who see excessive use of social support as a deterrent to forming intimate attachments.
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