Markus Kemmelmeier

Rethinking Individualism and Collectivism: Evaluation of Theoretical Assumptions and Meta-Analyses

Are Americans more individualistic and less collectivistic than members of other groups? The authors summarize plausible psychological implications of individualism-collectivism (IND-COL), meta-analyze cross-national and within-United States IND-COL differences, and review evidence for effects of IND-COL on self-concept, well-being, cognition, and relationality. European Americans were found to be both more individualistic-valuing personal independence more-and less collectivistic-feeling duty to in-groups less-than others. However, European Americans were not more individualistic than African Americans, or Latinos, and not less collectivistic than Japanese or Koreans. Among Asians, only Chinese showed large effects, being both less individualistic and more collectivistic. Moderate IND-COL effects were found on self-concept and relationality, and large effects were found on attribution and cognitive style.

Cultural Orientations in the United States (Re)Examining Differences among Ethnic Groups

The authors investigate differences in individualism and collectivism between the four largest ethnic groups in the United States (African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and European Americans). It has been asserted that U.S. minorities score higher in collectivism compared to European Americans, whereas European Americans score higher in individualism than minorities. The authors reexamined these assumptions using meta-analytic techniques with new data (total N = 1,510). Asian Americans and African Americans but not Latinos scored higher in collectivism than did European Americans. African Americans exhibited the highest levels of individualism. The authors discuss the cultural, historical, and social factors that should be taken into account to adequately characterize cultural orientation of socially constructed groups.

Long-Term Psychological Consequences in Women of Witnessing Parental Physical Conflict and Experiencing Abuse in Childhood

Exposure to parental domestic violence in childhood is associated with long-term psychological maladjustment. Although previous studies controlled for childhood physical abuse, it is unclear how the coexisting risk factors of sexual abuse and parental substance use contribute to psychopathology. Questionnaires assessing childhood risk factors and current symptoms were completed by 131 college women. We compared a nonwitness control group with two groups exposed to moderate or to severe marital violence. Witnesses of marital violence experienced more sexual and physical abuse and more parental substance use in childhood than did nonwitnesses and there was more violence in their own dating relationships, even after controlling for other risk factors. Depression, trauma symptoms, antisocial behaviors, and suicidal behaviors were related to childhood experiences of sexual and physical abuse. The need for future research to examine multiple childhood stressors simultaneously is discussed.

Child Sexual Abuse, Peer Sexual Abuse, and Sexual Assault in Adulthood: A Multi-Risk Model of Revictimization

This study explored the predictors and consequences of sexual assault occurring after the age of 16 years in a nonclinical sample of women. Child sexual abuse occurring before the age of 16 years was the only predictor of later sexual assault among comorbid risk factors. Peer sexual abuse, number of perpetrators, age at time of sexual abuse, and severity of sexual abuse did not increase the risk for later sexual assault. Adult sexual assault victims showed lower levels of mental health functioning than did survivors of child or peer sexual abuse. We discuss a specificity model of revictimization and the differential effects of child, peer, and adult sexual trauma on the developmental trajectory of sexual violence and psychosocial functioning.

Gendered Influence of Downward Social Comparisons on Current and Possible Selves

Because men and women differ with regard to independent and interdependent self-construals, we propose that downward comparisons are more likely to lower women’s achievement-related self-evaluations compared to men’s. We also hypothesize that gendered self-schemas provide men with advantages in the processing of self-related dispositional information and women with advantages in the processing of self-related social-contextual information. To the extent that a downward social comparison presents a potential threat to the self, men and women differ in how effectively they can fend off the implications of different types of comparisons. Results from three experiments (total N = 393) support these hypotheses, suggesting that gendered responses to downward comparison are at least in part driven by a culturally normative focus on dispositional information prevalent in the West.

Explaining Asymmetric Intergroup Judgments through Differential Aggregation: Computer Simulations and Some New Evidence

Outgroups are often judged to be less differentiated, more homogeneous, and more polarized than ingroups. Theoretical accounts of this outgroup homogeneity effect (OHE) emphasize impoverished knowledge of outgroups, qualitatively different memory representations, or the motivational impact of group membership. A parsimonious explanation for all these findings is proposed, based on the assumption that most operational variants of the OHE can be understood as a result of differential aggregation from unequal stimulus samples. Given that (a) ingroup–related samples are typically larger and richer than outgroup–related samples, and (b) perception in the social domain rests on multiple probabilistic cues, latent information can be extracted more efficiently for ingroups than outgroups. The processes through which differential aggregation in a noisy environment produces different measures of the OHE, the so-called outgroup co-variation effect, outgroup polarization, and other paradigmatic findings, are explicat...

Parental Sociopathy as a Predictor of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Research on childhood sexual abuse has often examined, in isolation of one another, such highly correlated risk factors as parental substance abuse, domestic violence, and pathological family functioning. Investigating comorbid antecedents separately does not allow accurate specification of the predictors of abuse. Moreover, sexual trauma research has tended to neglect parental sociopathy as a risk factor. Given the limitations of past research, the present study examined the relationships among parental sociopathy, parental substance use, marital violence, poor family functioning, and childhood sexual abuse. We administered a battery of questionnaires to a nonclinical sample of 130 college women and replicated previous findings by showing that parental substance use predicted sexual abuse when examined in isolation. However, when parental sociopathy and the other risk factors were included in a regression model, parental sociopathy was the only significant predictor. Mothers and fathers sociopathy predicted sexual abuse independently and when combined.

Private self-consciousness as a moderator of the relationship between value orientations and attitudes.

Abstract The author examined implications of private self-consciousness (PrivSC; Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975) for the relationships between social values and issue attitudes. Indeed, the author expected that the value orientations of authoritarianism and individualism would shape attitudes toward physician-assisted suicide. Values and attitudes were consistent in the high-PrivSC participants, who tended to be more aware of different beliefs held simultaneously than were the low-PrivSC participants. However, for the low-PrivSC individuals, there was no relationship between values and attitudes. The results of 2 studies among U.S. undergraduate students confirmed these predictions.