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Acting in our interests: Relational self-construal and goal motivation across cultures

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Abstract

Relationally-autonomous reasons (RARs) are motives for behavior that take into account one’s close relationships. A cross-cultural model tested the hypotheses that (a) people with a highly relational self-construal will pursue their goals for RARs, and (b) RARs will predict positive goal outcomes after controlling for variance explained by personally-autonomous reasons (PARs) and social support. One hundred seventy Americans and 219 Japanese completed a well-being and self questionnaire then generated and rated seven goals on several attributes. Results showed that relational self-construal was associated with RARs for goals. RARs predicted effort directly and predicted progress and purpose in life indirectly for both groups. In addition, Americans and Japanese differed in the types of goals they pursued and the degree to which social support predicted effort. Implications for self, culture, and motivation research are discussed.

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Notes

  1. In both of Gore and Cross’ (2006) studies, the RISC scale scores were positively correlated with scores from the relationally-autonomous subscale of the RAR index (r = .28, p < .01 in Study 1, r = .20, p < .01 in Study 2) and unrelated to the relationally-controlled subscale scores (r = −.05, n.s. in Study 1, r = .09, n.s. in Study 2).

  2. Refer to Gore and Cross (2006) for the psychometric properties of these measures.

  3. When multiple items are used to measure a variable, as is the case here, the mean of several items are used as a parcel. To create the parcels for this study, all items for a measure were included in a confirmatory factor analysis, extracting one factor, which provided each item’s factor loading onto the single factor. Three parcels for each latent variable were then created by assigning each parcel an equal number of items with high loadings and items with low loadings (see Russell et al. 1998 for this procedure). The mean of the items were then calculated for each parcel; these means were then loaded onto the latent variables.

  4. It should be noted that Sheldon and his colleagues usually focus on progress and goal attainment rather than on perceived effort in their studies (e.g., Sheldon and Elliot 1998; Sheldon and Hauser-Marko 2001; Sheldon and Kasser 1998). The results of a recent study (Gore 2008), however, has shown that RARs positively predict the number of goals attained after 4 weeks, controlling for PARs, and this association was magnified among people whose self-construals were highly relational and interdependent.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY, USA

    Jonathan S. Gore

  2. Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA

    Susan E. Cross

  3. Koshien University, Takarazuka, Hyogo, Japan

    Chie Kanagawa

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  1. Jonathan S. Gore
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  2. Susan E. Cross
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  3. Chie Kanagawa
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Correspondence to Jonathan S. Gore.

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Gore, J.S., Cross, S.E. & Kanagawa, C. Acting in our interests: Relational self-construal and goal motivation across cultures. Motiv Emot 33, 75–87 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-008-9113-1

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