Abstract
Early work by Hofstede (Behavior Science Research, 18 (4), 285–305, 1983) described Costa Rica as among the most culturally collective of 52 countries studied. Later work described the people of Costa Rica as low in group orientation, an outlier compared to other Latin American populations (Oyserman et al. Psychological Bulletin, 128(1), 3–72, 2002). To examine this inconsistency, the current study assessed 69 Costa Rican university students’ responses on two well-known explicit attitude measures and one scenario measure of implicit tendencies (Kitayama et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(2), 236–255, 2009) related to group orientation. Responses were compared to those of North American participants who were of European (40) and African (60) heritage. Reliability estimates varied among the measures and in the sample groups. Costa Ricans did not differ from U.S. participants in interdependent but scored higher than both US groups in independent self-construal. Their communalism scores were lower. On the measure of implicit tendencies, however, they rated themselves more similar to communal than individualistic and competitive peers, and less similar to the individualistic peer than did either group of U.S. participants. These findings complicate the question of whether Costa Rican group orientation is at odds with other Latin American populations and raise important general questions about cross group measurement of culture.
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Data Availability
The data generated and analyzed for this report are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Notes
Historians document the first wave of mestizaje to have occurred 1777 and 1778, when Costa Rica’s ethnic composition was documented as 60% mestizo, between 18% black and mulatto, 12% Indian, and 10% Hispanic (Pérez 1997). The second wave of mestizaje occurred during the late 17th and 18th centuries as more Africans were brought from countries including Congo, Angola, Nigeria, Benin, and Ghana to present day Costa Rica (Marín González 2001). In 1867 there was also a large migration of Afro-Jamaicans to Costa Rica, even before the large wave of immigration of Europeans in the twentieth century (Rosabal-Coto 2008). Despite the history, at present, the Costa Rican census reports population percentages of 84% White/Mestizo, 6.7% Mulato, 2.4% Indigenous, 1.1% African descent and other ethnic groups (Central Intelligence Agency 2011).
Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in this study and all procedures were approved by the IRB of the corresponding author.
Power analysis using the G*power program (Faul et al. 2007) indicated that a total sample of 111 people would be needed to detect effects as small as (d = .20) with Power (1-ß err prob) = .95, using repeated measures ANOVA with alpha set at .05.
All three of our sample groups achieved interdependence subscale scores that were nearly identical to the highest interdependence sub-scale means (Asian Americans) reported by the scale’s authors (Singelis, et al., 1994). However, means for our Costa Rican participants were nearly half a standard deviation higher than the highest independence sub-scale means reported in that work (Caucasian Americans). A simple ratio conversion was used to account for scaling differences across studies, however for these archival comparisons, we did not account for differences between to forced choice vs. the availability of a neutral selection option.
Means were adjusted for this comparison via a simple ratio calculation to account for different scaling employed in the studies.
As evidenced by achieving a place in Euro western style higher education, whose modus operandi (and admissions criteria) tends to privilege those things (Hurley and Hurley 2011).
Anecdotally, the authors have observed this among some of their immigrant students, who arrive believing they are practically “American” but after some time among Americans realize how much their home culture informs their positioning on these and other dimesons of culture.
Researcher are still free to quibble over whether and to what degree the described behaviors do constitute communalism, but respondents’ status relative to those behaviors at least, will be unambiguous.
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Hurley, E.A., Salvador, C.E. & English, K.A. Self-construal and communalism in Costa Rica: Subjective attitudes vs. implicit behavioral tendencies. Curr Psychol 40, 1711–1719 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-0096-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-0096-0