Culture, Self-Construal, and Regulatory Focus: How and What to Promote or Prevent?

Perceptual Broadening Leads to More Prosociality

A link between perceptual processing styles and (pro)social behavior has gathered supporting empirical evidence to show that people raised or trained in traditions of collectiveness, compassion, and prosocial beliefs are biased to the global level in perceptual processing. In this research, we studied the reciprocal link - whether contextually broadening perceptual scope of attention via global processing could make people more prosocial. We hypothesized that global processing linked previously to an interdependent compassionate self-orientation would make people more prosocial, compared to local processing. Four experiments manipulated perceptual scope through a Global-Local task using hierarchical stimuli. It was found that participants who performed a global processing perceptual task volunteered to donate more money across different donation frames, compared to those who performed a local processing task. While previous research showed prosocial mindsets lead to perceptual broadening, the current results suggest that perceptual broadening also leads to more prosociality, thus establishing a reciprocal link between perceptual broadening (attentional scope), and acting prosocially. It is proposed that perceptual scope of attention is one of the generic cognitive processes that underlie prosocial decisions. Explanations based on scope of attention can potentially be used as a framework that enables researchers to link the effects of different contextual cues on prosocial decisions.

You Are Not Alone: Relatedness Reduces Adverse Effects of State Orientation on Well-Being Under Stress

A low ability to self-regulate emotions (state orientation) is associated with reduced well-being—especially under stress. Until now, research has approached this topic from an asocial perspective that views the self as devoid from relatedness concerns. However, people are social creatures who benefit from their relationships with others. As such, we expected that personally valuing (Study 1) and experimentally priming (Study 2) a sense of relatedness with others would act as a buffer against stress-related impairments in state-oriented individuals. In Study 1, high (vs. low) benevolence values removed the adverse effect of state orientation on well-being found under stressful life circumstances. In Study 2, focusing on similarities (vs. differences) while comparing oneself with a friend removed the adverse effect of state orientation on recovery from a negative mood induction. Our findings suggest that individuals with low self-regulatory competencies may profit from valuing and directing their attention toward their relatedness with others.