Individual differences in the motivation to comply across cultures: the impact of social obligation

This study investigated the hypothesis that similar behavior in different cultures may mask individual differences in the reasons for that behavior. Most previous research on culture and behavior has examined culture-based differences in overt behavior. In contrast, the present research focused on cultural variation in reasons for identical behavior (that is, individual differences in motivation), rather than cultural variation in behavior itself. Specifically, we investigated the impact of personal individual–collective primacy, personal individualism–collectivism, and nationality on social obligation-based compliance in Poland and the United States. We found that, in both nations, collectivists were more likely to be motivated to comply with the same request for other-oriented rather than self-oriented reasons and that collective-primacy persons reported a greater tendency to comply with a request to help a stranger for reasons of social obligation to their group than did individual-primacy persons. Our research (1) indicates that individual differences in motivation may underlie similar behavior in different cultures; (2) points to an important new direction for research into individual differences across cultures; and (3) demonstrates the value of circumscribed measures of cultural orientation in the prediction of behavior above and beyond a global measure.