Cultural Values Predict Coping Using Culture as an Individual Difference Variable in Multicultural Samples

Three studies establish the relations between cultural values and coping using multicultural samples of international students. Study 1 established the cross-cultural measurement invariance of subscales of the Cope inventory (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989) used in the paper. The cultural value dimensions of embeddedness vs. autonomy and hierarchy vs. egalitarianism predicted how international students from 28 (Study 2) and 38 (Study 3) countries coped with adapting to living in a new country. Cultural values predicted coping by religion, and this relation was only partly mediated by personally valuing tradition, cultural norms, and perceived difficulty of adapting. Cultural values predicted emotionfocused/avoidant coping beyond neuroticism, and seeking social support beyond extraversion. Mediators to the relations between cultural values and these coping strategies were also found. The results demonstrate the power of cultural values to predict coping, and bring to the forefront the use of multicultural samples as an important method in crosscultural research. Cultural Values and Coping 3 Can cultural dimensions account for differences in coping strategies? Many papers in applied journals have examined cross-cultural differences in coping, attesting to the practical importance of this issue to practitioners. Yet, these papers have typically not attempted to approach this issue on a theoretical basis. Furthermore, most papers have either used participants from two countries or from a few sub-cultures within the United States (e.g., Connell & Gibson, 1997; Taylor et al., 2004). Hence, it is not clear yet whether their findings can be generalized beyond the few cultures and sub-cultures examined. To establish the generality of theoretically-based questions a broader array of cultures is needed using cultural dimensions on which cultures could be positioned (see also Glazer, 2006). Our paper aims to start closing this gap using an efficient method for cross-cultural research. Specifically, samples with participants from many cultures enable the use of culture as an individual-difference variable. This paper uses basic cultural dimensions to form theoretically-based hypotheses relating cultural values to coping. First, Study 1 combines data from Studies 2 and 3 to test the cross-cultural invariance of the Cope inventory (Carver et. al, 1989). Then, Study 2 examines the basic relations between cultural values and coping. It also examines whether cultural values predict coping beyond personality traits and personal values, as well as the role of personal values as mediators to the relations between cultural values and coping. Study 3 provides a replication for Study 2 and examines additional mediators to the relations between cultural values and coping. We examine the relations of cultural values to coping in the context of sojourners while adapting to living in a new country. Sojourners are people who move to another country temporarily to engage in a concrete task, with the intention of returning to their original country upon completion of the task (see review in Bochner, 2006). According to Bochner, international students form one of the most prominent groups of sojourners, thus it is Cultural Values and Coping 4 important to examine cross-cultural differences in their coping strategies with adapting to living in a new country. The process of acculturation, which occurs in any relocation to a new country (see Sam, 2006), entails difficulties that require the use of coping strategies (e.g., Berry, 2006b). As Bochner (2006) concludes from reviewing the literature, the extent of these difficulties vary across international students from mild difficulties that require minimal adjustment, through to greater difficulties perceived as controllable resulting with the feeling of acculturative stress (reviewed in Berry, 2006b), and up to extreme levels of stress, termed culture shock (see, e.g., Berry, 2006b; Bochner, 2006). This range of levels of perceived difficulties probably results with ample variance in the extent of using different coping strategies, thereby facilitating the examination of cross-cultural differences in coping. Culture may affect coping in multiple ways (see also Glazer, 2006). As culture affects norms (e.g., Schwartz, 2004), it may affect coping behavior through norms (see also Glazer, 2006; Taylor et. al, 2004). Norms may define legitimate and encouraged ways of coping as well as illegitimate and discouraged ones. For example, in religious cultures, coping by praying may be legitimate and even encouraged. In contrast, in secular cultures, coping by praying may be legitimate only in certain situations, in which there are no active ways to solve the problem (e.g., coping with the death of a loved one). Throughout socialization, individuals learn the coping strategies that are legitimate and encouraged in their culture (Oláh, 1995). Similarly to norms, it has also been suggested that culture influences behavior through internalized cultural values (e.g., Matsumoto, Yoo, & Nakagawa, 2008). Hence, culture may also affect coping responses through personal values. Finally, culture may have an effect on the perceived difficulty of a situation which in turn may influence coping with this situation (see also Glazer, 2006). Specifically, in cultures in which life is relatively more predictable, an unfamiliar life situation (such as moving to a new Cultural Values and Coping 5 country) may be more difficult, thereby leading to certain coping strategies. In the specific context of moving to a new country, perceived difficulty may also be affected by cultural distance. Cultural distance refers to the differences between two cultures (e.g., Berry, 2006b; Triandis, 1995). A robust finding is that acculturative adaptation is more difficult the greater the cultural distance (reviewed in Masgoret & Ward, 2006). This was also found in sojourners, including international students in the UK (Furnham & Bochner, 1982). Cultural Dimensions Used in the Current Research The present paper uses the Schwartz (2004) cultural value dimensions due to their potential relevance to coping strategies. The dimension of embeddedness vs. autonomy contrasts the importance of the group with the importance of the individual. This cultural contrast may lead to coping strategies that emphasize tradition and group interests vs. individual autonomy in decision and action. The second cultural dimension is hierarchy vs. egalitarianism. It contrasts the employment of fixed hierarchy and roles with encouragement of personal responsibility as means to encourage responsible behavior. This cultural contrast may lead to a contrast in the passivity vs. activity of encouraged coping strategies. The third dimension, mastery vs. harmony, contrasts emphasis on the legitimacy to change and exploit natural and social resources with emphasis on preserving and protecting the environment and the world at large. Based on its content, this issue has little theoretical relevance to coping strategies. For similar arguments and choices regarding emotion regulation see Matsumoto et al. (2008). Still, this dimension was included in the statistical analyses for completeness. Coping and its Expected Relations to Cultural values Coping may be defined as cognitive and behavioral efforts by which a person reacts to stressors and attempts to manage difficulties and the emotions generated by these difficulties (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Many coping strategies have been suggested, as well as a number of classifications of coping strategies (reviewed in, e.g., Connor-Smith & Flachsbart, 2007). Cultural Values and Coping 6 The most prevalent classification is to strategies of problem-focused coping and emotionfocused coping (Folkman & Lazarus, 1980). This classification has also been referred to in addressing coping as a moderating factor during acculturation (see Berry, 2006b). Problemfocused coping includes strategies that aim at solving the problem (e.g., active coping, planning). Emotion-focused coping refers to strategies that aim to reduce emotional distress or express emotions, such as engaging in distracting activities and venting emotions. These broad classifications will be used in this paper because many of the empirical studies that we base our hypotheses on used these classifications and did not report results separately for the specific coping strategies. Moreover, the same specific coping strategy (e.g., avoidance) can be classified as an emotion-focused coping in some papers, but as avoidance coping in others. Therefore, we combine emotion-focused and avoidance coping into one broad coping strategy. The current research examines how international students from many different cultures cope with the difficulties of adapting to life in a new country (Britain). Three coping strategies emerge from the literature as consistently differing in their frequencies across cultures. These are coping by religion (e.g., Connell & Gibson, 1997; Wahass, & Kent, 1997), emotionfocused/avoidance coping (e.g., Oláh, 1995; Radford, Mann, Ohta, & Nakane, 1993), and social-support (e.g., Shin, 2002; Taylor et al., 2004). Coping by religion and emotionfocused/avoidance coping are more frequently used in non-Western cultural groups, whereas seeking social-support is more frequently used in Western cultures. Problem-focused coping often does not differ across cultures. We next theorize on the possible relations of these coping strategies to the cultural dimensions described above. Coping by religion. Using religion as a way of coping is more common in non-Western cultures compared with Western cultures in dealing with a variety of stressors (e.g., Connell & Gibson, 1997; Wahass, & Kent, 1997). People in embedded cultures are expected to follow tradition, including their religion. Thus, in embedded cultures, coping by seeking God’s help Cultural Values and Coping 7 may be legitimate and even encouraged. In contrast, in cultures that emphasize autonomy, people are encouraged to think for themselves and to find their own unique solutions to solvable problems. This approach is incompatible with accepting imposed solutions from an external source, such as religion. Thus, in cultures that emphasize autonomy, coping by religion may be discouraged as a way to cope with adapting to living in a new country. In egalitarian cultures, people are expected to take responsibility; thus exerting responsibility for adapting to living in a new country to an external source, such as religion, is incompatible with cultural expectations. In contrast, in cultures that emphasize hierarchy, decisions for action are usually made by higher authorities. Thus, individuals are used to placing responsibility outside the self. Religion, or God, might be one such external source of responsibility. Therefore, individuals from cultures that emphasize hierarchy may cope by religion more than individuals from cultures that do not emphasize hierarchy. Hence, we hypothesize that coping by turning to religion would relate positively to the cultural dimensions of embeddedness vs. autonomy and hierarchy vs. egalitarianism. Emotion-focused/avoidant coping. Many studies have found that emotionfocused/avoidance coping is more common in non-Western cultures compared with Western cultures (e.g., Oláh, 1995; Radford et al., 1993). Focusing on emotions and avoiding the problem may be seen as a waste of time in cultures emphasizing personal responsibility, that is, cultures high on egalitarianism. Therefore, in such cultures, emotion-focused coping and avoidance may be perceived as less legitimate, compared with cultures that place less emphasis on taking personal responsibility. In cultures that emphasize embeddedness and hierarchy, the correct way of acting is well-known, and ambiguous situations (such as life in a new country) are relatively rare. Indeed, in comparing employees with similar jobs from India and the USA, the stressor mentioned most often by Indian employees, but not mentioned at all by American employees, Cultural Values and Coping 8 was lack of clarity and structure (Narayanan et al., 1999). Hence, the ambiguous situation of living in a new country may be more difficult for people coming from embedded and hierarchical cultures, leading to greater use of emotion-focused coping. This may be worsened by the added acculturative stress due to greater cultural distance between the British culture and cultures high on embeddedness and hierarchy. Similarly, Park, Armeli, and Tennen (2004) found that perception of low controllability was associated with using emotion-focused coping and avoidance, and this may also apply to cultures high on embeddedness and hierarchy, particularly as such cultures view individuals as less agentic (Menon, Morris, Chiu, & Hong, 1999). Furthermore, cultures high on embeddedness and hierarchy might be more tolerant of emotion-focused and avoidant coping, as this is a way to alleviate distress temporarily without violating norms, which is crucial in such cultures (see e.g., Matsumoto, 2007). Taken together, we hypothesize that emotion-focus/avoidant coping would correlate positively with the cultural dimensions of embeddedness vs. autonomy and hierarchy vs. egalitarianism. Social-support. Taylor et al. (2004) found that European-Americans tend to seek social support more than Asians and Asian-Americans do when coping with difficulties. The cultural basis for such findings may be as follows. In embedded cultures, the group is viewed as more important than the individual leading to reluctance to burden others with one’s personal problems, and this was found to explain the finding that Asian-Americans had a lower tendency to seek social support compared with European-Americans (Taylor et al., 2004). In contrast, in cultures high on autonomy, individuals are viewed as important, and they are encouraged to maximize pleasant affect. This may encourage seeking social support to cope with difficulties, because individuals may be less bothered by the effects that their personal difficulties might exert on others (Taylor et al., 2004). In egalitarian cultures there is an emphasis on voluntary commitment to help one-another. Thus, people who come from egalitarian cultures may expect others to help them and therefore they may seek social support. Cultural Values and Coping 9 Hence, we hypothesize that seeking social support would be negatively related to the cultural dimensions of embeddedness vs. autonomy and hierarchy vs. egalitarianism. To summarize, the current work presents three studies: in Study 1, the COPE scale (Carver et al., 1989) will be tested for invariance across groups, allowing its use in crosscultural research; in Study 2, we propose that coping by religion will correlate positively with embeddedness vs. autonomy and hierarchy vs. egalitarianism (hypothesis 1); emotion-focused/ avoidant coping will correlate positively with embeddedness vs. autonomy and hierarchy vs. egalitarianism (hypothesis 2); and seeking social support will correlate negatively with embeddedness vs. autonomy and hierarchy vs. egalitarianism (hypothesis 3). Study 2 will also examine the roles of personality traits and personal values in combination with cultural values in predicting coping. Study 3 will aim to replicate Study 2’s results regarding these hypotheses and examine additional mediators to the relations of cultural values to coping. Overview and Methodological Approach International students in their first year in Britain reported their ways of coping with adapting to living in Britain. All of the participants were at the same university, thus the living conditions with which they had to cope were similar. They reported their country of origin, and each participant was assigned the culture-level scores of a student-sample in his or her original country, based on data obtained by Schwartz (2005). As operationalized by Schwartz (e.g., 2004), the scores for the bipolar dimensions (e.g., hierarchy vs. egalitarianism) were calculated by subtracting the score of one dimension from the other. These scores were used as indicators of cultural background. The culture-level scores were then correlated with participants’ coping strategies. Thus, cultural background was used as a continuous individual-difference variable. This was possible, because the sample included participants from many different cultures. Note that this procedure does not involve the confusion of the individual level of analysis with the cultural level of analysis (see Hofstede, Cultural Values and Coping 1