Social Support Provision and Cultural Values in Indonesia and Britain

Previous cross-cultural research into social support has attributed national variations in social support to assumed cultural values but has rarely measured these values at an individual level. This study investigates the relationship between support offered and individualism among 186 government workers in Indonesia and the United Kingdom. Indonesian respondents were more willing to offer support to strangers than their British counterparts, but individualism was a significant predictor of (lesser) support provision only in Britain. In addition, female respondents in Britain, and older respondents in Indonesia, offered higher levels of support. These findings underline the difficulties for individual-level measures of culture in accounting for cultural level differences and are discussed in the light of further emic and etic factors likely to be significant for an understanding of support provision in these two cultures.