Priming an interdependent self-construal causes increased allocentric social evaluative concerns in Western sample

Prior research suggests that egocentric and allocentric social evaluative concerns are present in both Western and Eastern cultures, and that an individual's social evaluative concerns may reflect his or her self-construal more than his or her cultural orientation. In order to evaluate the extent to which allocentric social evaluative concerns are engendered by an interdependent self-construal, the present study experimentally manipulated self-construals with a cultural prime. Participants included 66 adult Amazon Mechanical Turk users who were located in the United States and who mostly self-identified as white/Caucasian (72.7%). Participants were randomly assigned to one of two priming conditions, and results revealed significant main effects of the priming activity on allocentric social evaluative concerns. Participants who received the collectivism prime reported more allocentric social evaluative concerns than did participants who received the individualism prime. Thus, allocentric social evaluative concerns seem to be tied more closely to an interdependent self-construal than to membership in a collectivistic culture.