The Effects Of Self-construal Priming On Self-expansion Motivation

Current social psychology focus on Cross-cultural psychology. An important finding is that self-construal is different between westerners and easterners. The western society promotes the independent self and east Asian society promotes interdependent self. One who possess independent self pay attention to himself/herself and his/her unique intrinsic quality. One who possess interdependent self pay attention to relationships between self and others. The conception of interdependent self have a great close relationship with self-expansion theory. In recent years, many foreign researchers studied self-expansion theory. According to self-expansion theory, a central human motive is the desire to expand the self—to acquire whatever skills or resources that will enhance one's ability to accomplish one's always evolving goals. This is consistent with the conception of interdependent self. However, the self-expansion theory is proposed in west countries, The western society promotes the independent self, the self is separated from others. So, why westerners possess self-expansion motivation? Our research studied this problem and discussed the effects of self-construal on self-expansion motivation. According to research results, we propose a possible explanation to the problem that why westerners possess self-expansion motivation.Previous studies find that although westerners show independent self and easterners show interdependent self, both westerners and easterners possess the two types of self-construal. Westerners can prime interdependent self via experiment and easterners can prime independent self via experiment. These findings provide a possible explanation to the problem that why westerners possess self-expansion motivation. In westerners'life, many situations can prime their interdependent self, so they possess self-expansion motivation. We assume that when people prime interdependent self, they possess self-expansion motivation. When people prime independent self, they don't possess self-expansion motivation. If this hypothesis is confirmed, the explanation above is right.In our research, we did two experiment. The purpose of Experiment 1 is investigating whether easterners can prime independent self. It is a 3 (priming)×2 (self-description) experimental design. Priming type is between-subject variable and self-description is within-subject variable.In experiment 2, we first let subjects prime different self-construal, and then investigate their self-expansion motivation level.By statistical analysis, the main findings of the present research are as follows:(1) Chinese people show interdependent self.(2) Chinese people can prime independent self via experiment.(3) Westerners possess self-expansion motivation, the reason maybe westerners can show both independent self and interdependent self, but interdependent self is not predominant, however, it also effects people's self-expansion motivation. So westerners' self-expansion motivation level is lower than easterners'.