RR: INFLUENCE OF SELF-CONSTRUAL AND CULTURE ON COGNITIVE DISSONANCE IN THE INDUCED COMPLIANCE PARADIGM

Cognitive dissonance, a fundamental psychological process involving inconsistent cognitions causing discomfort, may vary across cultures. These variations could be attributed to differences in the way people define themselves, known as “self-construal”. Previous cross-cultural studies on the role of self-construal in cognitive dissonance have mainly employed the free-choice paradigm. However, many concerns have been raised about the validity of this procedure and these studies, more generally. To address this issue, we will conduct secondary analyses to explore unexamined associations in a large existing dataset (Vaidis et al., 2024). Specifically, the current study will investigate the moderating role of individual (self-construal) and cultural (individualism) variables on dissonance effects following an induced-compliance paradigm across 18 countries (N = 3822). Based on the literature, we hypothesised that induced-compliance effects (i.e., adjusting attitude to match behaviour, particularly when it has been adopted freely) will be stronger for participants with higher individual self-construal scores (H1), in more individualistic countries (H2), and in countries with higher aggregated levels of independent self-construal (H3). The analyses [supported / did not support] H1, [supported / did not support] H2 and [supported / did not support] H3.Keywords: Self-Construal, Culture, Cognitive Dissonance, Induced Compliance, Cross-cultural study