Social science research has highlighted “honor” as a central value driving social behavior in Mediterranean societies, which requires individuals to develop and protect a sense of their personal self-worth and their social reputation, through assertiveness, competitiveness, and retaliation in the face of threats. We predicted that members of Mediterranean societies may exhibit a distinctive combination of independent and interdependent social orientation, self-construal, and cognitive style, compared to more commonly studied East Asian and Anglo-Western cultural groups. We compared participants from eight Mediterranean societies (Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus [Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities], Lebanon, Egypt) to participants from East Asian (Korea, Japan) and Anglo-Western (the United Kingdom, the United States) societies, using six implicit social orientation indicators, an eight-dimensional self-construal scale, and four cognitive style indicators. Compared with both East Asian and Anglo-Western samples, samples from Mediterranean societies distinctively emphasized several forms of independence (relative intensity of disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, happiness based on disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, dispositional [vs. situational] attribution style, self-construal as different from others, self-directed, self-reliant, self-expressive, and consistent) and interdependence (closeness to in-group [vs. out-group] members, self-construal as connected and committed to close others). Our findings extend previous insights into patterns of cultural orientation beyond commonly examined East–West comparisons to an understudied world region.

Social science research has highlighted ‘honor’ as a central value driving social behavior in Mediterranean societies, which requires individuals to develop and protect a sense of their personal self-worth and their social reputation, through assertiveness, competitiveness, and retaliation in the face of threats. We predicted that members of Mediterranean societies may exhibit a distinctive combination of independent and interdependent social orientation, self-construal, and cognitive style, compared to more commonly studied East Asian and Anglo-Western cultural groups. We compared participants from eight Mediterranean societies (Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus [Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities], Lebanon, Egypt) to participants from East Asian (Korea, Japan) and Anglo-Western (UK, US) societies, using six implicit social orientation indicators, an eight-dimensional self-construal scale, and four cognitive style indicators. Compared with both East Asian and Anglo-Western samples, samples from Mediterranean societies distinctively emphasized several forms of independence (relative intensity of disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, happiness based on disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, dispositional [vs. situational] attribution style, self-construal as different from others, self-directed, self-reliant, self-expressive, and consistent) and interdependence (closeness to ingroup [vs. outgroup] members, self-construal as connected and committed to close others). Our findings extend previous insights into patterns of cultural orientation beyond commonly examined East-West comparisons to an understudied world region.

In the present study, the interplay between self-construal, social support and psychological adaptation of first generation Indian immigrants residing in Crete (N = 114) was examined. The first aim of the study was to analyze the association of self-construal with anxiety, depression, and self-esteem as indicators of psychological adaptation. It was hypothesized that Indian immigrants would maintain a more interdependent than independent self-construal and that Indians with high interdependent self-construal would receive more social support and have less adaptation problems compared to immigrants’ with a more independent self-construal. Furthermore, the second aim was to examine the relation of social support to self-construal, and psychological adaptation. It was hypothesized that interdependent self-construal would have positive effects on psychological adaptation through social support (mediation). A moderation effect was also hypothesized, in that social support was expected to act protectively for Indians with high interdependence, regarding psychological adaptation. The results verified some of the hypotheses but there were unexpected findings as well. Interdependence was not related to any indices of psychological adaptation, while a negative relationship was found between independent self-construal and self-esteem. Although, social support was not related either to self-construal or to adaptation, it acted as mediator in the relationship between interdependent self-construal and depression. Furthermore, a moderation effect was found on the relationship between independent self-construal and self-esteem. There are certain implications of these findings, regarding the impact of cultural values in counseling and the role of social support in immigrants’ psychological adaptation.

The data and syntax that support the findings of this study and produced this manuscript are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/4tyk5/. The current research and analyses were not pre-registered at an independent repository.

Social bonds and relationships are important determinants of well-being and happiness. Peoples’ propensities for relating to individual and cultural levels can partially account for variations in well-being in different cultures. The present paper examined how adult attachment orientations, a seminal aspect of relating, and independent and interdependent self-construal, a cultural category of social relations, interrelate at an individual level to explain well-being in Greece. In a large-scale community study state secure attachment and independent and interdependent cultural orientations were all positively associated with well-being. As expected, the two relating constructs intersected so that higher interdependence was associated with higher anxiety and lower avoidance in line with expectations. Importantly, the interaction between interdependence and anxious attachment accounted for an additional part of the variance in well-being: participants higher in anxiety and interdependence had higher well-being whereas the inverse was true for participants higher in anxiety and independence. These results point to culture-specific patterns in how central relating schemas contribute to well-being[1].