Investigating the sociocultural models with cultural experiments: A Polish‒English study on {Request → Compliance} in gender relations

Abstract

The dominant model in cross‐cultural psychology largely disregards culture (Boski, 2018). An alternative theory of sociocultural models (SCMs) has been proposed in this volume. SCMs mould cognitive, affective, and behavioural processes of individual persons, as well as their corrective measures should such processes be sidetracked. Because SCMs are culture‐bound, intercultural contacts are likely to be fraught in misconceptions and conflicts, but they may also give rise to attraction and to culture change. This article compares Polish script of gender roles and its transformations between the ingroup and English (outgroup) contexts. Framed in a {Request → Compliance} format, a cultural experiment was conducted with university students in England and Poland. It was based on four video‐recorded enactments of that script, controlling for gender expressions on the request and on actor‐compliance sides. It was hypothesised that compared to foreign observers from England, Polish participants should provide confirmatory evidence to video installations, reflecting the script and should resist its transformation attempts. Results largely confirmed these expectations. The {Male addressed request → Male compliance} was of the Polish normative and behavioural prototype, but not appealing for English participants, for whom gender neutrality was the preferred cultural arrangement.

Effectiveness of the “But-you-are-free” technique

“…Indeed, the BYAF technique might rely on subtle or important differences between countries, as some studies on cross-cultural psychology pointed out. For example, Boskł (2020) found that male complied far less to male in Poland, but not in England, based on a sociocultural model. We do not know if the distinction we made was the best possible and we cannot compare countries because, France aside, all the others have experiments from only one study.…”

The sociocultural movement in psychology, the role of theories in sociocultural inquiries, and the theory of sociocultural models

“…In his article “Investigating the Sociocultural Models With Cultural Experiments: A Polish‒English Study on (Request → Compliance) in Gender Relations,” (Boski, 2020) Boski critiques the common cross‐cultural psychological approach to studying culture in which researchers implement questionnaires and their translations, and test their measurement invariance testing (Boski, 2018). As an alternative to this approach, he suggests that researchers use a quasi‐experimental procedure for violating the taken‐for‐granted scripts for dealing with gender roles in response to authority figures’ requests.…”