A. Timur Sevincer1, Hyekyung Park2, Shinobu Kitayama 2, & Henrik Singmann1

1 University of Hamburg, 2 University of Michigan

IntroductionVoluntary Settlement Hypothesis • Voluntary settlement refers to actively and personally choosing to leave one’s hometown to move and settle in another place.• Voluntary settlement is closely linked to independent mentalities. Indeed, cultures that have undergone a recent history of voluntary settlement are more independent than cultures that have not undergone such a history (Kitayama et al., 2006; 2009).

Poster presented at the Conference of the Association for Psychological Science in San Francisco, CA, May 2009

Voluntary Settlers Have a More Independent Goal Orientation Than Natives

Measures of Independence:• Life task questionnaire• Correlates of happiness (Implicit Social Orientation Questionnaire; ISOQ; Kitayama & Park, 2007)• Uniqueness task (Kim & Markus, 1999)

The Present Research Because voluntary settlement relies on a strong orientation towards personal goal pursuit, we hypothesized that individuals who engaged in such settlement have a more independent goal orientation than individuals who did not engage in such settlement• We compared students who voluntarily changed their residence to attend a university (i.e., settlers) with native students at the university town (i.e., natives).

MethodsParticipants116 German participants from the University of Hamburg (77 female, Mage = 22.18, SDage = 2.08): 58 settlers (moved to Hamburg) 56 natives (lived in Hamburg throughout their whole life) 2 unidentified

MaterialsLife tasks. Participants listed 10 life tasks they plan to engage in over the next 5 years. Two independent raters coded the tasks into 3 categories (interrater agreement: kappa = .92): Personal: Tasks related to personal achievement and success (e.g., “finish my studies”) Relational: Tasks related to social roles and relationships to significant others (e.g., “visit my brother in France”) Collective: Tasks related to group membership or social identities (e.g., “support charity ”)

Correlates of happiness. ISOQ: Participants indicated for each of the tasks they had listed to what extend they would experience each of 10 emotions if they successfully completed the task (1-6 scales: 1 = not at all, 6 = very strongly). There were the following emotion types: Socially disengaging positive (e.g., pride in self), Socially engaging positive (e.g., affection) General positive (e.g., happy) .

Uniqueness vs. conformity. Participants were presented 30 abstract figures composed of 9 subfigures. In half of the abstract figures one subfigure (unique subfigure) differed from the rest of the subfigures. In the other half a minority of subfigures (plural minority subfigures) differed from the rest. Participants ranked each subfigure in the order of their preference from 1 (favorite) to 9 (least favorite).

Unique Subfigure

Plural Minority Subfigures

ResultsLife TasksSettlers listed more personal and less relational and collective life tasks than natives (p < .05).

Correlates of HappinessSettlers’ happiness depended more on the experience of disengaging than of engaging emotions, whereas the reverse was true for natives’ happiness (p < .05).

Uniqueness vs. ConformitySettlers liked unique subfigures more than natives (p < .05). There was no difference with regard to the plural minority subfigures (higher bars indicate more liking.).

SummaryCompared to natives:• Settlers were more inclined to rely on personal, as opposed to communal, goals. Specifically, settlers set more personal goals and felt happier when they achieved socially disengaging goal states. • Settlers were also more inclined towards uniqueness.

ConclusionThis research suggests that individuals who have a personal history of voluntary settlement have a more independent goal orientation than individuals who do not have such a history of voluntary settlement.

ReferencesKim, H., & Markus, H. R. (1999). Deviance or uniqueness, harmony

or conformity? A cultural analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 785-800.

Kitayama, S., Ishi, K., Imada, T., Takemura, K., & Ramaswamy, J. (2006). Voluntary settlement and the spirit of independence: Evidence from Japan’s “northern frontier”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 369-384.

Kitayama, S, & Park, H. (2007). Cultural shaping of self, emotion, and well-being: How does it work? Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 1, 202-222.

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Kitayama, S. , Park, H., Sevincer, A. T., Karasawa, M., & Uskul, A. (in press). A cultural task analysis of implicit independence: comparing North America, Western Europe, and East Asia. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.