Open research questions in Cultural Differences and Values

What the literature leaves open

• 2.4. Theoretical Integration “Theoretically integrative approaches open new understanding psychopathology, personality functioning, and psychological change, both at the theoretical and practical levels” (Ciesielski, 2026, p. 136). The integration transcultural perspective and PPT is rooted in the idea that “in the process of socialization, actual capabilities are formed in harmony with the sociocultural system and are shaped by the specific conditions of individual development” (Peseschkian, 2008, p. 24). between the “Comparing the dynamic PPT types with key ORT constructs illustrates a single axis of maturity: a movement from polar security strategies–fusion as a search for unconditional support and control as an attempt at selfsufficiency–toward their dialectical synthesis, which tolerate ambivalence, combine care with boundaries and aggression with love, and maintain the stability of internal objects and a realistic ego identity” (Tyshchenko, 2026, p. 178).

  Transformations of anger: An integrative model for clinical work with greed, envy, jealousy, and guilt · 2026 · DOI

• Consequently, the overrepresentation of WEIRD populations in psychological research constitutes a significant limitation for the accuracy and generalizability of empirical findings.

  A Dual Inheritance Perspective on Cultural Bias, Psychological Science, and Human Diversity · 2026 · DOI

• Future research should broaden cross-cultural validation efforts by including more diverse cultural contexts beyond the three countries analysed in this study. Additionally, future studies could consider refining or culturally adapting the weak-performing items – especially within the IDV and UAI scales – through cognitive interviews or qualitative validation methods. Finally, exploring hybrid models that balance etic (universal) and emic (culture-specific) components may provide deeper insight into how cultural dimensions manifest in different national contexts. Young consumers in cultural context: A cross-national study of Hofstede’s value dimensions | 171 REFERENCES Alon, I., Lankut, E., Gunkel, M., Munim, Z.H., Taras, V., & Richter, N.F. (2023). Predicting leadership emergence in 7-23.

  Young consumers in cultural context: A cross-national study of Hofstede’s value dimensions · 2026 · DOI

• This study identified the value orientations of seafarers based on Schwartz’s value theory. Considering the unique context of the work and life of seafarers, this study found that seafarers exhibit a distinctive pattern of value priorities. Prominent among these values are self-transcendence and conservation, specifically Security, Benevolence, Universalism and Conformity broad values. Universalism-Nature, Security-Personal, Benevolence-Caring, Security-Societal, and Conformity-Rules are the particularly defined values that seafarers hold. This finding reflects that seafarers give importance to safety, security, environmental protection, and the human element in the maritime industry, which are aligned to IMO’s mission. On the other hand, seafarers ranked Power-Resources, Hedonism and Power-Dominance the lowest, indicating that seafarers value their individual and seafarers’ group welfare as well as the welfare of the environment. In addition, the findings reveal the flexibility and adoptability of Schwartz’s value framework in understanding the values of seafarers. With the findings of this study, MET institutions may develop course packages that intentionally and explicitly address values development and formation of maritime students. Moreover, Schwartz’s framework can also be applied in analyzing marine incident or accident case studies to teach students how underlying values influence the causes and outcomes of such events. In addition, the value priorities identified in this study should J. Bacasdoon et al.

  Understanding the Core Values of Seafarers · 2026 · DOI

• Our research also has several limitations that can inspire future research. Based on the insights of the study as well as its strengths and limitations, we suggest several avenues for further research on IH assessment. First, all of the chosen IH measures were self-report questionnaires. As these are a valid tool to assess theoretical constructs and used commonly in psychological research (Haeffel & Howald, 2010), our validation of these scales addresses the needs of many researchers. However, it can be beneficial to develop behavioral measures of IH (Van Tongeren et al., 2022a, 2022b), especially when being interested in measuring IH in social interactions (Hanel et al., 2023; Meagher et al., 2020). Here, it would be fascinating to see how different self-report measures, especially those with a rather (meta-)cognitive scope, can predict intellectually humble behaviors. Previous research showed that intellectual humility in conversation (e.g., interrupting others less, more often conveying one’s opin­ ion as tentative) coded by linguists was not associated with the CIHS (Hanel et al., 2023), potentially due to the gap between cognitions and behaviors (Minson & Chen, 2021; Van Tongeren et al., 2022a, 2022b). It would be of interest to see if this also applies to other intellectual humility measures, such as the specific intellectual humility scale. Second, the IH scales chosen for validation conceptualize IH rather as a trait than as a state (Ballantyne, 2023; Du & Cai, 2020). This enables researchers to reliably study be­ tween-person variations of IH, and its associations with political constructs (e.g., Bowes et al., 2020; Krumrei-Mancuso & Newman, 2020). However, there might be substantive within-person variation of IH, for instance depending on the norms of a given context (Porter & Cimpian, 2023) or the availability of mental resources in a specific situation (Hanel et al., 2023). Here, it would be beneficial to develop and validate additional state-like IH measures as Zachry et al. (2018) did. This would tap potential within-person variations of IH better than the existing IH measures and enable research investigating in which contexts people show IH. Third, despite several methodological strengths, there are still some aspects that we could not implement within our study. Future IH validation research could address these open questions. For instance, we only assessed the constructs used for evaluating discriminant and incremental validity after measuring the IH scales. We decided to do so because we did not want the participants’ responses on the IH scales to be impacted by having answered these questionnaires before. However, filling out the IH scales might have influenced answers on the discriminant scales, too. Thus, future experimental research could systematically assess order effects of when IH is measured in a survey.

  Intellectual humility: Validation and comparison of four self-report scales in the German context · 2026 · DOI

• Several limitations of the present study should be acknowledged when interpreting the findings of this study. First, the sample size and distribution across cultural categories may have limited the ability to detect higher-order effects. Although the total sample included 324 participants, the number of participants categorized as collectivistic (n = 70) was ~66.35% smaller than those classified as individualistic (n = 202); This imbalance may have reduced statistical power, particularly for detecting complex interaction effects such as the hypothesized three-way interaction between action crisis, condition, and culture. Higher-order interaction effects typically require larger and more evenly distributed samples, and future research will benefit from recruiting larger samples with more balanced representation across cultural groups. Second, the current study relied on country of origin as an indicator of cultural orientation, and this may have oversimplified the complexity of cultural identity as cultural values such as individualism and collectivism are not uniformly distributed within national CULTURE, ACTION CRISIS AND GOALS 21 boundaries. Substantial regional variation may exist within countries, for example, research has demonstrated meaningful regional variation in individualism–collectivism within China (Gong et al., 2021). Although participants represented 34 countries of origin, 25 individuals reported China as their country of origin, encompassing a large proportion of the collectivistic category. This concentration may have reduced the clarity of the individualistic–collectivistic categorization and may have influenced the detection of cultural moderation effects. Cultural orientation is increasingly conceptualized as multidimensional and context-dependent, suggesting that future research should incorporate direct measures of cultural values rather than relying solely on national classification (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Kiuchi, 2006). Recruitment methods also present a potential limitation; Participants were recruited through online platforms including Prolific, SONA (University of Chicago students), and snowball sampling across multiple U.S. colleges. Though this approach enabled recruitment across a geographically diverse sample, online recruitment methods could introduce self-selection bias; Participants who volunteer for online psychological research––particularly when compensation or course credit is involved––may differ systematically from the broader student population in motivation, self-perception, or goal engagement. These differences may have influenced responses to measures related to action crisis and the subsequent self-reflective questions, possibly limiting the representativeness of the sample.

  Love, Goals, and Culture: How Significant Others Impact Academic Goal Pursuit · 2026 · DOI

• Although the three‑way interaction was not significant, the study did reveal a clear negative association between action crisis and state self-esteem across participants. This consistent two‑way relationship underscores the importance of understanding how students experience emotional strain during academic goal conflict. Future research should build on the insight that action crisis exerts a strong and consistent emotional impact, and then test the specific relational or cultural conditions under which this pattern meaningfully shifts; by building on this pattern by using stronger priming manipulations, more precise cultural measures, and more balanced samples, future studies can reliably test when relational cues meaningfully alter these dynamics. Clarifying the conditions under which significant others shape students’ emotional responses will help refine theories of relational influence in academic goal pursuit. Further, the researchers hope to conduct a second study where the significant other prime is even more salient, perhaps including pictures, voice notes, autobiographical recall, or interactive prompts; Additionally, we intend to prime participants with different types of significant others that may have a greater impact on their academic goals specifically (e.g. CULTURE, ACTION CRISIS AND GOALS 24 mentors). We also believe that future research could benefit from examining within-country variation in culture, bicultural identity integration, and possibly a distinction between recruiting students earlier in their transition to college versus later. Lastly, we are also curious to see if future research would benefit from a more upfront priming assessment such as moderated live-interviews with significant others as compared to an independent survey-based study.

  Love, Goals, and Culture: How Significant Others Impact Academic Goal Pursuit · 2026 · DOI

• First, regarding the cross-sectional design and sample, although the chained mediation analysis is based on theoretical derivation, cross-sectional data cannot confirm causal relationships; therefore, the mediation effects reported in this study should be interpreted as correlational patterns consistent with the theoretical model and not as causal evidence. Simultaneously, to control for grade-level effects, we included only sophomore medical students; therefore, conclusions should be generalized to other grade levels and majors with caution. Future research should adopt longitudinal tracking or experimental designs to test causal relationships and include multi-grade, multimajor samples to examine the generalizability of the findings. Second, regarding measurement dimensions and exploratory findings, we focused solely on knowledge of red music and did not comprehensively cover the rich connotations of cultural heritage education; furthermore, the “resource substitution effect” identified in the subjectively advantaged subtype stems from exploratory analysis, and its robustness remains to be verified. Future research could incorporate additional dimensions, such as institutional history and cultural role models, and employ larger samples or experimental designs to specifically test the compensatory protective role of subjective perceptions in resource-scarce contexts. Third, regarding the construction and stability of poverty types, it is worth noting that cluster solutions are inherently sample-dependent, and their stability and generalizability require further validation.

  How do poverty types reshape the effect of political identity on prosocial behavior? The chain mediation role of emotion regulation and compensatory effect of cultural heritage education · 2026 · DOI

• This paper examines the underexplored area of vicarious relative-led family mediation, wherein mediation is facilitated by a third party assuming a relative role, Laoniangjiu, analyzing how disputants use persuasive attacks to increase mediators’ perceived responsibility and how mediators, often perceived as biased in Chinese culture, enact conditionally appropriate responses.

  Increasing mediators’ perceived responsibility: The role of persuasive attacks in vicarious relative-led family mediation · 2024 · DOI

• This study investigated heritage language (HL) maintenance and ethnic identity among Korean heritage speakers in the Pacific region (Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii), an understudied population in the field.

  Language maintenance and ethnic identity among Korean heritage speakers in the Pacific region (Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii) · 2023 · DOI

• It offers a possible reason for the mixed findings previously in the literature regarding status and sustainability by illustrating status motivations may work both directly and through cultural values in influencing ECCB.

  Understanding the ecologically conscious behaviors of status motivated millennials · 2021 · DOI

• Social implications The authors shed light on two widely held yet insufficiently researched assumptions: that the homogenizing effect of global consumer culture may be fomenting materialism worldwide, and that nationalistic, parochially oriented consumers may be more capable of resisting materialistic values.

  Global consumer culture and national identity as drivers of materialism: an international study of convergence and divergence · 2021 · DOI

• Research in this area is scarce, even though rapid social transformations worldwide, fueled by globalization, make it imperative to identify the conditions under which commonalities and differences in materialistic tendencies are most likely to evidence among consumers as they seek to assert, restore, or enhance their self-concept and status in the context of global consumption trends.

  Global consumer culture and national identity as drivers of materialism: an international study of convergence and divergence · 2021 · DOI

• I find widespread consensus in the mechanisms of impression formation, particularly for judgments of evaluation (goodness, esteem), but also find sufficient individual differences to warrant further study for models of potency (power, dominance) and object impressions (feelings about the target of a behavior).

  Do You See What I See? Testing for Individual Differences in Impressions of Events · 2018 · DOI

• The Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) has been widely used in the last 15 years, but little is known about how ethnicity and socioeconomic status relate to scores on this scale.

  An Investigation of Demographic Correlates of the Celebrity Attitude Scale · 2016 · DOI

• Future research is needed to uncover how different cultural elements are mixed and how ecological factors affect responses to culture mixing, to investigate the underlying psychological mechanisms of culture mixing, and use multiple methods at various levels of analysis to uncover the dynamic, interactive culturally mixed processes.

  Advancing Our Understanding of Culture Mixing · 2016 · DOI

• These seemingly clear and obvious consequences of smiling are assumed to be culturally universal, however most of the psychological research is carried out in WEIRD societies (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) and the influence of culture on social perception of nonverbal behavior is still understudied.

  Be Careful Where You Smile: Culture Shapes Judgments of Intelligence and Honesty of Smiling Individuals · 2015 · DOI

• In this paper, I address a much understudied pathway – assimilation by way of the ethnic community – based on a case study of Chinese immigrant children in the USA.

  Segmented assimilation and socio-economic integration of Chinese immigrant children in the USA · 2014 · DOI

• A final total of 13 studies of teacher bias suggested mixed evidence for bias due to student ethnicity and strong evidence of bias due to teacher culture, particularly when positive stereotypes were violated.

  CULTURAL AND ETHNIC BIAS IN TEACHER RATINGS OF BEHAVIOR: A CRITERION‐FOCUSED REVIEW · 2014 · DOI

• In the negative case where no consensus exists and the pattern of correlations contains more than one factor, we argue that a logical extension of CCA is the Points-of-View approach of Tucker and Messick.

  Subject Variations in Sorting Data: Revisiting the Points-of-View Model · 2013 · DOI

• Studies of the “Way of Coping Checklist‐Revised” (WCCL‐R) in the West suggest that the WCCL‐R has good psychometric properties, but its applicability in the East is still understudied.

  Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Way of Coping Checklist‐Revised (WCCL‐R) in the Asian Context · 2009 · DOI

• Do differences in individualism and collectivism influence values, self-concept content, relational assumptions, and cognitive style? On the one hand, the cross-national literature provides an impressively consistent picture of the predicted systematic differences; on the other hand, the nature of the evidence is inconclusive.

  Does culture influence what and how we think? Effects of priming individualism and collectivism. · 2008 · DOI

• essay examines both published, if now little known, materials and Ruth Benedict's notes taken during a course on The Study of the Individual in Culture that Mead taught in 1935.

  Margaret Mead's Individual in Culture, or Cultures and Personalities without Embarrassment · 2005

• The present study examines the underresearched topic of bicultural identity; specifically, we: (1) unpack the construct of Bicultural Identity Integration (BII), or the degree to which a bicultural individual perceives his/her two cultural identities as "compatible" versus "oppositional," and (2) identify the personality (Big Five) and acculturation (acculturation stress, acculturation attitudes, bicultural competence) predictors of BII.

  Bicultural Identity Integration (BII): Components and Psychosocial Antecedents · 2005 · DOI

• The results of 3 priming experiments (N = 121, N = 99, and N = 361) suggest that (a) priming does not account for the inconsistent results observed in the meta-analysis, (b) that scores on a self-construal scale appear to be measuring trait-like constructs that are not sensitive to priming, and (c) that measures of self-construals lack convergent validity.

  Self-Construal Scales Lack Validity · 2003 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Cultural Differences and Values

• Does culture influence what and how we think? Effects of priming individualism and collectivism. · Psychological Bulletin · 2008 · 933 citations
• Bicultural Identity Integration (BII): Components and Psychosocial Antecedents · Journal of Personality · 2005 · 922 citations
• What happens if we compare chopsticks with forks? The impact of making inappropriate comparisons in cross-cultural research. · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 2008 · 748 citations
• Psychological Universals: What Are They and How Can We Know? · Psychological Bulletin · 2005 · 444 citations
• The cultural shaping of depression: Somatic symptoms in China, psychological symptoms in North America? · Journal of Abnormal Psychology · 2008 · 442 citations
• Many forms of culture. · American Psychologist · 2009 · 429 citations
• Do Reverse-Worded Items Confound Measures in Cross-Cultural Consumer Research? The Case of the Material Values Scale · Journal of Consumer Research · 2003 · 377 citations
• The Meaning of “Being Chinese” and “Being American” · Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology · 2000 · 349 citations
• Multiculturalism and acculturation: views of Dutch and Turkish–Dutch · European Journal of Social Psychology · 2002 · 341 citations
• Personal Values Across Cultures · Annual Review of Psychology · 2021 · 305 citations

Most recent work

• Ecocultural Identity and the Anthropocentric Avoidance Gesture in Intercultural Communication · Journal of Intercultural Communication Research · 2026
• Young Adult Children Negotiating Intergenerational Cultural Expectations: Insights from Chinese Indonesian Families in Indonesia · Journal of Intergenerational Relationships · 2026
• Teaching Social Studies as Edgework · The Journal of Social Studies Research · 2026
• The Cultural Difference In Nonverbal Expressivity Is Moderated By The Extent of Subjective Self-Construal: A Two-Study Examination Targeting Japanese And Korean Individuals · Journal of Intercultural Communication · 2026
• Investigating the Cultural Moderating Role in the Association between Exercise and Anxiety Symptoms · International Journal of Mental Health Promotion · 2026
• Understanding the Core Values of Seafarers · Pomorstvo · 2026
• The role of family and multicultural events in fostering Vietnamese students’ tolerance and inclusiveness in the context of globalisation · Educational Studies · 2026
• Eudaimonic life values and employment stress: a moderated mediation study in Chinese higher education students · Frontiers in Psychology · 2026
• Cross-national test of the hypothesis that cultural individualization mitigates social-origin inequalities in educational attainment · Social Science Information · 2026
• Is an exciting outsider or a trustworthy local more persuasive? A self-construal contingent, dual-pathway model of cross-cultural travel vlogs · Tourism Recreation Research · 2026

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