A. Timur Sevincer 1 , Hyekyung Park 2 , Shinobu Kitayama 2 , & Henrik Singmann 1

1. Voluntary Settlers Have a More Independent Goal Orientation Than Natives A. Timur Sevincer1, Hyekyung Park2, ShinobuKitayama2, & Henrik Singmann1 1 University of Hamburg, 2University of Michigan • Methods • Participants • 116 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 • Materials • Life 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 ”) • Introduction • Voluntary 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). Results Life Tasks • Summary • Compared 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. Settlers listed more personal and less relational and collective life tasks than natives (p < .05). Conclusion This 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. Correlates of Happiness Settlers’ happiness depended more on the experience of disengaging than of engaging emotions, whereas the reverse was true for natives’ happiness (p < .05). • 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). • 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) . References Kim, 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. K 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. • Unique Subfigure Uniqueness vs. Conformity Settlers liked unique subfigures more than natives (p < .05). There was no difference with regard to the plural minority subfigures (higher bars indicate more liking.). 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). • Measures of Independence: • Life task questionnaire • Correlates of happiness (Implicit Social Orientation Questionnaire; ISOQ; Kitayama & Park, 2007) • Uniqueness task (Kim & Markus, 1999) • Plural Minority Subfigures Poster presented at the Conference of the Association for Psychological Science in San Francisco, CA, May 2009