Cultural Values Versus Cultural Norms as Predictors of Differences in Helping Behaviors and in Emotion Regulation: A Preliminary Nation-Level Test Related to the Leung-Morris Model

Leung and Morris (2015) propose conditions under which values, norms, and schemata drive cultural differences in behavior. They build on past theories about dimensions of situational strength to propose that personal values drive behavior more in weak situations and perceived norms drive behavior more in strong situations. Drawing on this analysis as well as two recent models of cultural tightness-looseness, country-level effects are predicted on the assumption that tighter cultures more frequently create strong situations and looser cultures more frequently create weak situations. Using secondary data, I examine values as well as perceived descriptive norms and injunctive norms relevant to collectivism in relation to two key dependent measures: helping strangers and emotion regulation. The relation of embeddedness values to helping strangers is moderated negatively by tightness (in that high embeddedness reduces helping less in the context of tightness), and its relation to emotion regulation is moderated positively (in that embeddedness increases emotion regulation more in the context of tightness). Furthermore, descriptive norms show main effects for both dependent variables that are predominantly unmoderated by tightness. Finally, the link of injunctive norms with emotion regulation is moderated positively by tightness (in that injunctiveness heightens emotion regulation more in the context of tightness). Results support the relevance of nation-level tightness to reliance on values and norms, but the strength of effects depends on how it is operationalized.