SOCIAL SUPPORT PROVISION AND CULTURAL VALUES IN INDONESIA AND BRITAIN ROBIN GOODWIN Brunel University

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1 / Article JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY Goodwin, Giles / SUPPORT AND CULTURAL VALUES SOCIAL SUPPORT PROVISION AND CULTURAL VALUES IN INDONESIA AND BRITAIN ROBIN GOODWIN Brunel University SOPHIE GILES Bristol University Previous cross-cultural research into social support has attributed national variations in social support to assumed cultural values but has rarely measured these values at an individual level. This study investigates the relationship between support offered and individualism among 186 government workers in Indonesia and the United Kingdom. Indonesian respondents were more willing to offer support to strangers than their British counterparts, but individualism was a significant predictor of (lesser) support provision only in Britain. In addition, female respondents in Britain, and older respondents in Indonesia, offered higher levels of support. These findings underline the difficulties for individual-level measures of culture in accounting for cultural level differences and are discussed in the light of further emic and etic factors likely to be significant for an understanding of support provision in these two cultures. Keywords: social support; culture For more than two decades, social support has been one of the most widely investigated social psychological variables. Although large and demanding networks may be stressful, most research has suggested that social support is a good thing, with those with strong support networks exhibiting better psychological and physiological well-being, particularly during periods of high stress (Sarason, Sarason, & Gurung, 1997). A small subset of the social support literature has considered the impact of culture on support. One of the most widely employed dimensions for this study has been individualism-collectivism. For the collectivist, the basic unit of survival is the group (Hui, 1988); hence, support from others is very important in these societies (Triandis, 1989, 1994), providing a strong buffer against life stresses (Triandis, Bontempo, & Villareal, 1988). Whereas collectivists have been found to enjoy close and supportive networks, and actively share in the lives of others in their in-group (Gudykunst, Nishida, & Schmidt, 1989; Triandis et al. 1988), individualists exhibit fewer skills for interacting intimately with others and are more emotionally detached from their ingroups (Triandis et al., 1988). Using the related personality values of idiocentrism (for individualism) and allocentrism (for collectivism), Triandis and his colleagues (1988) found that allocentrics in the United States and Puerto Rico perceived greater social support and less loneliness than idiocentrics (Triandis, Leung, Villareal, & Clack, 1985). AUTHORS NOTE: Please address all correspondence to Robin Goodwin, Department of Human Sciences, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middx UB8 3PH; Robin.Goodwin@brunel.ac.uk; fax: ; phone: An earlier version of this article was presented at the Jubilee Conference of the International Association of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Bellingham, Washington, August The authors would like to thank David Matsumoto, Stanley Gaines, and two anonymous reviewers for their very thorough reviews and helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 34 No. X, Month DOI: / Western Washington University 1

2 2 JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY There have been, however, a number of problems with previous cross-cultural investigations on social support. First, in much of this work, the cultural values of respondents have simply been assumed rather than measured, committing what Hofstede (1980) terms the ecological fallacy of assuming that national values reflect individual values. Hofstede (2001) has argued that simply using national dimension scores is not appropriate for the understanding of individual-level social behaviours. Second, previous research on individualism/idiocentrism has focused primarily on the perceived reception rather than the actual provision of support (Triandis et al., 1985). Previous research on perceived and received support has found these two dimensions of support to be only poorly correlated (Barrera, 1986), with the two forms of support having very different consequences for stress resistance and symptomatology (Wills & Shinar, 2000). By switching our attention to support provision, we provide a new test of the predictive validity of individualism-collectivism, measured at the individual level, for the analysis of social support. In cross-cultural comparisons, Indonesia has emerged as one of the most collectivist societies studied. In Hofstede s (1980) ranking of individualism across cultures, Indonesia was ranked 47th out of the 53 countries and regions assessed, whereas Britain was ranked 3rd on this dimension. Using the pancultural measure of individualism-collectivism employed in this study, Indonesia was the least individualistic country of nine diverse nations assessed (Triandis et al., 1986). In this study, we explored the relationship between individualism-collectivism and the offering of support to two target groups close friends and strangers. We differentiate between the targets of support offered, suggesting that whereas those scoring high on collectivism are likely to offer strong support to in-group members (i.e., friends), they are less inclined to support those outside this group (i.e., strangers) (Leung & Bond, 1984). We also include two demographic variables age and sex as additional variables that might help us unpack important links between wider structural societal factors, values measured at the individual level, and social support provision (Triandis, 1995). Previous Western research on support provision led us to predict that women will offer higher levels of support to others than their male counterparts (Trobst, Collins, & Embree, 1994). Because of the lack of previous research into age and support provision, we include age as an additional exploratory variable in our analysis. METHOD PARTICIPANTS Participants were teachers and local government administrators from Central Kalimantan, Indonesia (N = 102, 49% male, mean age 32 years), and Surrey, England (N = 84, 56% male, mean age 34.5 years: All British respondents were White British). Respondents were volunteers recruited through their work place: Response rate in Indonesia was high (95%) but was lower in the United Kingdom (56%). Questionnaires were distributed in England by the second author and in Indonesia by an Indonesian research assistant. All questionnaires were completed anonymously and without payment. MEASURES Following back translation and decentering of inventory items, individualism-collectivism was assessed using 17 of the items from the pancultural measure of individ ualism-

3 Goodwin, Giles / SUPPORT AND CULTURAL VALUES 3 TABLE 1 Analysis of Variance for Cultural, Sex, Age, and Target Effects on Social Support Source df F η 2 p Between subjects Age Culture ** Sex ** Error 178 (224.43) Within subjects Target ** Target Culture ** Error 178 (62.77) NOTE: Numbers in parentheses represent mean square errors. **p <.01. collectivism (Triandis et al., 1986). This scale examines self-reliance with hedonism and separation from in-groups (reflecting individualism) and family integrity, interdependence, and sociability (reflecting collectivism), with the 17 items spread across the scales following pilot trials and recoded to form an overall individualism index. Although intrascalar reliability for this complete scale was relatively low standardised alpha =.59:.65 in Britain,.57 in Indonesia: test for the equality of reliability coefficients, F(101, 83) = 1.23, p >.05, this scale may be seen as reflecting the diversity of the individualism-collectivism concept, (Triandis, 1995) and reliabilities were consistent with similar uses of this scale (Goodwin, Nizharadze, Nguyen Luu, Kosa, & Emelyanova, 2001; Singelis, Triandis, Bhawuk, & Gelfand, 1995). To assess support provision, we used a modified version of Trobst et al. s (1994) Supportive Actions Scale, which assesses the degree of help individuals would provide to others. Respondents were asked, Imagine your closest friend has a problem which is serious but not life threatening. Using the scale below please judge to what extent you would perform the following actions. Respondents indicated the extent to which they were prepared to provide help by indicating the extent to which they would perform 20 actions on 5-point scales (e.g., Inform them about possible solutions, Assure them that he/she is still a worthwhile person ). All respondents then repeated the task for someone you have just met for the first time. Overall internal scalar reliability was good for both friends and strangers conditions, and there were no significant differences in scale reliability between the cultures (overall αs =.83 and.92 for support to friends and strangers, respectively). RESULTS First, we examined the relative impact of culture, type of support (support to stranger or friend), sex and age on support provision in a Culture Support Target Sex Age ANCOVA with age as our covariate (see Table 1). Indonesians reported higher overall support levels, Ms of (SE = 1.05) versus (SE = 1.20) for Britain and Indonesia, respectively, and women were more likely to provide support than men, Ms of (SE = 1.16) versus (SE = 1.08) for women and men, respectively. There were significant within-subject effects for the type of support offered and an interaction between support type and culture, with the Indonesians most willing to provide the greater support to strangers (Ms of for Indonesia vs for Britain). There were no significant national differences

4 4 JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY TABLE 2 Summary of Regression Analysis of Individualism, Culture, Age, and Sex as Significant Predictors of Social Support Variable B SE B β Combined country data Support to friends Culture ** Age * Individualism * Individualism Culture ** Support to strangers Individualism * Individualism Culture ** Country-specific hierarchical analyses Support to strangers in Britain Individualism ** Sex * Support to friends in Indonesia Age * Support to friends in Britain Individualism ** Sex * NOTE: Only significant findings are reported. The lower half of the table provides only Step 2 of the hierarchical regressions. *p <.05. **p <.01. in levels of support to friends (Ms of vs for the Indonesians and British, respectively). Next, we considered the impact of individualism-collectivism on social support. Contrary to our expectation, there were no significant differences between the cultures on individualism-collectivism, F(1, 178) = 2.78 p =.10, Ms = (SD =.28) and (SD =.36) for Indonesia and Britain, respectively. There were also no significant gender differences in individualism-collectivism, F(1, 178) =.18 p =.67, although older respondents did score higher on this variable, F(1, 178) = 5.00, p <.03. We then ran regression analyses to assess the impact of culture, individualism, age, and gender, and their interactions with culture, on the two types of support. Culture, individualism, and age, and the interactions between culture and individualism, were all significant predictors of support to friends, with individualists and older respondents reporting higher levels of support (see Table 2). Only individualism, and the interaction between culture and individualism, significantly predicted support to strangers, with individualists reporting higher levels of support. Finally, in separate regression analyses for each culture, again analysing each target separately, individualism was entered first in a blocked regression analysis followed by age and gender. In Indonesia, none of the variables entered significantly predicted support for strangers, but in Britain individualism and gender were both significant predictors of support for strangers, with collectivists and female respondents offering greater support to strangers. Older respondents in Indonesia offered more support for friends, whereas in Britain collectivists and women offered greater aid to friends.

5 Goodwin, Giles / SUPPORT AND CULTURAL VALUES 5 DISCUSSION In our Introduction, we criticised previous research into individualism-collectivism and social support by noting that earlier researchers had frequently committed the ecological fallacy of assuming that national differences in values necessarily reflect individual differences in cultural values. In our study, the anticipated (and observed) differences in support provision could not be explained by cultural level variations in individualism-collectivism. Furthermore, it was only in Britain that there was a significant correlation between individualism and support for either target support group. How might we explain these findings? One potential reason for this lack of cultural differences in individualism may be due to problems with the measure of individualism used in this study, which had relatively low intrascalar reliability. Furthermore, other unmeasured individual-level variables, such as fatalism (e.g., Goodwin et al., 2001) might have been more important in predicting support. However, an important possibility is that support behaviour is not so readily predicted by individual-level, psychological measures of individualism or that such predictability is culture specific. Macro and ecological factors such as differences in financial resources and educational opportunities may instead be of greater significance for support provision, with such factors influencing both the ability to provide support (Hobfoll, 1999) and the location, size, and homogeneity of the social network (Triandis, 2001). A second focus of this study was on the comparison between two different targets of received support friends and strangers. Contrary to our expectations and previous findings (e.g., Leung & Bond, 1984), there were no significant differences between the cultures in provision of support to friends, but the Indonesians provided greater support to strangers than their British counterparts. Such a finding may reflect the social norm of tolongmenolong (helping one another), well established within Indonesian village society (Higgins & Higgins, 1963) but arguably less present in modern-day Britain, with its longer tradition of industrialisation and social movement. Such culture-specific, social role focused norms might play an important part in the development of different collectivisms in different societies, with potentially important consequences for both the definition of group membership and the implications of this membership for social responsibility across cultures (Fiske, 2002). Cultural differences in the role of sex and age in support provision also underlined the importance of culture-specific effects in our study, with female respondents in Britain more willing to offer support to both friends and strangers and older Indonesians more willing to offer support to friends. The lack of gender differences in support provision in our Indonesian data may be attributable to the high level of education within our sample, whereas the willingness of older Indonesian respondents to offer greater support to friends may have resulted from the process of Indonesianisation that occurred in the decades immediately following Indonesian independence and which actively encouraged social cohesion (Beers, 1970). Needless to say, such demographic factors need to be further explored in larger and more representative studies if we are to fully understand the range of factors informing support provision in these two cultures.

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