Communal Motives Towards Parents and Perceived Self-Parent Agreement

Kenneth D Locke,Hiroaki Morio,Shanmukh Kamble,Khairul A Mastor,Jose Alberto S Reyes,José De Jesús Vargas-Flores,Joselina Ibáñez-Reyes,Geoff Macdonald,Daniela Barni

doi:10.1525/collabra.22165

Abstract

Associations have been found between communal motives to feel warmly connected with others and perceiving similarities between self and others, presumably because perceived self-other similarity helps satisfy those motives. The current research examined the phenomenon in a novel and consequential context: Young adults’ perceived self-parent agreement regarding the values or preferences the young adult should prioritize in making life decisions. First, we describe an unregistered study in which 2,071 undergraduates from eight countries reported the qualities (e.g., attractive, outspoken) they prioritized when evaluating a potential spouse and the qualities they believed their parents would want them to prioritize. Second, we describe a registered study in which 1,141 undergraduates from five countries reported their basic values (e.g., security, hedonism) and the values they believed their parents would want them to prioritize. As hypothesized, stronger communal motives towards parents predicted greater self-parent agreement (regardless of the order in which students completed the measures). We also introduce a method for differentiating sources of individual differences in perceived agreement reflecting covariation between normative (average) and/or distinctive (non-normative) components of participants’ profiles of self- and other-ratings. Analyzing these distinct components of agreement suggested that communal motives were associated more strongly with students projecting their values onto their parents than with students introjecting parents’ values onto themselves, although both mechanisms—projection and introjection—likely played a role.

Highlights

For each hypothesis, support requires the association to be positive (p < .05, 1-tailed) and the effect size to exceed the smallest effect size of interest (SESOI); and disconfirmation requires the lack of a significant positive association and—applying an inferiority or directional equivalence test—the upper-bound of the effect size’s 90% confidence interval to be less than the SESOI
Framing the effects of communal motives on components of agreement as percentages of the effect of communal motives on overall agreement reinforced the above findings: Twice as much of communal motives’ association with overall perceived agreement was attributable to its association with Normativeself x Distinctiveparent versus with Normativeparent x Distinctiveself agreement
Because Normativeself x Distinctiveparent agreement can reflect projection but not introjection and Normativeparent x Distinctiveself agreement can reflect introjection but not projection, these results are consistent with effects of communal motives on perceived agreement involving more projection than introjection

Summary

Introduction

Support requires the association to be positive (p < .05, 1-tailed) and the effect size to exceed the smallest effect size of interest (SESOI); and disconfirmation requires the lack of a significant positive association and—applying an inferiority or directional equivalence test—the upper-bound of the effect size’s 90% confidence interval to be less than the SESOI (see Lakens, 2017).

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Methods

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Discussion

Conclusion