Cultural Estrangement: The Role of Personal and Societal Value Discrepancies

Abstract

Study 1 examined whether cultural estrangement arises from discrepancies between personal and societal values (e.g., freedom) rather than from discrepancies in attitudes toward political (e.g., censorship) or mundane (e.g., pizza) objects. The relations between different types of value discrepancies, estrangement, subjective well-being, and need for uniqueness also were examined. Results indicated that personal-societal discrepancies in values and political attitudes predicted estrangement, whereas mundane attitude discrepancies were not related to estrangement. As expected, value discrepancies were the most powerful predictor of estrangement. Value discrepancies were not related to subjective well-being but fulfilled a need for uniqueness. Study 2 replicated the relations between value discrepancies, subjective well-being, and need for uniqueness while showing that a self-report measure of participants' values and a peer-report measure of the participants' values yielded the same pattern of value discrepancies. Together, the studies reveal theoretical and empirical benefits of conceptualizing cultural estrangement in terms of value discrepancies.