Rebound Effect, Fast Adaptation to Social Change or Cultural Continuity among Two Generations of Hungarians

Abstract

The aim of the present research was to reveal what kind of values, self-conceptualisation and beliefs of personhood characterize two generations of Hungarians, almost three decades after the socio-political changes from socialism to capitalist market economy. Participants were high school students (N = 239) and adults (N = 122). Value-orientation was measured using the Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ, Schwartz et al, 2001), beliefs of personhood were measured by the Lay Contextualism Scale (Owe et al., 2013). Self-construals were measured in case of the high school students by using 23 items from Gudykunst et al. (1996) self-construal scale and in case of the adults a modified version of it (Owe et al., 2013). Results indicate that in the post-socialist Hungary, individualistic values and independent self-concept strongly characterize both the high school students and the adults, but the younger generation displays higher tendency towards individualism.