Individualism-collectivism, gender and the self-concept: A nine culture investigation

The Twenty Statements Test (TST) was used to investigate culture and gender differences in the self-conceptions of 1580 university students from 4 ind ividualist and 5 collectivist cultures. Considerable variability was found within both individualist and collectivist groups as were strong culture by gender interactions. Moreover, no support was found for the hypotheses tha t the individualist participants would provide more Idiocentric and Evaluat ive but fewer Large Group collectivist responses. The hypothesis that femal es would provide fewer Idiocentric but more Large Group, Small Group, and A llocentric self-descriptions was supported only for the individualist cultu res. The results thus question both the contention that gender differences in self-conceptions are consistent across cultures and the value of the Ind ividualism-Collectivism dimension as an explanation of cultural differences in self-conceptions. The possibility that a finer grained analysis of the Idiocentric category may lead to support for such an explanation is somethi ng that needs to be taken seriously in future research, however.