Allocentrism and idiocentrism as predictors of in-group perceptions: An individual difference extension of cultural patterns

Cross-cultural research has shown that collectivists have more representati ons of others in their concepts of self and other persons than do individua lists. Our research extends such research by investigating whether cultural variables of collectivism and individualism at the cultural level-conceptu alized as allocentrism and idiocentrism at the individual level-could predi ct social referencing in cognitive representations beyond that of the cultu ral-level variables. We replicated the cross-cultural finding that collecti vists generate more social references than do individualists. We also found that allocentrism was predictive of the number of social references genera ted by both European Americans and Mexican Americans. Thus, individual-leve l explanations in conjunction with cultural-level explanations may be requi red to better understand cognitive representations of social entities. (C) 2000 Academic Press.