When guiding principles do not guide: The moderating effects of cultural tightness on value-behavior links

Ample research documented the effects of guiding principles in people's lives, as reflected in personal values, on a variety of behaviors. But do these principles universally guide behaviors across all cultural contexts? To address this question, we investigated the effect of cross-cultural differences in the strength of social norms (i.e., tightness-looseness) on value-behavior relationships.

Using the archival data from the World Value Survey for 24 nations (N = 38,924; 51.40% female; M_age  = 44.98, SD = 16.87), a multi-level analysis revealed that cultural tightness moderated the effects of individual differences in personal values on behaviors from different life-domains.

As hypothesized, the relationships between self-transcendence values with civic involvement and pro-environmental behaviors, and between conservation values with religious behavior were significantly stronger in loose cultures that have weak norms and were almost nonexistent in tight cultures that have strong norms, even when controlling for individualism-collectivism or GDP.

Thus, despite the common belief that people behave in line with their guiding principles, our findings suggest this might not be the case in cultural contexts that put a strong emphasis on norms.