Changing Europe, changing self-construals: An investigation of two generations in Slovakia and Denmark

Self-construal refers to the culturally shaped view on self, and in particular the degree of inclusion of other people in one’s self-definition (Markus & Kitayama, 1991) whether in form of close relationships or important group memberships. The degree of including these social variables distinguishes between individuals who view themselves as rather separate and independent, as related to friends and family, or as part of larger social groups (Cross, Hardin, & Gercek-Swing, 2011).
Culture - encompassing political regime, socio-cultural discourses and values - is thought to promote particular types of self-construals in its members. In this understanding, people from societies undergoing a major social and cultural change should be “mirroring” this change in their intimate selves; that is, in their self-construals.
In line with the above argumentation, we conducted a study of self-construals in two European societies with distinct historical paths: Slovakia, a rapidly transforming post-communist country in Eastern Europe, and Denmark, a long-term Scandinavian welfare state. To capture the possible shift in self- construals of members of these societies, we asked two generations in each country, college students and their parents, to fill out a shortened version of Twenty Statements Test (Kuhn & McPartland, 1959). This self-description questionnaire detects prevailing views on self (private, public, or collective), as described above.
Both Danish generations have lived in a more or less similar socio-cultural discourse. The older generation in Slovakia has lived in two very different political regimes, and Slovak adolescents have direct experience with only the post-communist version. Thus, we employed these four samples (two generations by two countries) to test for a greater differences between the two generations in Slovakia compared to Denmark. In addition, we were interested in studying the types of self-construals prevalent in these samples, as data on self-construals from these populations is scarce (see Santamaría, de la Mata, Hansen, & Ruiz, 2010).
Thus far, we have found rather similar profiles in young Slovaks and Danes. Their self-construals were highly private, however, Slovak adolescents employed significantly more collective self-descriptions, viewing themselves more often as part of social and demographic groups. The older generations’ reports are currently under analysis and will be combined with the above results to enhance understanding of the dynamics of societal change and self- construals in the way described above.