Communal Motives Towards Parents and Perceived Self-Parent Agreement

Abstract

Associations have been found between communal motives to feel warmly connected with others and perceiving similarities between self and others, presumably because perceived self-other similarity helps satisfy those motives. The current research examined the phenomenon in a novel and consequential context: Young adults’ perceived self-parent agreement regarding the values or preferences the young adult should prioritize in making life decisions. First, we describe an unregistered study in which 2,071 undergraduates from eight countries reported the qualities (e.g., attractive, outspoken) they prioritized when evaluating a potential spouse and the qualities they believed their parents would want them to prioritize. Second, we describe a registered study in which 1,141 undergraduates from five countries reported their basic values (e.g., security, hedonism) and the values they believed their parents would want them to prioritize. As hypothesized, stronger communal motives towards parents predicted greater self-parent agreement (regardless of the order in which students completed the measures). We also introduce a method for differentiating sources of individual differences in perceived agreement reflecting covariation between normative (average) and/or distinctive (non-normative) components of participants’ profiles of self- and other-ratings. Analyzing these distinct components of agreement suggested that communal motives were associated more strongly with students projecting their values onto their parents than with students introjecting parents’ values onto themselves, although both mechanisms—projection and introjection—likely played a role.