The Development of Differentiation in Self-Evaluations: A Cross-Cultural Study

Summary

Samples of preadolescents, adolescents, and young adults of middle-class backgrounds from Canadian and Asian-Indian populations were used to assess the hypothesis that with age, individuals reveal increasing differentiation in categories of personal characteristics, when evaluating themselves. The results of this cross-cultural study showed a linear increase in variance with age, in both cultural samples, and confirmed the findings of earlier investigations conducted exclusively with American-born subjects. Consistency of the findings of increasing differentiation in self-evaluations with age in the American, Canadian, and Asian samples suggests that such differentiation is a basic developmental factor in the organization of self-evaluations across cultures. In addition, it was found that, as compared with the Canadian sample, the Asian sample had significantly lower mean summation self-evaluation scores and lower mean variance scores at each age level. The implications of these cultural differences are discussed.