Empirical Studies Regarding the Compatibility of Autonomy and Relatedness

different kinds of relatedness and different levels of analysis (individual and cultural). The incompatibility is mainly on the cultural level due to different overall emphases on autonomy (stronger in individualistic cultures) and relatedness (stronger in collectivistic cultures). The two perspectives may be reconciled by the fact that both argue that in traditional collectivistic cultures (or in the family model of total interdependence) relatedness is incompatible with autonomy, and therefore negatively related to it. However, when social change comes in as in Kagitcibasi’s model, and when a socialization focus on autonomy becomes more prevalent (as in the family model of emotional interdependence), will close relationships continue in the form of assurance or will they necessarily change to more trust-based relationships? The latter hypothesis would be in accordance with a culture-shift model in direction of Western relationships (and could be derived from Rothbaum and Trommsdorff’s model when extrapolating their view to include cultural change) while the former would entail a new form where closeness in the form of assurance would somehow become compatible with autonomy.

2.2.4 Empirical Studies Regarding the Compatibility of Autonomy and Relatedness

The empirical studies reviewed in section 2.2.2 all take Kagitcibasi’s theory of family change explicitly as a starting point and were therefore reviewed here in detail. There are other empirical studies related to the compatibility of autonomy and relatedness that are not explicitly based on Kagitcibasi’s approach but are nevertheless relevant here. These studies will be summarized in the following.

Beyers, Goossens, Vansant, and Moors (2003) investigated the structure of autonomy in two Dutch samples of high school students and university students. They found four different aspects of adolescents’ autonomy: connectedness, separation, detachment, and agency. While the first three components were substantially inter-correlated, much lower correlations were found between agency and the three other components. This suggests that relatedness and agency are independent dimensions and therefore supports the notion asserting their compatibility. Inspired by Beyers et al.’s (2003) results and by Kagitcibasi’s (2005a) conceptualization of autonomy and relatedness as separate dimensions, Yeh and Yang (2006) introduced the concepts of individuating and relating autonomy. While individuating autonomy is focused on the person and therefore combining autonomy with the separateness pole of the separateness-relatedness dimension, relating autonomy is focused on the interpersonal domain and combines autonomy with relatedness. A confirmatory factor analysis with culturally Chinese adolescents in Taiwan showed that both types of autonomy could be differentiated though they were also substantially positively correlated, and that they could also be discerned from the constructs of detachment and public conformity. As expected, individuating autonomy was more related to personal domain variables like self-esteem or internalizing problems, while relating autonomy was more related to interpersonal domain variables like social skills or delinquent behavior. The authors emphasize that their conceptualization of individuating and relating autonomy “can coexist for culturally Chinese adolescents, although they have different implications for psychological and social adjustment. The former mainly functions in the intrapsychic or personal domain, while the latter functions in the interpersonal domain. […] In other words, they should be seen as two kinds of coexisting differentiation processes for adolescent development.” (Yeh & Yang, 2006, p. 150).

Further results confirming the compatibility of autonomy and relatedness as well as the conduciveness of both for a healthy adolescent development come from studies based on self-determination theory. For example, Ryan and Lynch (1989) found that emotional autonomy as conceptualized by Steinberg and Silverberg (1986), was negatively correlated with adjustment aspects of adolescent self development like self-esteem, perceived competence, and lovability. This is contrary to the frequent finding that autonomy is positively related to indexes of adjustment (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 1987). In their review of autonomy and relatedness in relation to development and psychopathology, Ryan, Deci, and Grolnick (1995) conclude that the term ‘emotional autonomy’ as used by Steinberg and Silverberg (1986) is a misnomer because it equates emotional detachment from parents with

autonomy rather than defining autonomy with respects to the notions of volitional freedom and agency. Furthermore, they suggest that the fact that detachment (‘emotional autonomy’) and autonomy in an agentic sense show opposite relations with adolescents’ adjustment is an indication of the need to differentiate autonomy from detachment and independence. This line of reasoning is also confirmed by Chou (2000) who found that two components (individuation and de-idealization of parents) of emotional autonomy as defined by Steinberg and Silverberg (1986) were associated with depressive symptomatology in Hong Kong adolescents.

In a study of South Korean, Russian, Turkish and US samples, Chirkov, Ryan, Kim, and Kaplan (2003) found that participants’ relative autonomy was related to well-being in all four cultures. The term relative autonomy concerns the different cultural practices endorsed by members of different cultures and the respective consequences for autonomy: in collectivistic cultures, group goals rather than individual goals can be autonomously chosen after the respective cultural norms are internalized. Therefore, the notion of relative autonomy emphasizes that volitional and agentic autonomy is possible in different cultural settings and has to be distinguished from separation and detachment.

Lin and Fu (1990) found that Chinese parents in Taiwan as well as Chinese immigrant parents in the US used more control than European-American parents but at the same time encouraged more independence than European-American parents. Thus, from the perspective of these Chinese parents the combination of controlling parenting and autonomy-granting parenting seems to be possible. A similar view is expressed by Xia et al. (2005) reporting that in China both adolescents’ individuation as well as their connectedness with the family is nurtured by parents. In a paper reporting individualistic and collectivistic aspects in Korean culture Cha (1994) contends that though individualism is on the rise in Korea, collectivistic attitudes especially with respect to filial duties stay in high regard. This is reflected in a changing parenting style where parents now grant more autonomy to their children on the one hand while at the same time enforcing traditional standards of filial piety and group obligations. Findings by Stewart, Bond, Deeds and Chung (1999) point in a similar direction:

these authors showed that although Chinese mothers in Hong Kong moved towards more individualistic values they still showed markedly later autonomy expectations for their children than Western parents living in Hong Kong.

In a study of middle-class early and late adolescents in Pakistan Stewart et al. (2003) report results with respect to behavioral autonomy, emotional autonomy, detachment from parents, and psychological adjustment. The results showed that early behavioral autonomy in

questions of personal choice was associated with good psychological adjustment. In contrast, detachment from parents was never associated with good adjustment. This is in contrast to findings from studies in the West where detachment has been found to be adaptive when parents are not perceived as supportive. The authors conclude that the findings emphasize the persistence of emotional interdependence across generations in the collectivistic Pakistani culture. This study highlights that autonomy in the sense of decision-making on one’s own terms is conducive in the culturally appropriate domains and does not have to be in contrast to close and supportive parent-adolescent relationships. A similar conclusion is drawn by Kwak (2003) in a review of family relations regarding immigrant families: when the core cultural values of family embeddedness are supported by the family and its socio-cultural network, immigrant families from collectivistic cultures are able to maintain healthy intergenerational relations, especially when the adolescents growing up in these families are able and willing to delay their pursuit of autonomy.

A compatibility of autonomy-oriented and relatedness-oriented values is also highlighted by Reykowski (1994). The results reported show that moving towards individualism at a more general level does not necessarily imply a renunciation of collectivistic values and norms at a deeper level and in concrete situations. In his study, Polish and German adolescents did not differ with respect to general individualistic and collectivistic value orientations. When the adolescents encountered problems like finding a partner or choosing a specialization at school, however, Polish adolescents “turned to their families as the main source of support instead of relying on themselves. This lack of self-reliance reveals deep-seated beliefs about the responsibility of one’s group for one’s fate, a reaction that is in apparent contradiction with the individualist posture demonstrated in other contexts.”

(Reykowski, 1994, p. 290). Though this study does not explicitly focus on autonomy and relatedness, the co-existence of individualistic and collectivistic mind-sets in Polish youth reveal aspects of the integration of elements resulting from social change towards individualism after the breakdown of the iron curtain with traditional group-centered views in Polish society. It also suggests that sometimes one has to have a deeper look into values and beliefs: tapping general value orientations may not reveal more deeply-rooted attitudes and inclinations that are personally important but maybe not en vogue at that time. However, Reykowski (1994) also notes that the discrepancy found between general and more concrete values in Polish adolescents may also be a transitional phenomenon and that the ‘superficial’

individualism shown then may completely replace the collectivistic orientation now still existent in personally relevant situations.

Overall, the above cited studies show that especially in modernizing Asian cultures there is a trend to combine connectedness and collectivism with individual goals and strengthened autonomy. Thus, it seems that in these transitional and modernizing cultures there has been a shift towards the family model of emotional interdependence at least with regard to the above mentioned aspects. Studies based on self-determination theory also show that generally autonomy and relatedness are compatible. However, from this theoretical point of view, autonomy is solely defined in terms of agency without any individualistic connotations. From the perspective of the Rothbaum and Trommsdorff (2007) one could contend that the general compatibility and positive correlation (on the individual level) between autonomy and relatedness is nothing new since it was always conceptualized by (Western) psychological theories as compatible or even complementary. Thus, what would have to be shown in addition to their compatibility is that the level of relatedness is not on the decline (and/or does not change its quality from assurance to trust) when autonomy is on the rise in modernizing cultures of relatedness.

2.2.5 Summary

Kagitcibasi’s theory of family change presents a contextualist, structural/functional, and cross-cultural perspective on the family and on family change. The three hypothesized ideal-typical family models include the family model of (total) interdependence characterized by emotional as well as material interdependencies between family members in all spheres of life. Life is the family, and one cannot exist outside the family system. This family model is entirely pre-modern and assumed to be found mostly in rural areas of cultures with low affluence. In terms of broader value orientations, its outlook is collectivistic. On the contrary, the family model of independence is characterized by emotional and material independence and the general outlook is individualistic. This family model is thought to exist mainly in Western industrialized cultures. As a synthesis of the two former models, the family model of emotional interdependence is characterized by decreasing material interdependencies while emotional interdependencies stay high. This family model is hypothesized to be prominent in modernizing cultures with a collectivistic background.

The existing studies based on the theory of family change show mixed results with respect to the existence of the three proposed family models. The large study by Georgas et al.

(2006) exhibits many problematic features. Though the authors claim that they identified the family model of emotional interdependence, a closer look at the results of this study reveals that this conclusion is only partly justified. The results reported by Keller et al. (2006) suggest

that although a family model of emotional interdependence may exist in modernizing cultures of relatedness it is more likely that it represents a transitory phenomenon with the independent model as the endpoint of family development. The study by van den Heuvel and Poortinga (1999) was not really appropriate to test Kagitcibasi’s model in terms of the selected cultures and respondents. Nevertheless, although the authors conclude that the results do not substantiate Kagitcibasi’s model, in her rejoinder Kagitcibasi (1999) herself lays out that overall the results are in favor of her model. Finally, the study by Kagitcibasi and Ataca (2005) showed a clear decline of material interdependencies and other indicators of the family model of total interdependence (like son preference) across three decades in Turkish society as well as across urban-rural regions and social strata in the present VOC-study, but the differences with respect to the indicators of emotional interdependence were less clear. Thus, overall and especially with regard to the existence of the family model of emotional interdependence the reported studies leave many questions unanswered.

Kagitcibasi’s conceptualization of the autonomous-relational self as characteristic of the family model of emotional interdependence is closely connected to further theorizing and research with respect to the compatibility of autonomy and relatedness. It is suggested that a dimension of agency has to be distinguished from a dimension of relatedness to allow a combination of autonomous (agentic but not separate) and relational (interdependent but not heteronomous) aspects of the self. Rothbaum and Trommsdorff (2007) question the wide-held assumption that autonomy and relatedness are not compatible within Western individualistic cultural contexts. They argue that on the contrary, autonomy and relatedness are closely linked in Western cultures. Furthermore, they distinguish between trust as a Western form of relatedness and assurance as a form of relatedness prevalent more in East Asian cultures.

While trust is compatible with autonomy, assurance is not. In terms of Kagitcibasi’s model this differentiation poses the question if assurance-based relatedness changes to a more trust-based relatedness when traditional cultures of relatedness are confronted with the forces of modernization. The last part of this section reported cross-cultural empirical findings with regard to the compatibility of autonomy and relatedness in adolescents’ selves. Overall, these studies suggest that especially in modernizing Asian cultures a conception of the self as autonomous and relational is on the rise.

2.3 Adolescents’ Family Models: An Overview of Concepts in the Study