TY - JOUR
T1 - Defining and Measuring Harmony Control
AU - Morling, Beth
AU - Fiske, Susan T.
N1 - Funding Information:
This study proposes a new control construct, harmony control (HC), inspired by a reanalysis of Rothbaum, Weisz, and Snyder’s (1982) primary and secondary control constructs. Traditional primary control, and its supporting construct secondary control, affirm the Western cultural emphasis on an agentic self that separates positively from others. Harmony control reflects an interdependent self-concept. In HC, people are flexible and adjusting, and they recognize the agency that resides in spiritual and social forces. Guided by culturally informed views of the interdependent self and previously defined categories of secondary control, the present research develops an individual difference measure of HC framed independently of traditional primary and secondary control. Results from over 2300 community and student participants show that the scale meets traditional psychometric standards for reliability and predictive validity. As predicted, HC correlates with interdependence and This research was conducted as Beth Morling’s doctoral dissertation, chaired by Susan T. Fiske, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. We both thank the other committee members, Seymour Epstein, Bonnie Strickland, and Hariharan Swaminathan, for their invaluable suggestions and statistical advice. National Institutes of Health Training Grant MH18827 supported Beth Morling; portions of this research were supported by National Science Foundation Grant SBR9421480 and National Institute of Mental Health Grant 41801 awarded to Susan Fiske. A Grant-In-Aid of Research from Sigma Xi, awarded to Beth Morling, provided travel funds for the Texas A&M, Corpus Christi sample. Portions of this research were presented at the 1996 convention of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Ontario. We gratefully acknowledge Susan and Jamie King and Vernon and Jayme Goodwin, who arranged the participation of the Wally Byam Caravan Club, and Robert Schatz, who arranged the data collection at Texas A&M, Corpus Christi. We thank Abigail Farrar for coding data and Sudheer Potluri, Nancy Landsberg, and Tara Noyes for conducting the predictive validity study. We thank George Levinger and three anonymous reviewers for providing valuable feedback on early versions of the manuscript.
PY - 1999/12
Y1 - 1999/12
N2 - This study proposes a new control construct, harmony control (HC), inspired by a reanalysis of Rothbaum, Weisz, and Snyder's (1982) primary and secondary control constructs. Traditional primary control, and its supporting construct secondary control, affirm the Western cultural emphasis on an agentic self that separates positively from others. Harmony control reflects an interdependent self-concept. In HC, people are flexible and adjusting, and they recognize the agency that resides in spiritual and social forces. Guided by culturally informed views of the interdependent self and previously defined categories of secondary control, the present research develops an individual difference measure of HC framed independently of traditional primary and secondary control. Results from over 2300 community and student participants show that the scale meets traditional psychometric standards for reliability and predictive validity. As predicted, HC correlates with interdependence and collectivism and is orthogonal to two measures of traditional primary control. HC is uncorrelated with self-esteem, suggesting that harmony control may not engage self-efficacy because the social context is more in focus than the self. Women and Hispanics, two groups for whom role requirements and cultural background emphasize interdependence and harmony, score higher than men and Anglos, respectively. In a laboratory study, people higher in HC were more likely to transfer decision power to another person or to chance.
AB - This study proposes a new control construct, harmony control (HC), inspired by a reanalysis of Rothbaum, Weisz, and Snyder's (1982) primary and secondary control constructs. Traditional primary control, and its supporting construct secondary control, affirm the Western cultural emphasis on an agentic self that separates positively from others. Harmony control reflects an interdependent self-concept. In HC, people are flexible and adjusting, and they recognize the agency that resides in spiritual and social forces. Guided by culturally informed views of the interdependent self and previously defined categories of secondary control, the present research develops an individual difference measure of HC framed independently of traditional primary and secondary control. Results from over 2300 community and student participants show that the scale meets traditional psychometric standards for reliability and predictive validity. As predicted, HC correlates with interdependence and collectivism and is orthogonal to two measures of traditional primary control. HC is uncorrelated with self-esteem, suggesting that harmony control may not engage self-efficacy because the social context is more in focus than the self. Women and Hispanics, two groups for whom role requirements and cultural background emphasize interdependence and harmony, score higher than men and Anglos, respectively. In a laboratory study, people higher in HC were more likely to transfer decision power to another person or to chance.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0001179694&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=0001179694&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1006/jrpe.1999.2254
DO - 10.1006/jrpe.1999.2254
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0001179694
SN - 0092-6566
VL - 33
SP - 379
EP - 414
JO - Journal of Research in Personality
JF - Journal of Research in Personality
IS - 4
ER -