Environmentally friendly consumer choices: Cultural differences in the self-regulatory function of anticipated pride and guilt

Anticipated self-conscious emotions, such as pride and guilt, help individuals to behave in line with their personal and social standards regarding the environment. We seek to explore whether this self-regulatory role of anticipated pride and guilt functions similarly across individuals from different cultures (N = 3854). We show that there are no differences across countries in the self-regulatory function of anticipated pride and guilt within collectivistic and individualistic cultures but that there are differences between collectivistic and individualistic cultures. For example, for individuals from individualistic countries, anticipated emotions are more strongly affected by attitudes than they are for individuals from collectivistic countries. The results provide a first indication that the function of emotions is more social in nature for individuals from collectivistic than individualistic cultures. These findings imply that cultural differences in the function of emotions are associated with cultural differences in self-construal.