Intentions to Help Friends Across Cultural Groups: The Role of Emotional Connectedness

Across five studies ( N = 1,859), we examined cross-cultural variation in emotional connectedness and intentions to help a family member, a friend, and a stranger. Samples included a nationally representative Dutch panel (Study 1), Turkish and Dutch students (Study 2), Turkish and German working adults (Study 3), culturally primed Turkish-German biculturals (Study 4), and bilingual Turkish students (Study 5). Contrary to the traditional view that collectivists prioritize in-group ties more strongly than individualists, we hypothesized greater intentions to help friends among participants from relatively individualistic contexts or primed with an individualistic cultural frame. Results consistently supported the hypothesized differences for intentions to help friends, while differences in intentions to help a family member and a stranger were less consistent and generally not reliable. Study 1 further suggested that emotional connectedness statistically accounted for group differences in intentions to help friends, and Study 5 provided tentative converging evidence that an English-language prime was associated with greater connectedness with friends than a Turkish-language prime. Together, these findings suggest that considering the role of particular relational targets within their cultural context may provide a more differentiated account of cross-cultural variation in helping than broad individualism–collectivism or in-group–out-group classifications alone.