Language and Self-Construal Priming

Previous research has argued that language serves as a cognitive cue to reinforce culturally normative self-construals. We hypothesize that language-priming effects would be stronger for women than men and that they would primarily occur for self-construals that are not already latently salient in the respondents’ culture. Also, in contrast to earlier research on language priming of self-construals, we rely on Singelis’s independent and interdependent self-construal scales as closed-ended dependent measures. Using a bilingual sample from Hong Kong ( n = 126), we experimentally varied questionnaire language (English vs. Chinese) and found support for all our predictions. The discussion focuses on cue strength as moderator of language-priming effects.