Being a parent together: Parental role salience promotes an interdependent self-construal

Abstract

Self-construal has been shown to be exert consequential influences on thinking and doing. Although how people construe themselves is often deemed as a chronic and stable individual difference, relatively little is known about the factors that could potentially shape the extent to which individuals form an independent-self or an interdependent-self. In the current work, we try to explore whether and how the salience of parental roles would affect self-construal. Given that an interdependent self-construal helps individuals maintain connectedness and harmony with others in a group, which is adaptive for being a parent, we propose that parental roles tend to increase the perceived connection with others, thus leading to an interdependent self-construal. Findings from three studies consistently show that a salient parental role promotes an interdependent self-construal. Moreover, we observe that parents' role salience only prompts an interdependent self-construal in relation to other people without increasing the connection with one's future self. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.