Individual models of social behavior.

Presents a technique that extracts individual models of social behavior. Such models reflect each individual's ideas about what social behaviors are interrelated, and what aspects of social situations are linked to different levels of probability that particular patterns of social behavior will occur. The method was used in 2 studies, one with bicultural Ss (1 American, 6 Latin Americans, 2 Hong Kong Chinese, and 1 Greek) and the other with 22 monocultural Mexican and Chinese Ss and 8 of the bilinguals from the 1st study. For each S, factor analysis of the judgments concerning the probability of occurrence of specific social behaviors in specific social situations provided information of how the S linked social behaviors. ANOVA on the factor scores provided information about the S's beliefs concerning how attributes of social situations are linked to social behaviors. Inspection of the individual models of social behavior indicated that some common elements across models are probably linked to culture. The technique has wide applicability for social and personality psychology because it permits idiographic comparison of models of social behavior across individuals who share some attribute. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)