Teaching and learning guide for: culture and development of self-regulation

Across the lifespan, individuals act to achieve desired goals as agents of their own development. A central means for goal attainment is self-regulation – modifying internal processes and behavior to reach one’s goals. Recently, self-regulation has become a topic of intensive research in psychology, with focuses on education, intergroup processes, and consumer behavior. Individuals differ in their preference of goals and also in their ways of reaching these goals. To understand why individuals differ in the ability and motivation to self-regulate, it is key to study the development of self-regulation, taking into account the cultural context. Most research on the development of self-regulation has been carried out with Anglo-Americans, ignoring differences in standards for self-regulation (behavior and emotion regulation) and related strategies for people from different cultural backgrounds. In line with culture-psychological studies on socialization, it is assumed here that dominant cultural values and related cultural models of agency affect both the socialization conditions of the child and the developmental outcomes of self-regulation. This approach allows for an explanation of cultural and individual differences in self-regulation by linking cultural and individual agency. This article integrates recent research and suggests a cultural model of agency and self-regulation. The proposed model goes beyond individual self-regulation and takes into account interpersonal processes of interdependent self-regulation.