EFFECTS OF AGENTIVE AND NARRATIVE PRIMING TO INDUCE INDIVIDUALISM AND COLLECTIVISM IN COSTA RICAN ADOLESCENTS

In the view of individualistic and collectivist cultural ori-entations as situated cognition, it is assumed that these can be induced and modified to some extent, but questions re-main about the mechanisms by which this occurs. This quasi-experimental study examines the effect of the fol-lowing types of priming: individualistic agentive, collec-tivist agentive, individualistic narrative, and collectivist narrative, compared with neutral priming, on a sample of Costa Rican adolescents in the first year of secondary ed-ucation (N = 173; 57 % female; Mage = 12.87, DEage = 0.75 years). The results found different effects according to the type of priming, being that the agentive induced more individualistic attitudes than the narrative. The collectivist agentive activated to a lesser extent the in-dependent self-concept, characterized by self-interest, compared to the other types of priming. The theoretical and methodological implications of these findings are dis-cussed.