LAUSR

Early work by Hofstede (Behavior Science Research, 18 (4), 285–305, 1983) described Costa Rica as among the most culturally collective of 52 countries studied. Later work described the people of Costa Rica as low in group orientation, an outlier compared to other Latin American populations (Oyserman et al. Psychological Bulletin, 128(1), 3–72, 2002). To examine this inconsistency, the current study assessed 69 Costa Rican university students’ responses on two well-known explicit attitude measures and one scenario measure of implicit tendencies (Kitayama et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(2), 236–255, 2009) related to group orientation. Responses were compared to those of North American participants who were of European (40) and African (60) heritage. Reliability estimates varied among the measures and in the sample groups. Costa Ricans did not differ from U.S. participants in interdependent but scored higher than both US groups in independent self-construal. Their communalism scores were lower. On the measure of implicit tendencies, however, they rated themselves more similar to communal than individualistic and competitive peers, and less similar to the individualistic peer than did either group of U.S. participants. These findings complicate the question of whether Costa Rican group orientation is at odds with other Latin American populations and raise important general questions about cross group measurement of culture.