Is Primacy of Primary Control Universal? Comparisons Between Ideal-Actual Levels of Control Strategies Among Youth and Emerging Adults Across Four Countries

Control strategies are cognitive, affective, and/or behavioral attempts to improve one’s status quo in social situations. A widely cited dichotomy classifies control strategies into two processes: primary and secondary control. Primary control refers to behaviors aimed at changing one’s external realities, whereas secondary control refers to people’s attempts to change themselves. Previous literature has provided conflicting views regarding the interplay between culture and control orientation: mostly, East Asian preference for secondary control and Western preference for primary control versus universal preference for primary control. We clarify this inconsistency by differentiating between ideal and actual control choices. We hypothesized that primary control would be universally preferred over secondary control at the ideal level, whereas that would not be the case for actual control choices. Consistent with the prediction, a systematic review of the previous research (Study 1) generally supports the hypothesized pattern, and our data from four countries in Study 2 suggest a primacy of primary over secondary control at the ideal level, a preference that is not always manifested in actual choice. An additional analysis of cultural unpackaging showed that, among other individual differences, prevention focus in particular is at play when people hesitate to use primary control despite their desire to use it.