Cultural social psychology: intercultural relations
The Social Psychology of Democracies in Transition
Interpersonal relations across cultures
The Smith (2015) helping study
P. B. Smith (2015) analysed nation-level frequencies of three types of helping across 135 nations: helping a stranger, donating money to charity, and volunteering in the last month. The three types of helping correlate positively, so they can be combined into a pro-social behaviour index ranging from −2 to +2. Helping was highest in nations that were low on in-group favouritism and low on uncertainty avoidance. Strong in-group orientation constrains helping to within-group relations; tolerance of uncertainty enables engagement with strangers and out-groups.
The CEE position in the Smith index is in the lower half. Poland, Romania, Estonia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Greece cluster below zero, with Estonia and Hungary particularly low. Western European countries (Ireland, the Netherlands, the UK, Norway, Germany) cluster above zero, with Finland and the Scandinavian countries at the higher end of the European distribution. Myanmar and Ireland occupy the very top of the index, reflecting specific cultural conditions (Buddhist tradition of dana, Irish charitable-giving norms) that do not scale straightforwardly to other contexts.
This ranking seems to contradict the message of Lecture 9 that informal helping in CEE is often higher than Western European averages. The contradiction dissolves when we recognise that the Smith index measures formal charitable-giving and volunteering, whereas informal helping (minding neighbours’ children, helping elderly relatives, assisting strangers in concrete trouble) is not captured well by the three items Smith uses. The CEE formal-volunteering deficit coexists with an informal-helping surplus, and the Smith ranking captures only one of these.
Intercultural relations and globalisation
Recent decades have produced unprecedented contact between cultural groups. Globalisation of media (satellite television, cable, streaming, social media), short-term movement (tourism, student exchanges, business travel), and long-term movement (migration and refugee flows) have all produced levels of cross-cultural contact that would have been unimaginable in 1950. The direction of movement matters: short-term moves tend to go from individualist to collectivist countries (Western tourists visiting Asia or Africa), while long-term moves tend to go the other way (labour migration from collectivist to individualist societies). Value profiles of nations with differing historical, religious, and political systems remain distinctive, but a global trend toward post-materialist values is visible in almost every long-run dataset, and migration and intermarriage are creating growing numbers of bicultural individuals for whom the frameworks designed for mono-cultural populations do not fully apply.
Post-materialist values
Ronald Inglehart’s 1970s hypothesis that economic development produces post-materialist value change has been among the most-tested claims in the comparative-values literature. The classic items on the post-materialist scale include “my self-expression and quality of life are more important than my economic and physical security”, “I am happy”, “homosexuality is justifiable”, “you can trust most people”, and “I have signed one or more petitions”. The scale has been expanded over the years to include questions on gender equality, tolerance of minorities, recycling, state support for the needy, and attitudes toward new technologies. The shift toward post-materialism is generational: younger cohorts everywhere are more post-materialist than older cohorts, even where the level difference is small.
Attitudes toward Muslims in Europe
Pew Research Center’s 2019 survey of European attitudes toward Muslims shows that positive views are more common in Western Europe and Russia, while less favourable views are more common in most CEE countries. UK respondents have a 78% favourable view of Muslims; France, 72%; Netherlands, 70%; Germany, 69%; Bulgaria, 69%; Sweden, 68%. CEE countries with less favourable views include Poland (26% favourable), Lithuania (26%), Czech Republic (23%), Slovakia (16%), and Hungary (11%). The 2016–2019 change is a partial bright spot: unfavourable opinions of Muslims declined across most surveyed countries, with the largest declines in Hungary (−14) and Italy (−14), followed by the UK (−10), Spain (−8), and Greece (−8). The decline is consistent with the contact hypothesis discussed in Lecture 12: where contact is possible, it happens, and attitudes soften.
The education and age gradients within each country are pronounced. Less-educated respondents hold more unfavourable views of Muslims than more-educated respondents, with the gap largest in the Czech Republic (+29), the Netherlands (+18), Poland (+15), Italy (+14), Greece (+11), France (+10), Spain (+9), the UK (+8), and Germany (+6). Older respondents hold more unfavourable views than younger ones across most of Europe; the oldest-youngest gap is largest in France (+27), Sweden (+26), Italy (+21), Greece (+19), Germany (+18), the Czech Republic (+15), the UK (+14), Slovakia (+13), and the Netherlands (+9).
Attitudes toward homosexuality
The CEE generational gap on homosexuality acceptance is among the largest in Europe. In Lithuania the youngest-oldest gap is +36 percentage points in favour of younger cohorts; in the Czech Republic, +35; Slovakia, +33; Greece, +30; Hungary, +29; Poland, +29; Bulgaria, +26; Russia, +19; Italy, +16; France, +12; Sweden, +8. The pattern has two important implications. First, CEE value profiles are not frozen: they are shifting generationally, and the rate of shift is rapid. Second, the gap means that CEE politics of LGBTQ+ rights is a generational politics: the cohorts that grew up after 1989 hold attitudes much closer to Western European norms than their parents do, and the political visibility of LGBTQ+ issues depends heavily on which generation is politically mobilised at any given moment.
Women’s rights after communism
The Pew data on women’s rights after communism are one of the more striking findings of the 2019 survey. Large majorities in CEE countries say women now have more legal and social rights than they had under communism: Lithuania (60% more, 17% same, 12% fewer), Poland (52% / 31% / 11%), Hungary (50% / 23% / 9%), Slovakia (49% / 25% / 17%), Czechia (44% / 19% / 21%), Bulgaria (40% / 34% / 14%). The share saying women now have more rights has risen sharply since 1991: Poland from 12% to 52% (+40), Slovakia from 11% to 49% (+38), Czechia from 15% to 44% (+29), Bulgaria from 20% to 40% (+20), Hungary from 37% to 50% (+13). The interpretation is that transition has materially improved women’s position in many ways, and post-1989 cohorts recognise the improvement. But legal and social progress has not translated equally into all domains: gender gaps in labour-market outcomes, political representation, and unpaid care work persist.
Egalitarian marriage norms have gained ground across Europe. Sweden has 93% preference for egalitarian marriages, France 91%, Spain 90%, Germany 79%, Netherlands 78%, Greece 77%, Italy 75%, Bulgaria 76%, Poland 69% (up from approximately 43% in 1991), Slovakia 67%, Czech Republic 60% (up from 45%), Lithuania 53% (up from 38%). The CEE generational gap on traditional marriage roles mirrors the homosexuality-acceptance gap: Czech Republic (−24), Poland (−24), Italy (−17), Lithuania (−17), Slovakia (−17), Greece (−13), UK (−10), US (−9), Spain (−9). Russia is again the outlier, with young Russians more traditional than older Russians (+13).
Under economic anxiety, however, traditionalism re-asserts itself. Pew’s question “when jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than women” produces majority agreement in only one European country (Slovakia, 59%), but the disagreement is much less consensual in CEE than in Western Europe: Greece 46% agree, Poland 42%, Bulgaria 40%, Italy 40%, Czech Republic 37%, Hungary 35%, Lithuania 28%. Western European countries show much lower agreement: Sweden 7%, Spain 12%, Netherlands 14%, UK 14%, Germany 20%, France 22%. Within countries, lower-income respondents endorse the traditional norm more than higher-income respondents by approximately 15 points in most cases, suggesting that economic anxiety activates compensatory traditionalism. The relative-deprivation mechanism from Lecture 8 is visible here as gender-traditionalist attitude formation under economic pressure.
Theories in parallel
Each of the theoretical frameworks the course has used applies to migration in specific ways. Social identity theory predicts that migrants develop complex identities spanning origin and destination countries, that in-group helping patterns change through intercultural contact, and that migration creates bicultural individuals managing multiple group memberships simultaneously. Social learning theory predicts that migrants observe, retain, reproduce, and model new behaviours; that success stories in media reinforce new social norms; and that Western NGOs model civic engagement practices for CEE returnees. Learned helplessness predicts that migration provides “mastery experiences” that break helplessness cycles, with returnees coming back with increased self-efficacy beliefs. Contact theory predicts that optimal contact conditions (equal status, common goals, institutional support, sustained interaction) are often met in Western European workplaces and schools, and that positive contact experiences transfer back to origin communities. Cognitive dissonance predicts that CEE societies experience tension between collectivist past and individualist present, democratic ideals and post-communist realities, traditional values and Western liberal norms, and that migrants help resolve these tensions by modelling behaviours that demonstrate integration is possible. Social capital theory predicts that countries with higher social capital (Slovenia, Czech Republic) show more migration and more remittance; that returnees import new networking practices; and that migration experiences can either strengthen or weaken institutional trust depending on specific experiences. Terror management theory predicts that migrants help preserve valuable cultural traditions abroad (Polish Catholic churches, Hungarian cultural centres) and that helping others abroad provides existential purpose during the uncertainty of emigration. Relative deprivation explains why migration occurs in the first place: economic disparities drive initial decisions, exposure to Western living standards creates new reference groups, and perceived unfairness on return motivates collective action in the home community. Collective memory explains how migration experiences become part of collective narratives and how success stories of migrant returnees reshape shared memory of what is possible.
Conclusions
Synthesis
The cultural social psychology of CEE reveals a region in substantial transition on its own internal value dimensions, converging in many respects with Western European post-materialist norms while retaining distinctive patterns (higher gender-traditionalism under economic pressure, higher religiosity, lower formal volunteering). The generational gaps on homosexuality acceptance, traditional marriage, and women’s rights are among the largest in Europe, suggesting rapid value change that has not yet produced political consolidation. Migration is one of the engines of this value change, transferring practices and attitudes from Western European host countries to CEE sending countries through mechanisms Grabowska and Garapich call social remittances.
The right unit of analysis is therefore not the country at a single time point but the generational layer within the country. The Pew 2019 data show that on homosexuality acceptance, gender roles, and acceptance of Muslims, younger CEE cohorts have shifted dramatically toward Western European norms while older cohorts retain traditional views. This generational structure means CEE value landscapes are not frozen: convergence with Western Europe is happening, but unevenly, and the resulting intergenerational gap is itself a source of political tension that earlier lectures (populism, polarisation) help explain.
The combination of findings produces an optimistic middle-run reading of CEE cultural trajectory. Generational turnover, migration-driven value change, and post-materialist shift all point toward convergence with Western European norms over the next two decades, with some resistance from older cohorts and from specific political movements that have made illiberalism electorally profitable (Fidesz, PiS, the Slovak Smer-SD of 2024). The short-run political situation is more contested, and the course’s broader claim — that institutional and narrative choices channel the underlying psychology — remains central. The thirteen weeks have moved from micro foundations (cognition, identity, attitudes) through group processes (in-groups, prejudice, conformity) to societal-scale phenomena (collective memory, populism, intercultural relations), and the recurring lesson is that transitions are not just political or economic events but sustained psychological reorganisations operating across generations, social networks, and institutional settings. The CEE case is distinctive but not unique: the same frameworks apply to any society undergoing rapid institutional change; the post-communist experience simply offers an unusually compressed and well-documented natural experiment.
Questions for discussion
- If post-materialist values are spreading globally, are CEE and Western Europe converging on a shared value profile, or is the convergence superficial (at the level of stated attitudes) while deeper differences (hierarchy, gender roles, religion) persist? What evidence would distinguish between these possibilities?
- Social remittances require agents of change with mandate, audience, and setting. Who plays this role in contemporary CEE, and what obstructs the flow of ideas from returnees to their communities?
- The generational gap on homosexuality acceptance is larger in CEE than in Western Europe — CEE young people have moved further than CEE old people. What happens when this generation ages into positions of authority? Will CEE value profiles continue to converge with Western Europe, or does older-generation conservatism reproduce itself through political and institutional channels?
- Economic anxiety activates compensatory traditionalism (especially on gender roles). If economic conditions in CEE continue to fluctuate, what implications does this have for the durability of the post-materialist shift? Could a future economic crisis reverse the value convergence documented in the 2019 Pew data?
Social remittances: Grabowska and Garapich
The concept
Izabela Grabowska and Michał Garapich’s concept of social remittances, developed from the Polish-UK migration relationship, directs attention to the non-financial dimensions of migration flows. Classical economics focuses on financial remittances: the money migrants send home, which is substantial for many CEE economies (Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria) but less central to the Polish case. Grabowska and Garapich argue that the ideas, values, practices, codes of behaviour, norms, aspirations, and social capital that migrants transfer back to their home societies are in many cases more consequential than the money, because they can produce durable cultural change rather than short-term income effects.
The authors place their analysis in the context of CEE system transformation from centrally-planned communist to democratic market economies. The transformation is uneven and non-linear across the region: some countries show “leftovers” from the communist era and delayed convergence with Western democratic norms. Migration is not just a labour-market phenomenon but a cultural-change engine, and the specific pattern of EU-enlargement migration after 2004 produced an unprecedented exchange of people between two very different cultural-institutional systems (post-communist CEE and Western European liberal democracy).
What gets remitted
Grabowska and Garapich identify several areas in which migrants acquire ideas that address gaps in the home system. Social control in neighbourhoods and workplaces: migrants discovered it was easier to live and work in accordance with their own preferences in the UK without the overwhelming interference and evaluation that small-town post-communist societies could impose. Family, family relationships, and fertility: greater fluidity in making and breaking relationships, patchwork families, more equal sharing of childcare. Self-perception and awareness of perception by others: less scrutiny of appearance by others, and consequently less self-scrutiny, producing a sense of personal freedom that migrants then attempted to transfer to their home settings.
The transfer process is not automatic. Acquisition is only the first step; for social remittance to occur, the new ideas, values, and practices must be transferred back to the country of origin. Transfer depends on conditions at the starting point (where the ideas were acquired) and at the destination point (where they will be implemented and eventually adopted). Communication is not enough; diffusion requires active agency and purpose.
Agents of change
Potentially all migrants can transfer social remittances, but only some are active agents of change. Being an agent of change requires three things. The migrant must have the capacity to act in an agency-oriented mode, able to articulate and promote new ideas rather than merely live them. The migrant must have a social mandate, some form of recognition in the local community that allows them to transpose, promote, and develop the new ideas. And the migrant must have a regular space for diffusion, such as their own business, professional setting, or voluntary association in which the new ideas can be modelled and transmitted.
Grabowska and Garapich offer the example of a Polish nurse who had worked as a care assistant in a UK nursing home. On her return to Poland, she transferred new work practices that changed the division of labour between nurses and carers; a more holistic (mind and body) approach to patients; a sincere and empathic approach to family members; and new motivational techniques for supervisors of care-home staff. The transfer was possible because she had a professional mandate in her workplace, an audience (colleagues and juniors who respected her), and a setting (the care home) in which to model the behaviours.
The process is not smooth
Ideas, practices, norms, and values can themselves change and be locally adapted during the transfer. The individual social actor plays a much more important role than in other forms of cultural diffusion (global pop culture, media, structurally-induced change), but whether diffusion takes hold depends on collective mandate and local readiness. Particular locations have their own limitations and their own levels of readiness to acquire new ideas, regardless of the intentions of individual migrants.
Post-Brexit developments
Recent evidence has updated the Grabowska-Garapich picture. Comparative Migration Studies (2024) shows that return migration from the UK to Poland increased markedly after the 2016 Brexit referendum and especially after 2020 when Brexit took full effect; the pandemic accelerated the trend. A CEEMR (2024) study frames Brexit as an “unsettling event” that forced decisions Polish migrants had postponed. Brexit was a catalyst for life-strategy decisions, not a cause of them, but it produced a substantial return flow that brought accumulated social remittances back to Polish communities. The net effect on Polish society is gradual, diffuse, but measurable, especially in the regions with the most returnees (Podkarpackie, Podlaskie, small towns).