Simplicity versus complexity : navigating social diversity with self-views and worldviews

Abstract

People differ in the ways to define themselves and understand the world, which influence their social and cognitive functioning, thereby providing them with different experiences to deal with social diversity. Yet, research examining adjustment by incorporating both self-views and worldviews is limited. As self-views and worldviews are two important parts in human belief system, they may function complementarily to influence people's functioning. A dual-path moderated mediation model, drawn upon schema theory, experiential learning theory and multi-tasking literature, outlines the processes and conditions in which complex beliefs help people cope with social diversity. Specifically, complex beliefs function as schema to foster adjustment through facilitating the learning of social skills and the practices of flexible thinking, and that these beneficial outcomes depend largely on people's motivation to tolerate ambiguity when processing social information. Adopting a multi-method approach, the cross-sectional, experimental, and longitudinal findings from this research generalized across various personal and interpersonal domains of adjustment, and across different groups of individuals, to support this dual-path moderated mediation model. Additional analyses showed that the predictive effects of self-complexity and social complexity on adjustment did not differ, indicating that self-views and worldviews are equally important to people's psychological functioning. Overall, the present research not only provided empirical evidence to support the beneficial roles of self-complexity and social complexity in well-being, but also laid important groundwork to understand the process to navigate successfully in this emerging social and cultural diversity.