Examining Within-Country Variability in Relational Mobility: Lessons from Brazil

Socio-ecological contexts vary in the degree they afford mobility concerning interpersonal relationships and group membership. While high-mobility contexts give individuals the opportunity and freedom to choose new and discard old relationships, individuals within low-mobility contexts have fewer opportunities and less freedom to select interaction partners based on personal preference. Drawing from this observation, scholars have conceptualised relational mobility as a socio-ecological construct reflecting how much freedom in interpersonal or intergroup choice a given social environment affords individuals. An emerging line of research has examined relational mobility both within and across nations. In this talk, we will present results from two large studies examining relational mobility across all federative units and geo-socio-political regions in Brazil, which is a continent-size country in terms of both territory and population. Study 1 included relational mobility data from 647 respondents (92% female; M_age = 22.31, SD_age = 9.57) and Study 2 from 7343 respondents (85.6% female; M_age = 26.30, SD_age = 13.53). Results from both studies indicated that respondents from the North region score significantly lower on relational mobility than respondents from the Northeast region. This suggests that Brazilians from the North region of the country feel their socio-ecological context affords less freedom in interpersonal or intergroup choices than those living in the Northeast region. Hofstede and colleagues (2010) observed a marked distinction between these two regions, with greater Masculinity in the North compared to the Northeast; and Thomson and colleagues (submitted) observed a negative correlation between relational mobility and Masculinity in their 39-society study. These findings suggest that within and across country variability in relational mobility has parallels with the degree to which social gender roles are clearly distinct in society. Implications of the findings will be discussed.