Is human Identification Universal? Cross-cultural Equivalence of the Identification With All Humanity Scale

People tend to identify with broad groups, like ethnic, religious, national or even with whole humanity. Earlier studies show that identification with all humanity (IWAH) is stable over time and therefore may be seen as an individual characteristic. It is positively associated with empathy, openness to experience and universalism, and negatively correlated with ethnocentrism, blind patriotism, right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation and religious fundamentalism. It predicts a human rights orientation, concern for global issues and enhances intergroup forgiveness toward historical perpetrators.

In order to check if identification with all humanity appears in different cultures, we have conducted studies in Poland (N = 311), Chile (N = 142), Mexico (N = 211) and the US (N = 313). The results show that the tendency to identify with the whole humanity is a phenomenon that exists in all included countries. Identification with all humanity scale (McFarland et al., 2012) had high reliability in all countries. The levels of identification, as well as distributions of the results in all tested countries will be presented. Since the main goal of the project is to analyze if this broad identification functions in the same way in different cultures, our preliminary analyses concentrate on the methods of establishing the equivalence of the scale. In the presentation we will discuss possible sources of bias and solutions to it.