Abstract
Cognitive dissonance, traditionally conceptualized as a fundamental psychological process involving discomfort from inconsistent cognitions, may vary across cultures. These variations could be attributed to self-construal, or how individuals define themselves in relation to others. Although previous cross-cultural research has predominantly used the free-choice paradigm, significant concerns have been raised regarding its procedural validity and the robustness of its findings. To address this issue, this registered report presents secondary analyses of a large-scale international dataset. We investigated the moderating role of cultural variables on dissonance effects within the induced-compliance paradigm across 18 countries (N = 3,804). We hypothesized that dissonance effects would be stronger for participants with higher individual-level self-construal scores (H1), in more individualistic countries (H2), and in countries with higher country-level self-construal scores (H3). Our results did not support these hypotheses, suggesting that cultural moderation may not generalize to the induced-compliance paradigm. We discuss the necessity of reassessing the procedure’s reliability and clarifying the theoretical role of choice.