Coping in children and adolescents in Germany and Turkey: Cultural differences in seeking social support?

Based on the assumption that people in more collectivistic Asian cultures are more reluctant to ask for social support from others than people from more individualistic European cultures, children and adolescents (age: 9 to 16 years, grades 4 to 8) from Germany (n = 1.240) and Turkey (n = 473) were compared with regard to their seeking social support in a social and an academic stress situation (i.e., argument with a friend, too much homework, respectively). In contrast to expectation, no general differences between cultures were observed in seeking social support. While confronting the academic stressor, however, students and adolescents from Turkey reported more seeking of social support than those from Germany. In addition, gender differences with a higher amount of social support among girls were more pronounced in the German than in the Turkish sample. Implications from a health psychology perspective are discussed.