Cultural Differences between Poland and the United States Found Through the Use of Hofstede’s Model – Brief Report

The following paper presents a preliminary study based on Hofstede’s six-dimensional cultural model that was conducted in order to compare relationships between locus of control, self-esteem, emotion regulation strategies and coping with stress strategies in Poles and Americans. In the study, it was expected that Poles would differ significantly from Americans as to the above-mentioned psychological constructs and that statistically significant correlations between variables within a given country would be observed. Methods used in the following study are: Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, Self-Esteem Scale, Multidimensional Coping Inventory and The Locus of Control Questionnaire. As a result of statistical analysis, the majority of tested hypotheses have not been confirmed. Thus, it can be indicated that Poles and Americans do not significantly differ regarding these factors, which can be associated with some long-term consequences in terms of the perception of these countries. The interpretation of the following findings has been provided pertaining to the specification of Hofstede’s estimated values for Poland, methodological limitations as well as different cultural changes.


INTRODUCTION
In the modern world, almost every day we face diversity problems. Due to globalization (that not only does entail with increasing possibilities of relocating, 10.17951/j.2020.33.3.83-104 tourism or education, but also with the escalation of developing professional careers outside one's home country), it is crucial that one can relate to people from different cultures and recognize not only their differences, but also similarities (Hofstede, 2000). To a large extent, this topic was developed by Geert Hofstede who ultimately distinguished six dimensions to describe cultural differences. Initially, he identified four dimensions, namely -Power Distance Index (PDI), Individualism vs Collectivism (IDV), Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) and Masculinity vs Femininity (MAS) (Hofstede, Hofstede, Minkov, 2010). Thereafter, two dimensions have been added to Hofstede's model -Long-term orientation vs Short-term orientation (LTO), and Indulgence-Restraint (IVR) (Bond and Hofstede, 1989;Minkov and Hofstede, 2012). Therefore, the following paper refers to the aforementioned dimensions in order to explore differences occurring between a Central European country -Poland and the United States of America.
To shortly describe all earlier-mentioned dimensions, it may be stated that Power Distance Index refers to the way people from a specific society perceive power relationships and authorities, the extent to which they view them as superior or subordinate, as well as the extent to which they accept inequalities (Hofstede, 2001). Individualism vs Collectivism relates to a role one attributes to an individual and a group, whereas, Uncertainty Avoidance Index is a term that describes "the level of stress in a society in the face of an unknown future" (Hofstede, 2011). On the other hand, Masculinity vs Femininity is entailed with the level of diversity within the roles of a woman and a man in a society. Long-term orientation vs Short-term orientation is related to how much one focuses on the future compared to the present and the past (Bond and Hofstede, 1989). Lastly, Indulgence-Restraint dimension pertains to one's attitude towards indulging themselves and satisfying their natural human desires (Minkov and Hofstede, 2012).
Overall, a comparison of Poland and the United States, as presented by Hofstede (2001), has been presented in Figure 1. The two countries differ as to their scores for PDI (χ² = 7.26, p < 0.01) IDV (χ² = 6.36, p < 0.01), UAI (χ² = 15.89, p < 0.001) and IVR (χ² = 15.68, p < 0.001). As shown in Figure 1, the biggest difference can be noted for UAI and IVR. The above-mentioned differences are statistically important, however, there are no statistically important differences found between Poland and the United States as to MAS and LTO.
Given PDI, Poland scored higher than the United States (Hofstede, 2000(Hofstede, , 2001(Hofstede, , 2011The Hofstede Insights, 2020a, 2020b, which may indicate that Poland is more of a hierarchical society than the United States. Above and beyond, it has been postulated that societies that score high on this dimension (like Poland) are inclined to be emotionally distant in the area of work relations and, therefore, be more prone to suppress their emotions (Hofstede, 2000). On the contrary, societies that score low on PDI (e.g. the USA) have a tendency to be more open while directly expressing their emotions and their employers-employees relations can be characterized as more interdependent.
In terms of IDV, Poland scored lower than the United States. Forasmuch as the United States' score simply implies that the level of individualism is very high in this country, Poland's relatively high score on this dimension contradicts their score on PDI. Therefore, in spite of Polish need for hierarchy, Polish people appear to have a tendency to put their needs and the needs of their close families first and to be inclined to form loosely-knit social relationships (Czerwonka, 2015). At the same time, it is crucial to emphasize that Poles scored comparatively lower than Americans and, therefore, may be considered less individualistic. Individualistic cultures value the ability to cope with new and unprecedented situations and consider this ability the core aim of education that should be developed throughout the whole life (Hofstede, 2000). They also tend to think of novelty as something positive and that speaking one's mind is very beneficial and should be endorsed. It is also enhanced that individualistic cultures tend to believe that an individual has control over different situations that emerge as well as needs to take responsibility for coping with them. On the other hand, more collectivistic cultures tend to believe that belonging to a group is the most important thing, thus, they prioritize a group above their individual members. In terms of education, in these cultures people learn how to "do" things, instead of how to "learn" things (Hofstede, 2011).
Considering the UAI, Poland's score was very high, while the United States' was rather low. Hence, Americans seem to be a type of a society that accepts new ideas and perceives innovation of all sorts as very beneficial. Additionally, this society can be viewed as tolerant and disposed to allow freedom of expression. Poles, by contrast, to a large extent, are intolerant of new ideas and nontraditional behaviors. As put in words by Hofstede "In these cultures there is an emotional need for rules (even if the rules never seem to work) time is money, people have an inner urge to be busy and work hard, precision and punctuality are the norm, innovation may be resisted, security is an important element in individual motivation" (The Hofstede Centre, 2016).
In terms of IVR, Poland's score was lower than the United States'. These results demonstrate differences between Poland and the United States as to the level of control over desires and impulses that most certainly derives from upbringing and socialization (Hofstede et al., 2010). Restraint cultures like Poland tend to hold a belief that indulging themselves is not freely permissible by social norms, are more pessimistic as to future events and have more internal restrictions as to controlling urges. In regard to this dimension, the United States seems to be in a polar opposition and can be depicted by higher acceptance in the area of permitting indulgence, need gratification and higher optimism. For that reason, it is also indicated that such cultures tend to smile more often and do not pay as much attention to saving money.
On the grounds of Hofstede's model that describes differences between the two countries that occur on the general cultural level, the aim of this paper was to assess what role these differences play on the more individual level. Therefore, a focus was placed on a few psychological constructs that may appear to be related to Hofstede's model. Namely, locus of control, emotion regulation strategies, coping with stress strategies and self-esteem level have been analyzed in order to estimate these differences. Below, we provide a brief explanation of how each construct relates to a particular dimension of Hofstede's model.

HOFSTEDE'S MODEL AND LOCUS OF CONTROL
The term "locus of control" refers to the extent to which an individual is convinced that he/she does or does not exert a control over bad and good events that occur in his/her life (Aronson, Wilson, Akert, 1994). Hence, in this concept, Julian B. Rotter posited that there are two types of control -external and internal. In essence, people who have external locus of control believe that almost everything that happens to them is caused by some external factors like, for example, fate, luck, chance or some other forces. In other words, they reckon that they do not have much control over the course of their life. On the flip side, people who have internal locus of control are convinced that the majority of life events that take place depends on their own actions or characteristics (Rotter, 1966).
One of the main features that is typical for individuals from cultures that score high on IDV (e.g. the USA) is believing that being able to cope with new situations is the primary goal of education, which may reflect higher internal locus of control as in this regard one takes responsibility for his/her action and holds higher belief in possessing the necessary abilities to cope with novelty. We can find support for this hypothesis in a study conducted by Stephen Mueller and Anisya Thomas (2001) that indicated that people from individualistic cultures tend to display an increased likelihood of an internal locus of control. Therefore, in the following research, we predicted that Americans would display higher internal locus of control than Poles. Following this reasoning, individuals from cultures that score lower on IDV (Poland) most likely may be characterized to a larger extent by external locus of control as they hold the conviction that they do not have that much impact on the external situation. Thus, we predicted that Poles would display higher external locus of control than Americans.
Likewise, Brian Osoba (2009) associated UAI with locus of control. As it is discussed by Yasemin Hancıoğlu Ülkühan Doğan and Şükran Yıldırım (2014), in the context of entrepreneurial behavior, individuals in higher uncertainty avoidance countries may present higher external control as they rather tend to take over existing business with established organizations than to enter unknown ventures. Hence, we posed another hypothesis here that pertains to UAI. Namely, we predicted that Americans (as they scored lower on UAI than Poles) would score higher on internal locus of control than Poles and Poles would score higher on external locus of control than Americans (as they scored higher on UAI than Americans).

HOFSTEDE'S MODEL AND EMOTION REGULATION STRATEGIES
Emotion regulation is defined as a process of "dampening, intensifying or simply maintaining emotion, depending on an individual's goals (Gross, Thompson, 2007). John Gross differentiates a few emotion regulation strategies, although in this paper, attention has been focused on two of them -Reappraisal and Expressive Suppression. Essentially, Reappraisal involves changing the way of thinking about a specific stimuli that elicits an emotion to lessen emotion intensity, whereas Expressive Suppression entails trying to hide and suppress emotion experiences as well as their expressions (Campbell-Sills, Barlow, 2007). Comparing these two strategies, it seems that Expressive Suppression is less adaptive than Reappraisal for it can cause an elongating and intensifying of the experience of emotion (Wenzlaff, 1993;Wenzlaff, Wegner, Roper, 1988;Wegner, Erber, Zanakos, 1993, in: Loewenstein, 2007. Presumably, Expressive Suppression also weakens the experience of positive emotions, but not negative ones (Campbell-Sills, Barlow, 2007;Westen, Blagov, 2007). What is more, this strategy has been related to the activation of a sympathetic system that activates stress reaction (Campbell-Sills, Barlow, 2007, Westen, Blagov, 2007, a decrease in experiencing positive emotions, a negative impact on memory in terms of social information (Wranik, Barret, Salovey, 2007), weaker memory of emotional events and weaker interpersonal functioning (Szczygieł, Bazińska, Kadzikowska-Wrzosek, Retkowski, 2009), lack of social support as well as depressive symptoms (John, Gross, 2007). It has also been postulated that it is very likely that highly submissive individuals may be more prone to use Expressive Suppression to regulate the feeling of anger and content within their close relations in order to avoid confrontation and sustain interpersonal harmony (John, Gross, 2007). On the other hand, Reappraisal is thought to be more effective as it diminishes behavioral and subjective components of the negative emotion experience as well as there has been found a positive correlation between Reappraisal and optimism (Gross, Thompson, 2007;John, Gross, 2007).
Deriving from emotional regulation strategies, it can be observed that this theoretical construct corresponds with PDI dimension. As mentioned before, higher scores on PDI can be related to a higher tendency to suppress emotions (Hofstede, 2000), while low scores on PDI can be related to being more open while directly expressing emotion. For this reason, it can be inferred that higher score on PDI (Poland) is involved with both higher emotional load as a result of suppressing emotions and less direct emotional expression in many social situations, which may be related to more frequent use of Expressive Suppression strategy. Thus, it was hypothesised that Poles would indicate using Expressive Suppression strategy more frequently than Americans.
In turn, low scores on UAI (the USA) may be associated with experiencing positive emotions (higher well-being, higher composure, patience and restraint in their emotional reactions), which can indicate using Reappraisal. Oppositely, individuals from cultures that score high on UAI (Poland) do not have a tendency to directly express emotions which may again imply that they use Expressive Suppression in order to regulate their emotions. Similarly, individuals from cultures that score high on IVR tend to be more optimistic and smile more frequently (Hofstede, Hofstede, Minkov, 2010), which can be related to the use of Reappraisal as an emotion regulation strategy more often than Expressive Suppression. Also, as mentioned earlier (Gross, Thompson, 2007;John, Gross, 2007), optimism seems to be associated with higher use of Reappraisal. For this reason, it was predicted that Americans, who scored higher on IVR than Poles, would declare applying Reappraisal more often than Poles. Rosenberg (1965Rosenberg ( , in: Łaguna, 2007 implied that an individual may present positive or negative feelings about oneself, what is customarily called "global self-worth" or "self-esteem". Higher level of self-esteem corresponds with higher optimism (Lucas, Diener, 1996, in: Łaguna, 2007 as well as experiencing more positive emotions and less negative emotions (Łaguna, 2007). Self-esteem is neg-atively correlated with depression (the lower self-esteem level, the higher risk of depression) (Sowislo, Orth, 2013). In the light of these studies, it seems plausible that self-esteem may be related to the IVR dimension. In this matter, we reason that people who have higher self-esteem would hold a belief that they deserve satisfying their needs, be more optimistic and allow themselves to indulge. All of the mentioned features are also characteristics of individuals from cultures that score high on IVR. Thus, we predicted that people from cultures that score higher on this dimension (the USA), may hold higher self-esteem than people from cultures that score lower on this dimension (Poland).

HOFSTEDE'S MODEL AND THE LEVEL OF SELF-ESTEEM
Simultaneously, lower self-esteem is correlated with a decline in activity level and initiative (e.g. active attitude towards learning) (Rosenberg, 1965(Rosenberg, , in: Łaguna, 2007 that is expressed by PDI dimension. That could mean that people from cultures that score higher on this dimension (Poland) may have lower selfesteem than people from cultures that score lower on this dimension (the USA). Additionally, low scores on UAI are typical for cultures who come across as dissatisfied, impulsive, aggressive, impatient and thus, may also correspond with lower self-esteem. Therefore, it also indicates that individuals from cultures that score higher on this dimension (Poland) may have lower self-esteem than individuals from cultures that score lower on this dimension (the USA). Taking that into account, in the following study, we predicted that Poles may display lower self-esteem than Americans.

HOFSTEDE'S MODEL AND COPING WITH STRESS STRATEGIES
Charles Carver, Michael Scheier, Jagdish Weintraub (1989;Juczyński, 2009) differentiated 15 strategies one may use to cope with stress, namely: Active Coping, Planning, Suppression of Competing Activities, Restraint Coping, Seeking Social Support for Instrumental Reasons, Seeking Social Support for Emotional Reasons, Positive Reinterpretation and Growth, Acceptance, Turning to Religion, Focus on & Venting of Emotions, Denial, Behavioral Disengagement, Mental Disengagement, Alcohol-drug Disengagement, Sense of Humor. Hence, it can be inferred that people can differ as to strategies they use to cope with stress.
However, owing to the multitude of coping with stress strategies, in the following paper, the coping with stress strategies have been divided into three separate groups, as proposed by Carver et al. (1989). The first group -Coping Focused on Problem (CFP) -includes Active Coping, Suppression of Competing Activities, Positive Reinterpretation and Growth, Planning and Restraint Coping. The second group -Coping Focused on Emotion (CFE) -embraces: Seeking Social Support for Instrumental Reasons, Turning to Religion, Seeking Social Support for Emotional Reasons, and Focus on & Venting of Emotions. The third group -Avoidance Coping (AC) -covers Mental Disengagement, Behavioral Disengage-ment, Alcohol-drug Disengagement, Denial, Acceptance and Sense of Humor. In this regard, we did not find any reference in literature that addresses the possible link between Hofstede's model and coping with stress strategies. Nevertheless, we considered this issue a very interesting matter that is worth-exploring.
Therefore, looking from the perspective of UAI dimension, in the following study, we expected that people from cultures that score higher on UAI (Poland) (which is, for example, associated with experiencing higher levels of stress or emotional pressure while facing new situations), use different coping with stress strategies than people from cultures who score lower on this dimension (the USA). Therefore, we predicted that people from cultures that score higher on UAI (Poland) would more frequently use coping with stress strategies that are not necessarily deemed adaptive such as Mental Disengagement, Behavioral Disengagement, Alcohol-drug Disengagement, Denial compared to people from cultures that score lower on UAI (the USA) (O'Brien, Moorey, 2010;Penley, Tomaka, Wiebe, 2002).
Cognately, individuals from cultures that score high on PDI (which involves higher emotional distance between people that have some sort of power and authority and those who do not evince that) may manifest different coping with stress strategies than individuals from cultures that score low on PDI. Especially that, as established by Alisher Dedahanov, Dohyung Lee, Jaehoon Rhee and Sardorbek Yusupov (2016), high scores on PDI are associated with higher levels of stress. For this reason, we predicted that individuals from cultures that score higher on PDI (Poland) would more often use maladaptive coping with stress strategies, such Mental Disengagement, Behavioral Disengagement, Alcohol-drug Disengagement, Denial compared to individuals from cultures that score lower on PDI (the USA). Moreover, we expected that higher scores on IVR may be correlated with more frequent use of coping with stress strategies such as Positive Reinterpretation and Growth, Acceptance or Sense of Humor as all of these strategies express an optimistic approach to life and problems. Therefore, we hypothesized that individuals from cultures that score higher on IVR (the USA) would more often use adaptive coping with stress strategies, such as Positive Reinterpretation and Growth, Acceptance or Sense of Humor compared to individuals from cultures that score lower on IVR (Poland).

THE PRESENT RESEARCH
The main hypotheses guiding this research put into question whether there are differences between Poland and the United States as to the following constructs: locus of control, emotion regulation strategies, coping with stress strategies and selfesteem level. Overall, it was hypothesized that Americans more often than Poles would declare: internal locus of control, higher self-esteem, using Reappraisal as an emotion regulation strategy than Expressive Suppression and in terms of coping with stress strategies -using Sense of Humor, Acceptance, Positive Reinterpretation and Growth. On the other hand, it was hypothesized that Poles more frequently than Americans would declare: external locus of control, lower self-esteem, using Expressive Suppression as an emotion regulation strategy than Reappraisal and in terms of coping with stress strategies -using Mental Disengagement, Behavioral Disengagement, Alcohol-drug Disengagement and Denial.
Moreover, it was hypothesized that there would be a correlation between locus of control and self-esteem level, namely that lower self-esteem would be associated with external locus of control, whereas higher self-esteem would be associated with internal locus of control. Additionally, we expected that there would be a correlation between locus of control and emotion regulation strategies, particularly that external locus of control would be associated with higher declared use of Expressive Suppression, while internal locus of control would be associated with the higher declared use of Reappraisal. We also hypothesized that external locus of control would be associated with more frequent use of Avoidance Coping strategies, whereas internal locus of control would be associated with more frequent use of Coping Focused on Problem (CFP) and Coping Focused on Emotion (CFE).

Participants
Seventy-three people took part in the study (40 Poles and 33 Americans). The Polish group there included 23 women and 17 men, whereas the American group consisted of 12 women, 17 men and 4 people who did not determine their gender. The age of participants ranged from 18 to 71 years old (M = 27.79, SD = 16.28), 6 of the participants did not indicate their age.

Materials and procedures
To verify above-mentioned hypotheses, eight questionnaires were used in total (four for the Polish group and four for the American group). Thus, the following measures were included in the present study.

Locus of control
The Locus of Control Questionnaire developed by Terry F. Pettijohn (1992) was used to test locus of control in the American group. This measure is a 20item true/false test based on Rotter's concept of locus of control. The higher the score, the higher internal locus of control, while the lower the score, the higher external locus of control. In the Polish group, Delta Questionnaire, a tool created by Radosław Drwal (1979) was used. This Questionnaire consists of 24 true/false items and it is based on Rotter's theory. Here, oppositely to Pettijohn's tool, the higher the score, the higher external locus of control and the lower the score the higher internal locus of control.

Emotion regulation strategies
In the American group, the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) developed by James Gross and Oliver John (2003) was used to test whether participants use Expressive Suppression (ERQ-S) or Reappraisal (ERQ-R) in order to regulate their emotions. Similarly, in the Polish group, a translated version of ERQ was used (adapted by Kobylińska, 2015). Both of these questionnaires are available online on Gross' website and consist of ten statements. Respondents provide their answer to each item on a 7-point Likert-type scale that ranges from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).

Self-esteem
To measure self-esteem, Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale (SES) was used, which was developed by Morris Rosenberg (1965). The Scale consists of 10 items to which respondents answer on a 4-point scale ranging from 1 -I strongly agree, to 4 -I strongly disagree. In the Polish group, a Polish adaptation of the measure created by Mariola Łaguna, Irena Dzwonkowska, and Kinga Lachowicz-Tabaczek (2007) was used. Despite some subtle differences due to idiom translation, the structure of the scale is comparable to the English version.

Coping with stress strategies
The COPE Inventory was used to determine which coping with stress strategies one uses to manage stress. This measure was developed by Carver et al. (1989). The COPE Inventory contains 60 statements to which respondents answer on a 4-point scale where 1 -I usually don't do this at all, 2 -I usually do this a little bit, 3 -I usually do this a medium amount, 4 -I usually do this a lot. In the Polish group, a Polish adaptation of the COPE Inventory was used. This version of the questionnaire was created by Zygfryd Juczyński and Nina Ogińska-Bulik (2009) and corresponds with the English version as to the content as well as the way of calculating scores.

RESULTS
The descriptive statistics for the Polish group have been presented in Table 1 and for the American group -in Table 2. The vast majority of items appeared to have relatively high internal consistency (a reliability coefficient [Cronbach's alpha] of .70 or higher), although some of them cannot be considered internally consistent (e.g. COPE12 -Mental Disengagement and COPE8 -Restraint Coping in Polish group and COPE5 -Suppression of Competing Activities in American group). The comparison of the results of the study for Americans and Polish participants has been presented in Table 3. Considering the results for Poland and the United States as to coping with stress strategies, it may be inferred that there is a statistically significant difference as to Coping Focused on Problem (CFP), COPE5 -Suppression of Competing Activities, COPE6 -Turning to Religion, COPE10 -Focus on & Venting of Emotions, COPE12 -Mental Disengagement and COPE15 -Sense of Humor.
As shown in Table 3, the biggest difference occurred for Sense of Humor strategy. The computed value of Cohen's d = 0.76, which implies medium effect size. This result designates that Americans declare using Sense of Humor more of-ten than Poles. Similarly, Mental Disengagement (the computed value of Cohen's d = 0.35, which implies small effect size) and Turning to Religion (the computed value of Cohen's d = 0.69, which implies medium effect size) are more often declared to be used by Americans than Poles. In general, strategies that belong to Coping Focused on Problem (CFP) are more often used by Poles than Americans (the computed value of Cohen's d = -0.23, which implies small effect size).
On the other hand, using Suppression of Competing Activities (the computed value of Cohen's d = -0.29, which implies small effect size) and Focus on & Venting of Emotions (the computed value of Cohen's d = -0.34, which implies small effect size) appears to be declared more frequently by Poles. The difference for the results for locus of control in Polish and American groups have not been compared as the applied measures of locus of control in Polish and American groups are not compatible. n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a DELTA n/a 4.83 (2.82) n/a n/a n/a n/a *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, n.s. -not significant, n/a -not applicable Source: Authors' own study.
In order to verify hypotheses stating that there is a statistically significant relation between the following variables: level of self-esteem, emotion regulation strategies, coping with stress strategies and locus of control, the r Pearson correlation was used. Moreover, as mentioned before, in order to simplify the results, three general groups in terms of coping with stress strategies were used -Coping Focused on Problem (CFP), Coping Focused on Emotion (CFE), Avoidance Coping (AC) (Carver et al., 1989). All of the earlier-mentioned correlations have been presented in Table 4 for the Polish group and in Table 5 for the American group.
In the Polish group, there were five statistically significant correlations out of 21. In line with predictions, there was a statistically significant moderate negative correlation between locus of control (DELTA) and self-esteem level (SES), which can indicate that the higher the score for self-esteem level, the lower the score for locus of control (the higher internal locus of control) and the lower the score for self-esteem level, the higher the score for locus of control (the higher external locus of control). Additionally, there was a statistically significant weak negative correlation between self-esteem level and Avoidance Coping (AC), that may be interpreted as the higher score for self-esteem level, the lower the score for Avoidance Coping (the lower the declared use of Avoidance Coping strategies). With Table 3. continuation regard to Avoidance Coping, there was also a significant moderate positive correlation with locus of control. That, in turn, can implicate the higher the score of locus of control (the higher external locus of control), the higher the declared use of Avoidance Coping strategies. In terms of Avoidance Coping, there was also a significant moderate positive correlation with Coping Focused on Emotion (CFE), which indicates that the higher the declared use of Avoidance Coping strategies, the higher the declared use of Coping Focused on Emotion strategies.
Furthermore, there was a statistically significant weak negative correlation between Expressive Suppression (ERQ-S) and Coping Focused on Emotion, which indicates that the higher the declared use of Expressive Suppression, the lower the declared use of Coping Focused on Emotion strategies. There was no statistically significant correlation between locus of control and emotion regulation strategies as well as the level of self-esteem and emotion regulation strategies.  In the American group, there were five statistically significant correlations out of 21. There was no statistically significant correlation between self-esteem level (SES) and locus of control (LOC) or between locus of control and the three groups of coping with stress strategies (CFP, CFE, AC), emotion regulation strategies (ERQ-S and ERQ-R) and self-esteem level. However, regarding locus of control and emotion regulation strategies, there was a statistically significant moderate negative correlation between locus of control and Expressive Suppression. Therefore, it can be concluded that the higher the score of locus of control (the higher internal locus of control), the lower the declared use of Expressive Suppression. Consequently, the lower the score of locus of control (the higher external locus of control), the higher the declared use of Expressive Suppression. There was no statistically significant correlation between Reappraisal and locus of control. Considering self-esteem level and the three groups of coping with stress strategies, there were no statistically significant correlations between the variables.
In regard to emotional regulation strategies and coping with stress strategies, there was a statistically significant strong negative correlation between Expressive Suppression and Coping Focused on Emotion as well as statistically significant moderate positive correlation between Reappraisal and Coping Focused on Emotion. That indicates that the higher the declared use of Expressive Suppression, the lower the declared use of Coping Focused on Emotion and the higher the declared use of Reappraisal, the higher the declared use of Coping Focused on Emotion.
Lastly, we calculated the Fisher r-to-z transformation value to assess the significance of the difference between correlation coefficient between Expressive Suppression and Coping Focused on Emotion. A statistical tendency was found. The correlation in the American group was stronger than in the Polish group (Z = 2.14; p < 0.05).

GENERAL DISCUSSION
The topic of cultural differences from the perspective of Hofstede's model is still up-to-date and raises universal interest. For example, Polish researchers (Komor, Schumann, 2015) compared Poland and Germany in Hofstede's dimensions, and Marcin Pędich (2014) discussed consequences in managing styles that stem from these dimensions. For that reason, in spite of the fact that the majority of hypotheses have not been confirmed, this study casts a new light on a comparison of Poland and the United States, for the results of the study can be explained in at least a couple of reasons.
Firstly, it can be supposed that presented variables were not adequate for the operationalization of Hofstede's dimensions and thus, we could not observe differences between the two countries, that have been noticed by Hofstede himself (2011). This explanation indicates that in future research, it is crucial to construct variables that would pose better operationalization of Hofstede's dimensions. Furthermore, it can be presumed that Poland's scores in Hofstede's dimensions do not describe it in its current state. For instance, Marcin Komor and Jan H. Schumann (2015) state that Hofstede's descriptions of Poland and few other countries, refer to his estimations from 2001 (Hofstede, 2001) [that are based mainly on results of the study published by Wojciech Nasierowski and Bogusz Mikuła (1998) and Ludek Kolman, Niels Noorderhaven, Geert Hofstede, and Elisabeth Dienes (2003)] and not from his research from 2003. Therefore, data used by Hofstede has been around for at least 17 years and is not necessarily in good standing. Within this 17-year time frame, a lot of political, cultural, social and economic changes have been observed in Poland, that not only involve changes of social and living conditions and modernization of a plethora of areas, but also reflect in the cultural changes of this country and hence, can have an influence on shifting ways of thinking and creating new behavioral patterns. These changes can also impact the way other countries perceive Poland, which is no longer viewed as a post-communist country that aspires to be equal with Western societies (like, e.g. the United States). That, in turn, may reciprocally result in changes occurring within Poland. What is more, factors as e.g. an increase in commercial exchanges, an increase in military cooperation (including higher number of American soldiers being stationed in Poland), travel growth, an increase in cooperation between researchers and workers from Poland and the United States, as well as more frequent student exchanges between the two countries (for example, Work & Travel programs) may influence changes that have been observed in both countries. It is worth emphasizing that the earlier-mentioned changes may result in boosting the chance of converging thinking patterns and behaviors that occur in both countries. That, on the other hand, may have an impact on the results that have been obtained in this research and diminishing differences between Poland and the United States as to the presented variables. To support this view, it is also worth mentioning the World Base of Happiness (Veenhoven, 2019a(Veenhoven, , 2019b that presents happiness in different countries over the course of years. Given these data, it can be noted that the average current happiness for Poland is similar as the average current happiness for the United States, whereas, in previous years, the measured happiness for Poland was often lower than for the United States. That too indicates the changes that have taken place in the two countries and that they may indeed have become less dissimilar in some aspects over the years. Overall, in the following research, we set two research goals. First one was to explore differences between Poles and Americans in terms of the proposed factors. The second one was to explore whether there is a correlation between the given variables in both groups. Given the first goal, these results indicate that only one hypothesis considering differences between Poles and Americans as to the aforementioned variables has been confirmed. As we predicted, Americans more often than Poles declare using Sense of Humor strategy as a coping with stress strategy. This result corresponds with Poland being perceived as a "complaint culture" as affirmed by Bogdan Wojciszke (2004) and Wojciszke and Wiesław Baryła (2001), that is a culture in which people have a strong tendency to focus on what is negative as well as their dissatisfaction in terms of material standing, political situation of the country and alternatives for the future. Despite the difference for Sense of Humor strategy, differences for Acceptance and Positive Reinterpretation and Growth have not been discovered. This partially confirms the hypothesis that cultures which score higher on IVR use different coping with stress strategies than cultures which score lower on IVR. Sense of Humor strategy, which involves making jokes about the stressful situation, may indeed be associated with lowering the stress response and thus, higher optimism, which is a component of IVR dimension.
Surprisingly, we found that Americans declare using Mental Disengagement more often than Poles, which contradicted our assumptions. Mental Disengagement can be defined as a psychological withdrawal from the stressful situation, through the use of daydreaming, sleep, or self-distraction and, therefore, does not really lower the pressure connected with stress as it does not address it directly. For this reason, we assumed that it may be used more frequently in cultures who tend to experience higher levels of stress while facing new situations. Since there was no difference in the use of Behavioral Disengagement, Alcohol-drug Disengagement and Denial and Mental Disengagement turned out to be used more frequently by Americans than Poles, we cannot infer that these strategies account for higher stress levels in Poles as indicated by UAI and PDI dimensions.
Also, we found that Poles declare using Suppression of Competing Activities and Focus on & Venting of Emotions more often than Americans. This second strategy actually suggests that Poles more often than Americans ventilate their emotions, which disaffirms the proneness to suppress emotions as suggested by PDI dimension. Although, the question may be raised here whether they do it in all sorts of situations or, as suggested by PDI dimension, stay emotionally distant at work and discharge their emotions in more close relationships.
Contrary to our predictions, our research indicated no difference between self-esteem level between Poles and Americans. We also found no difference in the use of Expressive Suppression or Reappraisal. These findings, as well as all of the above mentioned that contradicted our hypotheses, may lead us to two possible explanations. First one posits that we erroneously combined the use of particular coping with stress strategies and emotion regulation strategies as a manifestation of the particular dimensions. Second explication revolves around the outdatedness of Hofstede's model, as discussed above. The difference for the results for locus of control in Polish and American groups have not been compared as the applied measures of locus of control in Polish and American groups are not compatible. Hence, future research needs to explore this realm through the use of different measures (e.g. translated version of Locus of Control Questionnaire for Poles).
Considering the second goal, exploring whether there is a correlation between given variables in both groups, we found that in both groups there was a statistically significant negative correlation between Expressive Suppression and Coping Focused on Emotion (Seeking Social Support for Instrumental Reasons, Turning to Religion, Seeking Social Support for Emotional Reasons and Focus on & Venting of Emotions), which indicated that the higher the use of Expressive Suppression, the lower the use of Coping Focused on Emotion. This correlation was stronger for the American group. This finding seems reasonable in the light of the fact that people who suppress their emotions may not use other strategies that target emotions, as they may lack emotional awareness.
In reference to results for COPE that measures coping with stress strategies and for the SES questionnaire that measures self-esteem level, it has been revealed in the Polish that the higher the self-esteem level, the lower the declared use of Avoidance Coping strategies. Thus, it can be fathomed out that enhancing the self-esteem level (e.g. in children) may result in less frequent use of coping with stress strategies such as: Alcohol-drug Disengagement and Denial (in later life), that are commonly believed to be maladaptive. Similarly, it may be beneficial to reinforce internal locus of control in children as the following research shows that the higher external locus of control, the higher the use of maladaptive coping with strategies such as Alcohol-Drug Disengagement and Denial, and the lower the use of adaptive coping with strategy, such as Sense of Humor.
Taken together, it is worth emphasizing that our research has preliminary character and future research is thus needed to arrive at any firm conclusions regarding the presented issues. For instance, it may be worth testing whether some other constructs correspond better with Hofstede's model (such as optimism/pessimism, etc.). Perhaps, the biggest limitation of this research is a relatively small sample of subjects, which can surely compromise the conclusions drawn from this study. Therefore, in future research, it could be beneficial to replicate this study using larger groups of participants. Also, it would be profitable to use experimental methods rather than self-reported tools to measure, e.g. emotion regulation strategies such as detached reappraisal (Wager, 2008, in: Jasielska, Kaczmarek, Brońska, Dominiak, 2015. Certainly, regardless of their limitations, the results of this study as well as the conclusions that can be drawn from them, may pose an inspiration for future studies associated with the presented topic.

CONCLUSIONS
In general, this research aimed to verify whether locus of control, self-esteem, emotion regulation strategies and coping with stress strategies may be adequate indicators of the differences between Poland and the United States found throughout Hofstede's six-dimensional cultural model. The second goal of the study was to compare relationships between the aforementioned variables in Poles and Americans. The majority of tested hypotheses have not been confirmed, which implies that either the above-mentioned factors were not suitable indicators of differences as described by Hofstede's six dimensional model, or the two countries have prominently changed since the model was tested.