exam 2 cross-cultural

Attitude

tendency to evaluate an object, person, or idea in a more favorable or unfavorable manner

Person-centric model

attitudes are an integral part of an individual’s sense of self, and thus are personal preferences reflecting information about the actor

Normative-contextual model

attitudes are the response to the norms and contexts in which attitudes are developed or expressed; views people (and attitudes) as varying across contexts

Fundamental attribution error (FAE)

human tendency to attribute others’ behavior to internal (rather than external) factors

Cognitive dissonance

people experience a state of discomfort when they hold inconsistent cognitions or behave in a counter attitudinal manner manner

Spreading-of-alternatives

following a decision, individuals evaluate the chosen alternative more positively and the rejected alternative more negatively than they did before the decision 

Persuasion

the process of changing one’s attitude toward something

Matching effects

makes the message self-relevant by matching a characteristic of the audience with a characteristic of the message or message’s source 

Experience emotions

the focus of emotional experiences varies in terms of focusing on the individual self vs. the collective self

Expressing emotions

how we communicate our feelings to others verbally and nonverbally (e.g., facial expressions) 

Internalize success and failure

impact of goal attainment on subjective well-being 

Analytic thinking

a type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context 

• Most prevalent in Western countries (e.g., America, Canada, Germany) 

Holistic thinking

a type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly in the ways objects relate to each other 

• Most prevalent in East and South Asian countries (e.g., China, Japan, South Korea, India) 

entitative mindset

belief that people’s defining characteristics are fixed, stable over time

incremental mindset

belief that people’s defining characteristics are fluid, malleable

Brand elasticity

consumers’ comfort with brands extending into distant product categories 

Dialectical thinking

style of thinking wherein people tolerate and accept apparently contradictory information 

Law of Identity

everything is equal to itself

• A=A

Law of the Excluded Middle

any statement must be either true or false 

Law of Noncontraction

no statement can be both true and false 

• If A=A, then A cannot equal B

Objective ambivalence

degree to which people report having both positive and negative evaluations; sometimes called potential ambivalence

Subjective ambivalence

psychological experience of felt conflict or indecision toward an object; sometimes called felt ambivalence

Fluency

the extent to which information is cognitively easy to process; greater ease reflects greater fluency 

Kitatama et al. (2004)

• self-construal explains cultural differences in dissonance effects 

• rank CDs from 1-10, depending on how much you want to listen to them

• result: Japanese Ps who ranked Cds based on others (vs. the self) reported greater spread-of-alternatives (more dissonance) than did American Ps

Han and Shavitt, 1994

• Cultural differences in advertisements

• Study 1: Content analysis—examined print advertisements (newspapers, magazines) from the USA and South Korea 

  • Results: Ads in the USA placed greater emphasis on themes of individualism, whereas ads in South Korea placed greater emphasis on themes of collectivism 

• Study 2: Experiment—examined matching effects 

  • Results: South Korean Ps reported greater intention to buy the product if the ad emphasized collectivism, whereas American Ps reported greater intention if the ad emphasized individualism 

Olympic athletes study

• Study 1: examined expressed emotion in interviews with Japanese and American Olympic athletes (emotion content vs relationship content)

  • Results: no cultural differences on general emotion Qs, but Japanese athletes used more emotion words on relationship Qs vs. American athletes

• Study 2: inferring emotions in Olympic athletes–experiment 

  • Results: Japanese Ps are likely to infer emotions in relational contexts, whereas American Ps are more likely to infer emotions in individual contexts 

Yuki et al., 2007

• Culture influences which facial features (eyes vs. mouth) we pay attention to when inferring emotion

• Prediction: Americans are more likely to rely on the mouth for emotional cues, whereas the Japanese are more likely to rely on eyes 

• Results: Japanese Ps placed more weight on eyes for emotion judgements, whereas American Ps placed more weight on mouths 

Ren et al., 2013

• Self-contrual explains cultural differences in response to ostracism

• Examined how self-construal (Chinese vs. American Ps) can moderate how people cope with social exclusion via Cyberball (a virtual ball toss game)

• Results: when excluded, Chinese Ps demonstrated better coping with negative affect than American Ps

Oishi & Diener, 2001

• Self-construal explains happiness following goal attainment

• Study 1—Independent goal pursuit over the course of a month 

• Study 2—Interdependent goal pursuit over the course of a week 

  • Results: European Americans saw greater increases in well-being when goals reflected personal motivation, whereas Asian Americans saw greater increases in well-being when goals reflected others’ motivation 

Masuda and Nisbett (2006) 

• Plane photo, find the difference 

• Analytic thinking→looked for differences on the plane itself 

• Holistic thinking→looked for differences in the background 

Nisbett et al., 2001

• fundamental attribution error

• We are more likely to have internal attributions of behavior than external behavior

Dweck, 2006

• Lay theories of personality and how people “are”

• Analytic thinking) entitative mindset

• Holistic thinking) incremental mindset

Masuda et al., 2008

• American vs. Japanese participants rate the emotions of faces in cartoon drawings 

• Results: American Ps rated the emotion of the central figure based on their individual expression, whereas Japanese Ps rated the emotion based on everyone’s expression 

Monga & John, 2007

• Cultural thinking styles influence brand elasticity

• Indian (holistic) and American (analytic) Ps reported attitudes toward various potential brand extensions (e.g., Toyota wallets, McDonald’s chocolates, etc)

• Results: Indian Ps were more comfortable with brand extensions; American Ps were less comfortable with brand extensions 

Lalwani & Shavitt, 2013

• Experimentally induced Ps to think analytically or holistically; Ps evaluated the quality of a consumer product that was depicted as expensive or cheap

• Results: Holistic thinkers are more likely to perceive a correspondence between product price and quality

Zhu & Myers-Levy, 2009

• Differences in attributing product value based on the product’s physical in-store display

  • IV #1: Priming analytic vs. holistic thinking 

  • IV #2: Product display (mug on wooden vs. glass table)

  • DV: Evaluation of object 

• Results: Holistic thinkers viewed the mug as more valuable when on a glass table, but analytic thinkers did not differ 

Peng & Nisbett, 1999

• Dialecticism and perceiving conflicting evidence

• Formally introducing dialectical thinking (first study to talk about it in this context) 

• American (non-DT) vs. Chinese (DT) Ps

• Presented a set of two contradictory scientific findings, and asked to rate the plausibility of the findings 

• results: American Ps were more likely to view only one set of finding plausible, whereas Chinese Ps viewed both sets of findings equally plausible 

Peng & Nisbett, 1999

• Dialecticism and conflict resolution

• American (non-DT) vs. Chinese (DT) Ps 

• Ps were told a story about a child-parent conflict; asked to identify…

  • Which party is at fault for starting the conflict 

  • Which party should apologize 

• Results: American Ps were most likely to choose side, whereas Chinese Ps more likely to conclude both parties are to blame 

Luttrell et al., 2022

• Dialecticism and ambivalent attitudes

• Study 1: Individual differences in DT among American Ps 

  • Subjective ambivalence

  • Objective ambivalence 

    • (POS + NEG) /2 - |POS-NEG|

  • Results: Ps that thought more dialectically were not as bothered (subjective ambivalence) by holding very ambivalent (objective ambivalence) attitudes 

• Study 2: Cultural differences (Americans vs Taiwanese Ps) 

  • Results: Taiwanese Ps were not as bothered by holding very ambivalent attitudes compared to American Ps

DeMotta et al., 2016

• Non-dialectical thinkers experience cognitive disfluency when trying process contradictory information

Song & Schwartz, 2008

• Experiment: Ps read task instructions in easy or hard-to-read font

• Results: Easier to read font fostered fluency→viewing task as easier to do and greater likelihood of incorporating task into daily routine 

(Lai et al., 2013) 

• American Amazon users (compared to Chinese users) are more likely to leave self-expressive reviews on products

(Sia et al., 2009) 

• Consumers in COL cultures (relative to IND cultures) are more likely to seek and rely on peer endorsements of products to guide purchase intention

(Siev et al., 2024)

In North America, people dislike others who hold ambivalent political opinions, even when they actually agree with the person’s perspective