U
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
Date:
May 18, 2009
Yan Yang
I,
,
hereby submit this original work as part of the requirements for the degree of:
Doctor of Philosophy
in
Educational Studies
It is entitled:
Causal Attribution and Culture--How Similar Are American and
Chinese Thinking?
Student Signature:
This work and its defense approved by:
Committee Chair:
Ryan Adams
Daniel D. Wheeler
Rhonda D. Brown
Approval of the electronic document:
I have reviewed the Thesis/Dissertation in its final electronic format and certify that it is an
accurate copy of the document reviewed and approved by the committee.
Committee Chair signature:
Causal Attribution and Culture—
How Similar are American and Chinese Thinking?
A dissertation submitted to the
Graduate School
of the University of Cincinnati
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
in the Department of Educational Studies
of the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services
June 2009
by
Yan Yang
M.A., Shanghai Maritime University, 2000
B.A., Liaoning Normal University, 1997
Dissertation Committee:
Ryan Adams, Ph.D., Chair
Daniel D. Wheeler, Ph.D.
Rhonda Douglas Brown, Ph.D.
Abstract
Recent psychological studies of culture have shown incompatible results about the
differences in causal attributions between Americans and East Asians. Nisbett and his colleagues
(Nisbett, 2003) found that Americans tend to make dispositional or internal attributions while
East Asians tend to make situational or external attributions. Nisbett traced this pattern back to
the differences between ancient Greek philosophy and Chinese Confucianism and Taoism. The
opposite pattern of results was found by Crystal, Hui, and some other scholars (Crystal, 2000;
Crystal, Parrott, Okazaki, & Watanabe, 2001; Hui, 2000, 2001). They theorized that Americans,
as individualists, make external attribution as a self-enhancement mechanism and East Asians, as
collectivists, make internal attribution to protect the group.
The purposes of this study were to find out if those cultural differences in causal
attribution could be replicated, if the content of attribution led to different responses, and if the
question format (open-ended versus rating-scale questions) made a difference in participant’s
attribution.
This study used an online survey with one scenario from each of the two group’s
representative studies, a campus-shooting scenario and a bullying schoolboy scenario. The two
scenarios were rewritten to fit in both cultures and the two characters in the scenarios were given
typical American names in the English questionnaire and Chinese names in the Chinese version.
The open-ended questionnaires for both scenarios preceded the rating-scale questions. There
were 76 American participants and 157 Chinese participants. There were separate web pages for
the English and Chinese versions of the survey so that all participants took the survey in their
native language.
ii
The results indicate that both scenario and question format had significant effects on
causal attributions. The two scenarios led to opposite attributions on the rating-scale
questionnaire: external attribution in response to the bullying scenario and internal attribution of
in response to the campus-shooting scenario. Question format made significant difference in the
bullying scenario: internal responses to the open-ended items and external responses to the
rating-scale items. Both culture groups made similar causal attribution, either internal or external,
of the same scenario in the same question format. American group held stronger opinions in
rating-scale attributions and provided more responses in open-ended attributions compared to
their Chinese counterparts. The results of this study do not follow the patterns predicted by either
Nisbett (2003) or Crystal (20000). Causal attribution is more context-specific than culturespecific.
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Copyright
iv
Acknowledgement
There are many people who have supported and helped me during my doctoral study.
Without them, I would not have been able to attain this degree. First of all, I want to thank my
advisor, Dr. Dan Wheeler, who has guided me with whole-hearted patience and support through
the program and helped me grow intellectually. He is a mentor who showed me how to find my
direction and steer my boat in academia.
The rest of the committee has provided great advices and moral support during my study
and dissertation as well. Dr. Rhonda Brown has been helping and providing advice since the
preliminary hearing in the first year of my study. I appreciate the meetings during which she
gave me advices, the detailed comments that she made on my work, and the opportunities that
she provided for me to teach. I want to thank Dr. Ryan Adams for serving on the committee, for
providing great feedback, for answering my questions, and for meeting me on a short notice. I
also want to give my gratitude to Dr. Gulbahar Beckett who listened to my concerns, provided
good advice for my problems, gave me support for my academic growth, and shared my Chinese
connection.
My husband, Robert, provided more support than I could ever have expected. He helped
me with data collection and coding, took care of household chores and listened to my concerns.
My parents always lavished me with their love and encouragement and they are the motivation
for me to seek this degree. I also appreciate very much that my in-laws were supportive and
helpful during my study.
As a friend told me all the time, you cannot finish your dissertation on your own. It is a
team work. There are many others who helped me during my research that I want to thank very
much. My cousins, Hongli Xu, Di Wu; my friends, Dave Sacks, Lanbin Ren, Zhimin Liang, Jian
v
Xu, Shufang Zhang, Rachel Noll, Robert Kallmeyer, Karin Mendoza, and many other friends
that I will have to fill another page up if I list their names. They helped me greatly with my pilot
studies, data collection, and data coding. They helped me keep my moral up when I feel stressed
out. They let me know that I was not alone.
Finally, I want to thank Educational Studies program for providing me this excellent
learning experience when I met so many wonderful people and took my first step in the academic
world.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. x
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ xi
I. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................... 1
Literature..................................................................................................................................... 1
The Psychology of Culture ..................................................................................................... 1
Western and Eastern Cultures................................................................................................. 5
Attribution............................................................................................................................... 6
Individualism-Collectivism Approach to Attribution........................................................... 10
Intellectual History Approach............................................................................................... 12
The Third Group: Individualism-Collectivism or Intellectual History? ............................... 16
Study Rationale and Purpose .................................................................................................... 18
Research Questions and Hypotheses ........................................................................................ 20
II. METHOD................................................................................................................................. 24
Participants................................................................................................................................ 24
Demographic Results ............................................................................................................ 25
Materials ................................................................................................................................... 25
Demographic questions......................................................................................................... 25
Scenarios ............................................................................................................................... 26
Open-ended Questionnaire.................................................................................................... 27
Rating-Scale Questionnaire .................................................................................................. 28
Procedure .................................................................................................................................. 29
Design ....................................................................................................................................... 32
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III. RESULTS ............................................................................................................................... 33
Data Preparation........................................................................................................................ 33
Coding of Open-ended Responses ........................................................................................ 33
Factor Analysis of Rating-Scale Items ................................................................................. 34
Derivation of Dependent Measures from Open-ended Responses ....................................... 37
Derivation of Dependent Measures from Rating-scale Responses....................................... 37
Distribution and Transformation........................................................................................... 38
Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 38
Attribution Preference........................................................................................................... 39
Open-ended Responses ..................................................................................................... 39
Rating-Scale Responses .................................................................................................... 40
Internal Versus External Attributions ................................................................................... 42
Open-ended Responses to the Dave/De (Bullying) Scenario ........................................... 42
Open-ended Responses to the Michael/Ming (campus-shooting) Scenario ..................... 43
Rating-scale Responses to the Dave/De (Bullying) Scenario........................................... 44
Rating-scale Responses to the Michael/Ming (campus-shooting) Scenario..................... 45
Itemized Scores..................................................................................................................... 46
Analysis of Open-ended Category Endorsement of the Dave/De (Bullying) Scenario.... 46
Analysis of Open-ended Category Endorsement of the Michael/Ming (campus-shooting)
Scenario............................................................................................................................. 47
Analysis of Rating-scale Items for the Dave/De (Bullying) Scenario.............................. 48
Analysis of Rating-scale Items for Michael/Ming (campus-shooting) Scenario.............. 50
Question Format Effect......................................................................................................... 53
viii
IV. DISCUSSION......................................................................................................................... 55
Interpretation............................................................................................................................. 55
Causal Attribution and Question Format Effects.................................................................. 56
Causal Attribution and Cultural Effects ............................................................................... 57
Limitations ................................................................................................................................ 59
Conclusions and Implications ................................................................................................... 61
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................. 64
APPENDIX A............................................................................................................................... 72
Recruitment Letters in English ..................................................................................................... 72
APPENDIX B ............................................................................................................................... 74
Recruitment Letters in Chinese..................................................................................................... 74
APPENDIX C ............................................................................................................................... 76
Cognition and Culture Survey in English ..................................................................................... 76
APPENDIX D............................................................................................................................... 83
Cognition and Culture Survey in Chinese .................................................................................... 83
APPENDIX E ............................................................................................................................... 90
Coding Rubric of Open-ended Responses .................................................................................... 90
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List of Tables
Table 1 Demographics of Participants.......................................................................................... 25
Table 2 Inter-coder Reliability for Open-Ended Responses ......................................................... 34
Table 3 Factor Analysis Summary of Dave/De (Bullying) Rating-Scale Items........................... 35
Table 4 Factor Analysis Summary of Michael/Ming (campus-shooting) Rating-Scale Items..... 36
Table 5 Dependent Measures........................................................................................................ 38
Table 6 Endorsement of Dave/De (Bullying) Open-ended Categories ........................................ 47
Table 7 Endorsement of Dave/De (Bullying) Open-ended Categories ........................................ 48
Table 8 Cultural Effects Among the Dave/De (Bullying) Rating-Scale Items............................. 50
Table 9 Cultural Effects in Michael/Ming (campus-shooting) Rating-Scale Items ..................... 52
Table 10 Participants’ Percentages for Each Scenario and Attribution Type............................... 54
x
List of Figures
Figure 1 Two Sequences of Online Questionnaire Pages............................................................. 31
Figure 3 Scenario and Cultural Effects on Causal Attributions of Rating-scale Questions ......... 41
Figure 4 Cultural Effect and Type-of-Cause Effect in Open-ended Attributions of the Dave/De
(Bullying) Scenario............................................................................................................... 43
Figure 5 Cultural Effect and Type-of-Cause Effect in Open-ended Attributions of the
Michael/Ming (campus-shooting) Scenario.......................................................................... 44
Figure 6 Cultural Effect and Type-of-Cause Effect in Rating Attributions of the Dave/De
(Bullying) Scenario............................................................................................................... 45
Figure 7 Cultural Effect and Type-of-Cause Effect in Rating Attributions of the Michael/Ming
(campus-shooting) Scenario.................................................................................................. 46
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I. INTRODUCTION
People usually want to make sense of the events in their lives, especially when these
events are negative. The inference process by which people explain an event or behavior is
referred to as causal attribution in psychology. People from various cultures differ in their
explanations of why certain events have happened in their lives (Crystal, 2000; Crystal et al.,
2001; Hui, 2000, 2001; Morris & Peng, 1994; Nisbett, 2003; Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan,
2001). This study is an effort to explore potential differences between American and Chinese
explanations of two specific incidents—a campus shooting and a bullying behavior. The goal of
this chapter is to provide background on psychological studies of culture and attribution theories,
to review the literature on cross-cultural causal attribution, and to propose the research questions
for this study.
Literature
The Psychology of Culture
Culture has been an increasingly popular topic of psychological research during the past
two decades. The scientific study of the link between psychology and culture can be traced back
to the 19th century (Triandis, 1996). The psychological study of culture has greatly benefited
from anthropologists’ efforts in defining culture, especially those of Tylor, Boas, and Sapir.
British anthropologist Edward Tylor (1832-1917) was considered as a founder of cultural
anthropology and he was widely recognized for an all-inclusive definition of culture. He
proposed that “culture, or civilization, taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is that complex
whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and
habits acquired by man as a member of society” (1871/1958, p. 1). There are two essential
1
components of culture in this definition—the human capability to create culture and the products
of this capability. This capability comes from the human mind and originally develops inwardly;
however, it is eventually affected by its social cultural context as well (Vygotsky, 1929). Tylor
(1871/1958) also pointed out that the cultural conditions in different societies provided an apt
subject for the study of human thought and action.
Franz Boas (1858-1942) disagreed with Tylor’s cultural evolutionism and refused to
accept that certain cultures and races were superior to others. He insisted that culture has to be
understood in specific cultural contexts. Different cultures evolve in a non-linear way and are not
parallel to each other. In addition, type, language, and culture are neither closely nor permanently
related (Boas, 1911/1938). Type can be loosely understood as race in this case. This antievolutionist view along with Boas’ other thoughts were later summarized by his students as
cultural relativism. “Culture may be defined as the totality of the mental and physical reactions
and activities that characterize the behavior of the individuals composing a social group
collectively and individually in relation to their natural environment, to other groups, to members
of the group itself and of each individual to himself” (Boas, 1911/1938, p. 159). Though radical
in his time, this definition remains central to anthropologists today (Holloway, 1997). Cultural
relativism also gave rise to cultural psychology in the 1980s and indigenous psychology in the
1990s (Triandis, 2007) which will be covered later in this chapter.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Boas’ students Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Edward
Sapir significantly contributed to the theoretical positions for the field later known as culture and
personality studies (LeVine, 2001, 2007). These studies are also referred to as the culture and
personality movement in American social and behavioral science. These studies included many
theories and approaches to the relationship between culture and the individual by anthropologists,
2
psychologists, and psychiatrists. An interesting remark regarding this relationship is the
following: “Culture is to society what memory is to individuals” (Kluckhohn, 1954). This field is
considered a precursor of contemporary cross-cultural studies on personality (LeVine, 2001).
In the late 1950s psychologists started to shift away from behaviorism and began to
communicate with linguists and computer scientists (Miller, 2003). Their efforts gave birth to
cognitive science in the 1960s; in the meantime, dissonance theory and attribution theory came
into being in social psychology. However, only a small group of psychologists, such as Harry
Triandis, Michael Bond, John Berry, and Michael Cole, devoted themselves to cultural
psychology (Nisbett, 2007, p.838). Interest in the psychology of culture did not revive until the
1980s; since then, more and more scholars have acknowledged the importance of culture in
understanding the human mind and human behavior and have joined forces with researchers in
cross- cultural, cultural, and indigenous psychology.
Cross-cultural psychology is the systematic (explicit or implicit) comparison of thought
and behavior in different cultural contexts. Cross-cultural research is usually conducted using
quantitative method with culture as an antecedent or independent variable whereas cultural
psychology uses ethnographic methods and treats culture as existing inside an individual
(Greenfield, 2000; Triandis, 2000). Although cross-cultural psychology examines both
similarities and differences in psychological functioning and behaviors of people from various
cultures or ethnic groups, it is mainly concerned with understanding human diversity (Berry,
1997; Matsumoto, 2001). This has been criticized as conveniently labeling culture as the
difference in behaviors and beliefs among different cultures (Hinde, 1987) and separating culture
and individuals. Cross-cultural psychology has changed considerably over the past three decades
with the emergence of the other two subfields—cultural psychology and indigenous psychology.
3
Cultural psychology usually avoids direct comparisons among cultures but endeavors to
understand how mind and culture interact in specific contexts (Adamopoulos & Lonner, 2001).
Cultural psychology honors the deep mentality differences among people from different cultures
and aims at psychological pluralism without denying all universals or commonalities (Shweder,
2000). In cultural psychology, culture is the medium of learning about people and the world
through which “the sources of development that underpin traditional developmental theories
(nature-nurture, biology-environment, individual-society) interact to produce this development”
(Cole, 1995, p. 31). Cultural psychology is still in its developing stage and is marked by its lack
of a commonly accepted orientation and methodology.
Indigenous psychology is similar to cultural psychology in the sense that it shares the
emphasis on examining cognition and behavior in specific culture contexts. In addition,
indigenous psychologists investigate “the knowledge, skills, and beliefs people have about
themselves, and study these aspects in natural contexts” (Kim & Park, 2006). This approach is
well-known for encouraging the development of a psychology of people in a specific cultural
context. However, indigenous psychology has attracted criticism because of its cultural relativist
views and difficulty in defining the indigenousness.
Although there are heated debates among the advocates for each of the three approaches,
differences among them are small and the approaches can complement one another.
We cannot fully understand one culture without understanding other cultures, we cannot
understand cultural differences without an understanding of cultural similarities, and we cannot
understand cultural universals without an understanding of cultural peculiarities (N. Ross, 2004).
It is very difficult to tease apart universals from specifics or to separate similarities from
differences. When culture is looked at in terms of similarities, culture becomes defined as
4
integration of universal human knowledge, beliefs, and practices. When culture is treated in
terms of differences, culture is defined as the unique social values and material traits of a racial,
religious, or social group. There is general agreement that people from different cultures share
similarities and have differences. There is little agreement, however, upon whether those
differences are minor or major and whether they are stable. In order to study culture and
psychology, it is necessary to create functionally equivalent and culturally sensitive instruments
to tease apart the universal and specific aspects of culture (Cole, 2005). Cultural psychologists
emphasize cultural differences among cultural groups because “cultural traditions and social
practices regulate, express, and transform the human psyche, resulting less in psychic unity for
human kind than in ethnic divergences in mind, self, and emotion” (Shweder, 1991, p. 72).
Western and Eastern Cultures
Western and Eastern cultures have been extensively investigated because of their
different historical traditions, political ideologies, and social outlooks. Western cultures usually
refer to European, North American, and Australian cultures. Eastern cultures usually refer to East
Asia — China and the nations that were heavily influenced by Chinese traditional culture, such
as Japan and Korea. Many differences in behavioral practices and beliefs have been found
between these two cultures. For instance, parenting practices differ significantly between
Americans and Asians in that American parents see great developmental value in play for their
pre-school children whereas Asian parents see less developmental value in play but believe in
early academic training (Parmar, Harkness, & Super, 2004). In addition, American college
students were found to be better at creating artwork than their Chinese counterparts according to
both American and Chinese judges (Niu & Sternberg, 2001). Western and Eastern people were
also found to think differently. Studies show that East Asians focus on the field and rely more on
5
intuitive and dialectical reasoning whereas Americans focus on the object and rely more on
formal and analytical thinking (Nisbett et al., 2001; Norenzayan, Smith, Kim, & Nisbett, 2002).
Western and East Asian cultures have also been extensively compared on their different
social outlooks — individualism and collectivism. Western society is generally accepted as the
individualist culture within which people value independence, attend to the self, and seek to
express unique individual attributes. East Asian nations are usually considered as typical
collectivist cultures within which people emphasize interdependent relationships among
individuals, attend to the goals of the group, and behave in a communal way (Markus &
Kitayama, 1991; Mills & Clark, 1982; Triandis, 2001). The difference in independent and
interdependent self-construal can influence emotion, cognition, and motivation. For instance,
Chinese individuals were found to more readily infer personality traits based on group
membership and tended to stereotype more than did their American counterparts (SpencerRodgers, Williams, Hamilton, & Peng, 2007).
Attribution
Attribution theories attempt to explain how people make causal explanations of behaviors
and events around them and how they govern themselves in response (Crittenden, 1996; Kelley,
1973). The methods by which people make causal attributions has been used as one perspective
to investigate the differences among cultures. People’s attribution styles or patterns can be
classified by the dimensions of causes (e.g., locus, stability, controllability, and globality) and
events (e.g., actor, domain, and valence) (Crittenden, 1996). The locus of control dimension
refers to the degree to which a cause is internal or external to the actor of the behavior. The
stability dimension indicates whether the cause will vary over time. Controllability refers to
6
whether the cause is subject to the actor’s choice. Globality indicates whether the cause is
associated with multiple events or a certain event.
The actor dimension refers to either the actor of the behavior or the observer, which is
also known as self-other dimension. Examples for the domain of an event can include academic
achievement, the relationship with one’s spouse, or a highway car crash. The valence of an event
concerns whether the outcome is good or bad. Using the above dimensions, this study
investigates the degree to which observers from America and China make internal or external
attributions of two negative incidents, a campus shooting tragedy and bullying behavior at school.
It is necessary to briefly review the history of attribution research in order to understand internal
and external causal attribution.
Psychological research on attribution started with the work of Fritz Heider (Malle, 2004).
Based on Lewin’s field theory (1948/1997) that one’s behavior is a function of personal
characteristics and social situation, Heider (1958) theorized that in common-sense psychology
(also known as naïve psychology) the outcome of a behavior is dependent on two conditions,
namely factors within the person and factors within the environment. These factors are also
known as dispositional (or internal) and situational (or external) factors.
Heider’s ideas did not arouse immediate interest until Jones and Davis (1965) published
their acclaimed theory of correspondent inference (Malle, 2004). Jones and Davis (1965),
building on Heider’s work, proposed that people tend to attribute an agent’s behavior to the
agent’s disposition or personality but ignore situational factors. This was demonstrated by an
experiment conducted by Jones and Harris in 1967.(1967) Participants read a short pro- or antiCastro essay and estimated the writer’s pro-Castro attitude. For writers who voluntarily chose
their argument (position), participants rated the writers’ true attitudes to correspond to their essay
7
positions. For writers who were assigned an argument randomly, participants still rated writers of
pro-Castro essays as having a more positive attitude towards Castro than those of anti-Castro
essays. This tendency for observers to overemphasize dispositional explanations in another’s act
but ignore situational explanations was later called the fundamental attribution error (FAE) by L.
Ross (1977). This tendency to infer that people’s dispositions correspond to their behaviors can
be demonstrated by an everyday example. People often like some movie stars because of the
characters the stars played even though the actors are not the characters they play. FAE recently
has been known as correspondence bias (Gilbert & Malone, 1995).
Correspondence bias is less likely and is sometimes even reversed when people explain
their own behavior. Loosely stated, people tend to attribute their own behaviors to situational
factors. Jones and Nisbett (1972) called this effect actor-observer discrepancy, which is also
known as the actor-observer effect (AOE). They proposed that there is a general tendency for
actors to attribute their own actions to situational factors whereas for observers, the tendency is
to attribute the same actions to actors’ stable personal dispositions. In Robins, Spranca, and
Mendelsohn’s study (1996), external causes were further grouped into either general or
immediate and concrete circumstances of the situation while internal causes were grouped into a
stable dispositional factor and an unstable mood factor. Following dyadic interactions, most
participants believed that their behaviors were influenced more by the immediate situation (the
interaction partner) and their partner’s behaviors were more of an outcome of the stable
dispositional factor.
The actor-observer effect held true for most of the participants in the above study;
however, there have also been studies indicating that this discrepancy between actors and
observers can be absent and that there is a significant consistency between participants’
8
explanations of their own and others’ behaviors. In Robins, Mendelsohn, Connell, and Kwan’s
study (2004), participants were found to provide the same causal factors to explain their own
behavior and the behavior of different partners. Participants who attributed their own behaviors
to personality tended to attribute their partners’ behaviors to personality as well. Participants who
favored situational factors for their own behaviors emphasized the same for their partners’
behaviors. This finding conflicts with AOE but has implications for the existence of attribution
styles and generalized causal schemas.
In the research of attribution styles or patterns, hypothetical negative events have been
more frequently used than positive or neutral events as the material to trigger causal inference.
The events or behaviors that have been used are diverse and include car crashes, gun-based
violence, sexual victimization, domestic violence, disease, and many others. This line of research
was inspired by Lerner’s Just-World Theory which stated that people need to believe in a just
and orderly world where everyone gets what they deserve so that when they are confronted with
injustice, they engage in a variety of causal inferences to maintain the sense of justice (Hafer &
Begue, 2005; Lerner & Miller, 1978; Lerner & Simmons, 1966). Sometimes people blame
innocent victims and rationalize that they deserve the unfortunate events that have happened to
them in order to claim that the “injustice” does not exist and that justice has been maintained.
Based on the internal-external attribution dichotomy, another attribution bias that has
been identified is self-serving bias which denotes that people tend to attribute positive events to
internal causes and attribute negative events to external causes. By taking credit for successes
and making internal attributions, people achieve the purpose of self-enhancement. By avoiding
blame for failures and making external attributions, people achieve the purpose of self-protection.
This has been found by some studies and considered typical of individualist cultures, such as the
9
United States and Europe. This self-serving bias becomes group-serving bias in collectivist
cultures, such as in China, Japan, and Korea, where people blame individuals and make internal
attributions for individual failures in order to protect the group. One of the ways attribution
theory has been applied to the study of cultures is to compare causal attributions made by people
from individualist cultures and collectivist cultures. This line of research has been known as the
individualism-collectivism approach.
Individualism-Collectivism Approach to Attribution
A group of psychologists have explained people’s cross-cultural differences in attribution
with individualism-collectivism theory. In individualist cultures, people are autonomous and
independent, giving priority to their personal goals; in collectivist cultures, people are
interdependent and concerned with relationships, giving priority to their groups (Triandis, 2001).
There is a group of scholars who emphasize individualism in Western cultures and collectivism
in East Asian cultures. They utilize this approach for theoretical explanations of differences in
causal attributions between the two cultures. Crystal’s study (2000) is representative of this line
of research. He found that concerning peers’ deviant behaviors, American participants generally
made external attributions for the purposes of individual protection or self-enhancement whereas
Japanese participants usually made internal attributions to blame the individual and protect the
group.
In Crystal’s study (2000), the participants were fifth and eleventh graders from urban and
rural areas in Tokyo and Michigan. All the participants listened to the same tape-recorded stories
that each described one of four deviant behaviors of a hypothetical peer. The deviant behaviors
included oppositional behavior, depression, school phobia, and aggression. After listening to the
story, the students were asked three questions. The first question was whether the character had
10
done anything that seemed strange or unusual. The second question asked what was strange or
unusual about the behavior or characteristic. The third question asked why the participants
thought the character acted in that way. At the end of the interview, students were given a minute
to describe themselves. Answers to the first three questions were analyzed for their content and
classified into seven major categories. The three categories of the responses to the third question
(why did the character act in a certain way) included external influences, psychological
reasoning, and a “don’t know” category. External influences referred to family or friends.
Examples of participant responses are “his father was too strict,” “his friends didn’t listen to
him,” or “his parents didn’t give her enough attention.’ In contrast internal psychological
reasoning involved the hypothetical peers’ feelings, cognitions, or emotional state. For example,
“he took his anger out on the short kid” or “she felt worthless because of her mistakes”.
The results show that, except for the scenario of the school phobic child, significantly
more American students attributed the child’s behaviors to external influences in every scenario.
In all four scenarios, more Japanese than American students explained the deviant behavior by
references to the child’s psychological reasoning. Crystal discussed the cultural differences in
attributions in terms of the individualism-collectivism paradigm and the self-serving bias. That is,
Americans as individualists responded to the task in a self-enhancing manner to protect the self
whereas the Japanese as collectivists responded in a group-enhancing manner to protect the
group.
Hui (2001) found a similar group-enhancing pattern in Chinese participants’ causal
explanations of students’ concerns. Hong Kong students’ and teachers’ perceptions of students’
concerns and causal explanations of these concerns were investigated. Both students and teachers
identified students’ ability and efforts (internal factors) as the top causal component for students’
11
concerns. In an earlier study by Hui (2000), Hong Kong adolescent students took a survey on
their concerns and the reasons/causes for their concerns. Results showed that even though
students made references to both external and internal causes, they tended to give more weight to
their own deficiencies (internal factors) rather than to others around them (external influences).
Both students and teachers agreed upon the internal causes for student’s concerns. AOE is absent
in this sample’s responses because actors and observers made similar attributions for the same
events. The two studies provided evidence that the Chinese tend to make internal attributions
with regard to school-related concerns.
Intellectual History Approach
Other research has come up with a very different analysis of the differences in causal
attributions between Western and East Asian cultures. Nisbett and his colleagues propose that
Western culture is more analytical and that Westerners make more internal attributions whereas
East Asians are holistic thinkers and make more situational attributions. Nisbett (2003) argued
that the differences in cognition between Western culture and East Asian culture can be traced
back to the different philosophies and achievements of the ancient Greeks compared to the
Chinese. Ancient Greek’s striking sense of freedom, individuality, and curiosity produced great
philosophers, such as Aristotle, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Plato. Due to the intellectual
inheritance from ancient Greeks, Westerners today are analytic thinkers and pay attention
primarily to the object, its categories, and formal logic. On the other hand, ancient Chinese
philosophies, a blend of Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, emphasized harmony, change,
contradiction, simplicity, and holism. Therefore, East Asians are holistic thinkers, are more
likely to attend to the entire field, and tend to rely on dialectical reasoning.
12
Nisbett and his colleagues have conducted a large number of comparative research
studies in East Asians’ and Westerners’ perception and causal attributions. They argued that East
Asians, as holistic thinkers, attend more to contextual or situational information and make more
situational (or external) attributions whereas their Western counterparts (usually Americans) tend
to make more dispositional (or internal) attributions (Nisbett et al., 2001). An early and
representative study from this group of research is Morris and Peng (1994), motivated by several
negative real-world events
For example, in 1991, a Chinese physics student at the University of Iowa, Gang Lu, lost
an award competition, appealed the decision unsuccessfully and subsequently failed to obtain a
job. One day he entered the physics building and shot his advisor, the administrator who handled
his appeal, a few bystanders, and then himself. Morris and Peng noticed remarkable differences
between Chinese news reports and English news reports on this incident. In the American news
reports, explanations for Gang Lu’s behavior focused on his psychological problems. In the
Chinese newspaper, explanations focused on social pressure and aspects of the American context.
Later in the same year, an American postal worker, Thomas McIlvane, killed his former
supervisor, a few coworkers, and himself after he had lost his job, appealed unsuccessfully, and
failed to find another full-time job. Morris and Peng performed another content analysis of
American and Chinese newspaper reports on this incident and found results similar to those in
Gang Lu’s case. They decided to design an experimental study to test their observations (Nisbett,
2003).
Morris and Peng collected dispositional traits and situational factors from the news
reports of both incidents and created a questionnaire. Half of the participants from each of two
cultures (American versus Chinese) received the questionnaire from the campus-shooting
13
scenario and the other half received the questionnaire from the post-office shooting scenario.
Each scenario preceded an open-ended question, which requested a brief explanation of the
shooter’s behavior. The causal judgment task was composed of 28 hypothetical situational and
dispositional causes of the murder on a 7-point rating scale (1 = “not a cause at all” and 7 = “the
most important cause”). In addition, a counterfactual judgment task presented the participants
with 16 hypothetical scenarios, each different from the actual scenario by the change of one
causal factor (x). Participants were asked to decide whether the murder would have happened if
only x had been different, where x stands for either a personal disposition factor or a situational
factor in the actual case.
The open-ended question served as a priming tool to trigger the participants’ spontaneous
thoughts about the murder and these responses were not included in the analysis. The responses
to the causal judgment task showed that personal dispositions were given greater weight overall
by American participants while situational factors were given greater weight overall by Chinese
participants. American participants particularly emphasized chronic psychological problems
related to work and Chinese participants emphasized corruption and disruption of the society.
American participants also committed the “ultimate attribution error” (or group-serving bias),
which means they were more critical of the out-group (the Chinese graduate student Lu in this
case). In addition, they gave more weight to personal dispositions and less weight to situational
factors for the murder. Finally, the results of the counterfactual questions were inconclusive
because Chinese participants believed the murder to be less likely than did the American
participants when either dispositional or situational factors were altered.
In addition to conducting verbal causality studies, intellectual history psychologists have
conducted a considerable amount of cross-cultural research in perceptual and visual causality.
14
The assumption was that the social-economic environment of the two cultures described above,
Greece and China, historically determined the different ways that we perceived the world and
therefore the different ways we explained the world. Conversely, if we explain the world
differently, we must see different worlds as well. Ji, Nisbett, and Peng’s art clips and rod-andframe study (2000) showed that Chinese participants reported stronger associations between
events and were more field-dependent than their American counterparts. The researchers
believed that East Asians attend to the field as a whole and that their cognition is relatively
holistic whereas Westerners focus on objects and their cognition is more control-oriented. They
proposed that East Asians believe that things are constantly changing, which leads them to “a
fluid and open-minded view of people and events” resulting in situational attributions whereas
“belief in no change may lead Americans to dispositionism that personal traits are fixed” (Ji,
Nisbett, & Su, 2001).
Ng and Zhu (2001) examined causality attribution and memory of events in situations
involving both individual and group actions with Chinese and American participants. The
Chinese participants, being more collectivist, showed greater preference for external attributions
whereas the more individualistic participants, the Americans, showed a preference for internal
attributions in situations involving individual actions.. The categorization of collectivists and
individualists was measured by a self-construal questionnaire. Ng and Zhu argued that
collectivism along with Confucianism and Taoism make the Chinese willing attributors but
reluctant reductionists. The Chinese pay attention to both the actor and the target of an action, as
well as the context in which the action occurs.
In order to further explore the underlying mechanisms for the cultural differences in
cognitive processing styles, Chua, Boland, and Nisbett (2005) tracked and measured American
15
and Chinese participants’ eye movements while they viewed photographs involving a focal
object in a complex background. The researchers found that the Americans looked at the focal
objects more quickly and fixated on them longer than did their Chinese counterparts. The
researchers claimed that differences in attribution style and event memory may originate from
differences in what people pay attention to.
The intellectual history school of thought thus proposes that Americans make more
dispositional attributions about an event whereas East Asians make more situational attributions.
These differences are due to the influences of their intellectual inheritance and cultural
backgrounds. The researchers of this school have provided empirical evidence to support the
claim that people from Western and East Asian cultures make different causal attributions. They
have proposed an interesting and provocative theory that links the cognitive differences to the
intellectual history influences, although these connections can be hard to demonstrate.
The Third Group: Individualism-Collectivism or Intellectual History?
It is apparent that the individualism-collectivism and intellectual history theorists and
researchers differ in their positions about the differences in causal attributions made by
Westerners and East Asians. Nisbett and his colleagues believe that East Asians make situational
and external attributions whereas Westerners make dispositional and internal attributions because
each group inherits different thoughts and beliefs from our ancestors through education.
Researchers such as Crystal and Hui argue that East Asians make internal attributions whereas
Westerners make external attributions because collectivist and individualist cultures have
different impacts on their members. To make the situation more confusing, there are other
studies that adopted individualism-collectivism theories but that produced results consistent with
those found by intellectual history researchers, as described below.
16
In a study conducted by Ho (2004), Chinese and Australian teachers were asked to rate
the importance of causal factors for students’ problematic behaviors and the teachers differed
significantly on the attribution of those behaviors. The Australian teachers emphasized students’
abilities as the main causal factor whereas the Chinese emphasized family background. Ho
argued that in individualist cultures, individuals are held responsible for their behaviors;
therefore, Australian teachers attributed students’ problematic behaviors to internal causes. In
collectivist cultures, family factors were emphasized, thus helping to explain Chinese teachers’
emphasis on family factors.
In a study conducted by Au, Hui, and Leung (2001), Chinese and Canadian participants
were presented with a scenario in which a customer’s coat was stained with tea in a hotel and the
hotel manager handled the customer’s complaint. The researchers found that Chinese participants
attributed more responsibility to the hotel than did Canadian participants and that both groups
were similar in the level of self-blame. The researchers argued that collectivists were more
sensitive to in-group and out-group differences, which individualists are less sensitive to.
Therefore, collectivists blamed the out-group service provider, the hotel, more than did the
individualists.
In Cheah and Rubin’s study (2004), American and Chinese (mainland) mothers were
asked to make causal attributions on hypothetical vignettes of an aggressive child and a socially
withdrawn child. The results revealed that Chinese mothers, compared to their counterparts, were
more likely to attribute social withdrawal to external causes and less likely to believe that social
withdrawal and aggression were stable or intentional. The authors believed that the Chinese
mothers’ endorsement of external causal attributions is consistent with Confucian ideology and
collectivist cultures that value unobtrusive and compliant behaviors in order to maintain social
17
harmony. It was thought that American mothers endorsed internal attributions because
individualist cultures value assertive and independent behaviors.
This third set of research shares the same theoretical classification of individualist
collectivist cultures, classifying America as an individualist culture and China as a collectivist
culture. However, the researchers produced different results from Crystal and Hui, who believed
that Americans tend to make external attributions to blame others and protect the self whereas
the Chinese tend to make internal attributions to blame individuals to protect the group. This
third group believes that Americans favor internal attributions whereas the Chinese favor
external attributions, similar to what Nisbett and his colleagues proposed.
Study Rationale and Purpose
Three groups of causal attribution studies have been presented with incompatible results.
The individualism-collectivism studies show that Westerners, as individualists, tend to make
external attributions to protect the self whereas East Asians, as collectivists, tend to make
internal attributions to protect the group. On the other hand, the intellectual history group and
results from several individualism-collectivism studies find that Westerners tend to make internal
or dispositional attributions whereas East Asians tend to make external or situational attributions.
The results of those studies are comparable because their participants were usually recruited
from the same regions—North America and East Asia. In the individualism-collectivism studies,
the individualist culture mainly refers to the U.S. and Canada, and the collectivist culture refers
to China and Japan. In intellectual history studies, East Asian culture refers to China, Japan, and
Korea, and Western culture mainly refers to the United States.
The present study is an effort to explain why there are conflicting results from previous
studies. On the one hand, the intellectual history group and some individualism-collectivism
18
scholars provided evidence that East Asian subjects were inclined to make stronger and more
external attributions whereas American subjects were more likely to make internal attributions.
On the other hand, another group of individualism-collectivism scholars came up with empirical
evidence showing that East Asian subjects made more and stronger internal attributions while
American subjects made more and stronger external attributions. Thus, the current study aims to
address why there are conflicting results among these attribution and culture studies and how
American and Chinese differ in their causal attributions.
One of the differences among the previous research studies is that they tended to use
different methods of soliciting responses. Most of the cultural studies of causal attribution
requested participants to take paper-pencil questionnaires that usually included rating-scale
questions, such as Morris and Peng’s study (1994) of the graduate student campus shooting.
Some studies were carried out through in-person interviews where participants were requested to
freely offer causal attributions, such as in Crystal’s study (2000). Methods of soliciting responses
can have a large impact on participants’ responses. For example, in response to open-ended
questions, participants are very likely to provide spontaneous causal explanations. Given
multiple-choice or rating-scale questions, participants are more likely to provide responses
constrained by the structure of the questionnaire. Thus, the researchers can impose their prior
beliefs on the participants. To avoid this, the current study requested participants to offer
spontaneous open-ended attributions first and then to respond to rating-scale survey questions.
The rating-scale items were collected from pilot studies to minimize any researcher bias.
Another difference among the previous studies is that they have used different scenarios,
which may lead to different causal attributions; therefore, in this study, both scenarios were
revised and used in an attempt to replicate the results of the two existing studies.
19
Research Questions and Hypotheses
As mentioned in the above section, there are several possible explanations for the
conflicting results in the above studies. First, different scenarios have been employed in previous
studies. Second, different measurement methods can affect the outcome. Open-ended questions
and rating-scale questions for the same material may solicit different answers from the same
participant. Third, as noted by Markus and Kitayama (1991) a persistent issue in cultural and
psychology studies involves the depth and pervasiveness of the cultural differences. The
interpretation of cultural differences in causal attribution may contribute to the incompatibility
among existing studies. Therefore, to test the validity of these explanations, three questions with
corresponding hypotheses were developed for this study.
Is Causal Attribution Content-Specific?
The first question concerns whether causal attributions are content-specific. That is, does
the specific scenario used in the survey lead participants to make certain type of attributions,
either internal (dispositional) or external (situational)? People make causal attributions (either
situational or dispositional) that correspond to the nature of the event or behavior. Studies show
that valence of the behavior (Ybarra, 2002), attractiveness of the character (Forsterling,
Preikschas, & Agthe, 2007), attributor’s cognitive load (Lieberman, Jarcho, & Obayashi, 2005),
and many other factors have an impact on people’s causal attributions. It may be that there are
not general differences in causal attributions between the American and Chinese groups but that
there are culture-specific differences in their reactions to certain scenarios. For instance, in the
shooting scenario, the murder weapon was a gun which is more accessible in the U.S. than in
China. It might be that the cultural differences in causal attributions were due to the different
reactions to guns by the two cultures. It is possible that if the weapon were a knife, there might
20
be a different pattern of causal attributions made by the two groups. Rather than there being
general cultural differences, no matter what scenarios being used, there may well be cultural
differences in the reactions to a specific scenario.
Thus, the first hypothesis is that causal attributions are content-specific. It is predicted
that the nature of the scenario is likely to interact with the culture. In addition, this hypothesis
makes the common-sense assumption that people tend to hold adults responsible for their
misdeeds and allow children excuses for their misbehaviors. Therefore, two predictions are made
for the first hypothesis:
I-1: For the aggressive schoolboy scenario, both groups will make stronger external attributions
than internal attributions.
I-2: For the graduate student’s murder scenario, both groups will make stronger internal
attributions than external attributions.
Is Causal Attribution Question-Format-Specific?
The second research question asks whether causal attributions are question-formatspecific. That is, does question format (open-ended questions versus rating-scale questions) in
the survey have an impact on participants’ responses? The rating-scale questionnaire is the
conventional measure adopted by most attribution studies (Forsterling et al., 2007; Kenworthy &
Miller, 2002; Kozak, Marsh, & Wegner, 2006; Schlenker, Weigold, & Hallam, 1990). This type
of measure has the disadvantage that participants lack the option of not responding to those items
that are unrelated to their prior thinking. However, open-ended questions provide the opportunity
to elicit participants’ idiosyncratic responses (Eagly, Mladinic, & Otto, 1994). Therefore, the
current study included both rating-scale and open-ended questions in the online survey in order
21
to compare the responses to each question format and find out if the two question formats will
elicit different attribution patterns.
Morris and Peng (1994) used open-ended questions to prime subjects prior to their
responding to the rating-scale questions; however, the researchers discarded the open-ended
responses which might provide richer information about the participants’ causal thinking patterns.
Crystal (2000) used one-on-one interviews with his subjects. It is possible that people respond
differently to questions presented in different formats; therefore, the incompatible findings from
previous studies could result from the differences in instrumentation used. Rating-scale questions
force participants to make a choice and are likely to provide participants with extra information
that they would not have otherwise thought about. In these cases, participants will react to the
items by retrieving previous attitudes toward the scenario (Eagly et al., 1994). However, openended questions allow participants spontaneous responses, which may be similar to responses
that participants would give in a real-life situation. Therefore, as stated above, the second
hypothesis is that causal attributions are question-format-specific; furthermore, the two
predictions for the second hypothesis are:
II-1: Participants from both cultural groups will endorse both internal and external causes in their
responses to the open-ended questions so that, overall, neither of these causes will be favored.
II-2: Participants from both cultural groups will favor one type of cause, either internal or
external, in their responses to the rating-scale questions.
Is Causal Attribution Culture-Specific?
The purpose of the study is to find out if the two groups (American versus Chinese) will
show different attribution patterns—either internal or external. The first two questions are
potential explanations of the incompatible findings in the existing literature, and the first two
22
hypotheses are designed to detect sources rather than culture for the different attribution patterns
between the American and Chinese groups. In contrast, the third research question asks whether
causal attributions are culture-specific. This study adapted two scenarios from previous
research—the bullying scenario from Crystal’s study (2000) and the campus shooting scenario
from Morris and Peng’s study (1994). As stated above, in Crystal’s study, American participants
were found to make external attributions, and East Asian participants were found to make
internal attributions. In Morris and Peng’s study, Americans favored internal attributions and
East Asians favored external attributions. Because there is considerable evidence to support both
groups’ claims, it is hard to assume that one of these results is not valid. Therefore, it is possible
that something else, such as the scenario or the question format, is causing the difference in the
attribution patterns. It is also possible that American and Chinese perceive the causes differently
from the internal-versus-external dimension.
Again, the third hypothesis is that causal attributions are culture-specific. It is predicted
that although there are differences in causal attributions between the two cultures, they will not
appear in the form of opposite patterns as claimed in the existing literature. Culture affects causal
attributions via interaction with the scenario and the question format. In other words, the main
effect of culture may not be significant but the interaction effects will be.
23
II. METHOD
Participants
There were 209 Chinese participants and 138 American participants who accessed the
online survey, Cognition and Culture. The Chinese participants were recruited from a university
in a major city in China, and the American participants were from a Midwestern university in the
U.S.
The researcher emailed her colleagues in the U.S. and China to ask for their assistance in
spreading the word about the study among their students. Potential participants (the students)
were informed of the study by their teachers either via recruitment email or a flyer. Please refer
to Appendix A for both the English and Chinese versions of the recruitment letter. In the letter,
students were provided the URL to access the online survey. Please refer to Appendix B for the
English version of the survey English and Appendix C for the Chinese version. Throughout the
study, participants had no direct contact with anyone at the research site.
Data collection lasted for one month. Participants were removed from data analysis based
on three data-cleaning criteria. First, participants (N =46) who did not provide any response to
the open-ended question were removed. Second, participants (N = 65) whose rating-scale
responses were incomplete were removed. Third, international participants (N = 3) who stayed in
the U.S. or China for academic purposes were removed because their opinions may not have
been representative of the local people’s beliefs. After data cleaning, responses were saved from
76 American participants and 157 Chinese participants and used in the final analysis.
24
Demographic Results
Participants were all well-educated, computer literate, and fluent in their native language
(Chinese or English). American participants had an average age of 27 and were recruited from
both graduate and undergraduate programs. Chinese participants had an average age of 21 and
were mainly from undergraduate programs. American participants were somewhat older and had
more years of education compared to their Chinese counterparts. The results are summarized in
Table 1.
Table 1 Demographics of Participants
Culture
N Mean
Standard
Minimum
Maximum
Deviation
Age
Education
U.S.
76
27.05
10.81
18
61
China
157
21.48
1.88
17
29
U.S.
76
2.86
1.32
1
5
China
157
2.10
.45
1
5
Note: Education level 1 = High School Graduate, 2 = Some College, 3 = Completed College,
4 = Some Graduate School, 5 = Completed Graduate School.
Materials
Demographic questions
Before participants took the questionnaire, they were asked four demographic
questions—nationality, residency, age, and education level. Gender of the participants was not in
the survey because existing research findings indicate that gender has little impact on the
participants’ causal attributions of other’s behaviors (Crystal, 2000; Song, Smetana, & Kim,
1987).
25
Scenarios
The scenarios of the survey were adopted from those used in the studies of Crystal (2000)
and Morris and Peng (1994). In Crystal’s study, four scenarios of deviant behaviors—
oppositional, depressed, school phobic, and aggressive—were presented to the participants. The
aggressive scenario was about a schoolboy bullying his classmates and was used in the current
study. Morris and Peng used two public shooting stories. The current study used the campusshooting scenario—an angry graduate student who committed murder and then suicide on
campus.
The two stories were rewritten to be applicable to both Chinese and American cultures,
and the two main characters were each given a typical Chinese or American name. The bullying
boy was named Dave in the English version and De in the Chinese version. The graduate student
was named either Michael (English version) or Ming (Chinese version). Participants were
expected to assume that the characters were from their own cultural backgrounds. Such approach
was designed to avoid group-serving bias which was shown to exist among American
participants in the literature (Morris & Peng, 1994). The scenarios and questions were written in
English by the researcher and then translated into Chinese by a bilingual translator. To ensure the
accuracy of the Chinese translation, it was back-translated into English by another bilingual
translator and compared against the original English version. The English version of the
schoolboy scenario used in the survey is as follows.
Dave is an only child. His parents are doctors so they worked very hard and aren’t home
very much. But they try to give him as much attention as possible. Dave doesn’t have
much patience if things don’t go his way. One day, Dave’s teacher mentioned Dave’s low
grade on a recent test in front of the class. After class, Dave was walking in the school
26
hallway when someone accidentally bumped into him. He grabbed the other person,
pushed him up against the wall, and demanded he apologize. At lunch, a particularly
short kid who was in Dave’s class stood in front of him on the food line. Dave began to
tease him and call him names. That afternoon, during a chemistry lesson, Dave tripped
this same kid as he was walking down the aisle carrying a tray of glass beakers.
The English version of the graduate student scenario is:
Michael was a graduate student and had been studying in a major university for five years.
He had recently lost an award competition which was given to his advisor’s other
graduate student. Michael suspected that his advisor had favored the other student and the
other fellow student had cheated. He unsuccessfully appealed it. Later on he failed to get
an academic job which he believed was due to his advisor's unenthusiastic reference letter.
One day he entered the faculty meeting in his department and shot his advisor, the fellow
student, and another two professors. He then proceeded two blocks to the administration
building where he shot the associate vice president of academic affairs who was handling
his case and a student helper. He then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.
Open-ended Questionnaire
The open-ended questionnaire consisted of three parts: the scenario, the open-ended
question, and five text boxes. The open-ended question asked participants to speculate beyond
the limited information given in the short scenario and to provide as many causes for the event as
they could think of. Below the instructions, there were five text boxes for participants to type in
their speculated causes of the incident. Results in the pilot study proved that participants rarely
gave more than five causes. The open-ended results were coded with a rubric that was created
27
after the data had been collected. More details regarding the coding rubric and the inter-rater
reliability will be discussed in the next chapter.
Rating-Scale Questionnaire
The rating-scale items were developed in a series of two pilot studies. In the first pilot
study, participants were recruited from the researcher’s social network in the U.S. and China.
They were presented with the same two scenarios in their mother tongue, either English or
Chinese, and asked to provide causal attributions freely for both scenarios and to comment on
how to improve the wording of the two scenarios. The collected causal statements were
summarized and rewritten to create the first draft of the rating-scale items, resulting in six
internal attribution statements and seven external attribution statements for each scenario.
This first draft was used in the second pilot study with another group of graduate students
and some faculty members in a Midwestern university in the United States. There were both
Americans and Chinese in this group of participants. They were asked to complete the ratingscale questionnaire, provide feedback on the rating-scale items, and offer any other causes
attributions that they could think of. They were also asked to comment on the instructions of the
questionnaire. After the participants turned in their responses, they were interviewed on the
telephone by the researcher for further discussion of the instrument. Each item in the rating-scale
questionnaire was either an internal or external attribution. One of the purposes for this second
pilot study was to find out if participants interpreted the rating-scale items the same way as the
researcher had intended, and this was confirmed.
In the final version of the questionnaire, there were thirteen questions for each scenario.
Each question consisted of two parts—one hypothetical causal statement for the incident in the
scenario and a five-point scale (from “very important” = 5 to “not a factor” = 1) placed in front
28
of the causal statement. By selecting one of the five ratings, each participant indicated how
important the cause was to the incident. Six internal causal statements and seven external causal
statements were randomly ordered in the questionnaire. In the analysis each participant’s ratings
of internal items were averaged separately from ratings of the external items. The difference
between the two means indicated whether the participant favored internal or external
explanations of the incident.
Procedure
In the recruitment email, the participants were provided with the URL of the online
questionnaire. They accessed the questionnaire at a time and location convenient to themselves
and had no contact with anyone at the research site. The online survey has one English version
for the American participants and one mandarin Chinese version for the Chinese participants. In
the recruitment email for American participants, the URL to access the English version was
provided; in the recruitment email for Chinese group, the URL to access the Chinese version was
provided.
The online questionnaire included seven web pages. Page 1 consisted of the informed
consent form, which told participants about the study in sufficient detail to allow them to make
an informed decision about whether to participate. At the bottom of Page 1, there were two
buttons to click on, “YES” and “NO.” Participants were informed that they had the option to
click on “NO” to decline the survey. If they clicked on “YES” and agreed to participate, they
would be led to Page 2, which consisted of the demographic questions.
Since priming has been shown to have an impact on attribution outcomes (Morris & Peng,
1994), in the current study the open-ended questions for both scenarios were given before the
rating-scale questions to ensure that the rating-scale items would not affect the answers of the
29
open-ended questions. Page 3 presented the first scenario followed by the open-ended question
with five text boxes for answers. Page 4 presented the second scenario followed with the openended question and the text boxes. Page 5 presented the first scenario again followed with
thirteen five-point rating-scale questions. Page 6 presented the second scenario, again followed
with thirteen five-point rating-scale questions. The last page, Page 7, was to thank participants
for their input.
In order to control for order effects, the two scenarios were presented to the participants
using one of two sequences (X or Y). In other words, from Page 3 to Page 6, the scenarios were
presented as either Bullying-Campus-shooting-Bullying-Campus-shooting (sequence X) or
Campus-shooting-Bullying-Campus-shooting-Bullying (Sequence Y). Half of the participants
read the scenarios in the first order, and the other half read them in the second order. Once a
participant accessed the website, he or she was assigned an ID number by the computer program.
When the ID was an odd number, the participant received sequence X; when the ID was an even
number, the participant received sequence Y. The order of the seven pages and the two
sequences of presentation of the scenarios can be viewed in Figure 1.
30
Sequence X:
Sequence Y:
Page1. Welcome Page
Page1. Welcome Page
Page2. Demographic
Questions
Page2. Demographic
Questions
Page3. Dave/De
Open-ended Questions
Page3. Michael/Ming
Open-ended Questions
Page4. Michael/Ming
Open-ended Questions
Page4. Dave/De
Open-ended Questions
Page5. Dave/De
Rating-scaleQuestions
Page5. Michael/Ming
Rating-scaleQuestions
Page6. Michael/Ming
Rating-scaleQuestions
Page6. Dave/De
Rating-scaleQuestions
Page7. Thank-you
Page7. Thank-you
Figure 1 Two Sequences of Online Questionnaire Pages
The website was made available in March 2007, and participants started to take the
questionnaire in early March. On April 16, 2007, at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University (Virginia Tech), a student killed 33 people, wounded many others, and committed
suicide (Hauser & O'Connor, 2007). This incident was similar to the Campus-shooting campusshooting scenario in the questionnaire. Because participants’ input may have been influenced by
the publicity of the Virginia Tech incident, the website was immediately closed, and data
collection was stopped.
31
Design
To test for the scenario-specific hypothesis and culture-specific hypothesis, a series of
2×2 ANOVAs were conducted for the study. For the scenario-specific hypothesis, culture
(American versus Chinese) was used as the between-subjects variable and the scenario (Bullying
scenario versus Campus-shooting scenario) was used as the within-subjects variable. Since the
rating-scale responses and open-ended responses constituted two different measures, one
repeated-measured ANOVA was conducted for each.
For the culture-specific hypothesis, the following analysis was run. For each scenario, a
2×2 ANOVA was conducted to test for a between-subjects cultural effect and a within-subjects
type of cause (internal versus external, as determined by the use of factor analysis) effect on
participants’ attributions, for the rating-scale and open-ended question formats examined
separately. In addition, for each scenario, a MANOVA was conducted to test for the effect of
culture on participants’ responses to the 13 rating-scale items, and another was conducted on
participants’ responses to the categories of the open-ended coding rubric, which will be
introduced in the next chapter.
32
III. RESULTS
Data Preparation
Coding of Open-ended Responses
For the open-ended questionnaire of the Bullying scenario, 76 American participants
offered 275 responses (in the form of causes), M = 3.79, SD = 1.42, and 157 Chinese participants
provided 459 responses, M = 2.8, SD = 1.02. For the Campus-shooting scenario, there were 287
total responses from the American group, M = 3.6, SD = 1.56, and the total responses from the
Chinese group numbered 457, M = 2.92, SD = .99. The first step in processing these open-ended
responses was to create a coding rubric.
All the open-ended responses were compiled into one file and were sorted into categories.
The categories were used to create the coding rubrics to analyze the open-ended responses. For
the campus shooting scenario, there were five categories for internal causes and five categories
for external causes. For the bullying scenario rubric, there were four categories for internal
causes and four categories for external causes. The coding rubric spelled out the content for each
code number mainly in English. Some Chinese expressions or idioms were used, however, since
they are absent in English or require extensive translation. In this case, the Chinese phrases
remained in the rubric because the raters were Chinese who would have no problems
understanding the rubric. Please refer to Appendix E for the coding rubrics of both scenarios.
Though given five text boxes to fill in causes, some participants wrote a long paragraph
in one or two boxes. In those cases, the researcher broke down the long paragraph into individual
causes and re-numbered them. The researcher coded both American and Chinese participants’
open-ended responses with the coding rubrics. An English-speaking rater coded American
participants’ open-ended responses and a Chinese-speaker fluent in English coded Chinese
33
participants’ open-ended responses. Both assistant raters were graduate students from the
researcher’s institution. The researcher introduced them to the online survey and trained them to
use the coding rubrics to code the open-ended responses. The inter-coder reliability was
calculated on 100% of the sample, and Cohen’s Kappa indicated good inter-coder reliability. The
average Kappa for the Dave scenario was .91, .87 for the De scenario, .88 for the Michael
scenario, and .89 for the Ming scenario. The inter-coder agreement is summarized in Table 2.
Table 2 Inter-coder Reliability for Open-Ended Responses
Scenario
Total Responses Agreement in Coding
Agreement in Coding across
for Coding
across 8 or 10 Categories
Internal-External Categories
Dave (Am)
275
250 (90.91%)
269 (97.82%)
De (Ch)
459
413 (89.98%)
449 (97.82%)
Michael (Am)
287
255 (88.85%)
273 (95.12%)
Ming (Ch)
457
415 (90.81%)
442 (96.72%)
Note: Am=American, Ch=Chinese
The differently coded English responses were recoded by another English-speaking
research assistant, and the differently coded Chinese responses were recoded by another
Chinese-speaking assistant fluent in English. This process determined the final coding for those
responses which the researchers had formerly disagreed upon.
Factor Analysis of Rating-Scale Items
Factor analyses were conducted for the rating-scale responses of each cultural group in an
attempt to confirm the internal and external components among the thirteen items. However,
American responses and Chinese responses yielded different factors of both scenarios, indicating
that the two cultural groups may perceive the rating-scale items differently. If factor analysis had
confirmed the internal and external components, subsequent analyses should have been done on
the factor scores. However, since the expected factors were not found, the subsequent analyses
34
necessarily assumed the face validity of the internal and external components. Rotated
component matrices for each group of the same scenario are summarized into one table for
comparison. Please view the results in Table 3 and 4.
Table 3 Factor Analysis Summary of Dave/De (Bullying) Rating-Scale Items
Rating-scale items of Dave/De (Bullying)
U.S.
Scenario
Components
Internal Causes
1
2
China
Components
3
1
2
D1
He is self-centered and spoiled.
.61
.47
D2
He was acting aggressive to gain attention
.69
.35
from peers.
D4
He was acting aggressive so that his peers
.52
.50
.59
would not bully him.
D5
He did not like school.
.83
.57
D6
He did not like his schoolmates and teachers.
.74
.71
D7
He did not like the classmate he bullied.
.56
.60
.57
.44
.41
External Causes
D3
His teacher mentioned his low grade in front of
the whole class.
D8
Movies, television, and other mass media
.51
.43
glorify this type of behavior.
D9
Most of his peers don't like him and make fun
.53
.39
.68
of him.
D10
He is friend with peers who behave like him.
.72
.64
D11
Peers who had been bullied by him did not
.78
.44
.47
report him.
D12
Teachers and school did not attend to his bully
.73
.68
behavior effectively and immediately.
D13
His parents spoiled him but did not discipline
him enough.
35
.38
.68
.74
Table 4 Factor Analysis Summary of Michael/Ming (campus-shooting) Rating-Scale Items
Rating-scale items of Michael/Ming
U.S.
China
(campus-shooting) Scenario
Components
Internal Causes
M1
1
2
3
He is stressed out by school and
4
Components
5
1
2
.80
.38 .39
.59
.64
3
unpromising job hunting.
M2
He did not know other ways to seek help
.56
to release his frustration and anger.
M4
He has some personality problems.
M5
He was too obsessed with the award.
M6
He was mentally instable and ill.
M7
He had unrealistic fantasy of social
.72
.56
.83
.61
.72
.77
.82 .36 .38
justice.
External Causes
M3
The vice president did not deal with the
.82
.80
case fair and square.
M8
Movies, television, and other mass media .63
.34
.42
glorify this type of behavior.
M9
People around are individualistic and
.81
.58
selfish.
M10 His friends like to play with guns and
.88
.67
.86
.67
solve problems by force.
M11 The availability of gun and shooting
training where he was living.
M12 His advisor and fellow students were
.70
-.40
.34
-.40
.80
cheating.
M13 There is no third-party entity for
appealing.
36
.59
.60
Derivation of Dependent Measures from Open-ended Responses
Coded responses were summarized for each participant to produce the following
dependent measures derived from the factor analyses (see Table 5). For each scenario, every
participant received one external attribution score (OE-Ext), which was the sum of his or her
responses categorized as external causes and one internal attribution score (OE-Int), which was
the sum of his or her responses categorized as internal causes. Finally, an attribution proportion
score (OE-Pref) for each participant was obtained by dividing the internal attribution score by the
total attribution score. Proportion scores smaller than .5 indicate that the participant favors
external attributions. Proportion scores larger than .5 indicate a favoring of internal attributions.
Derivation of Dependent Measures from Rating-scale Responses
There were five points on the rating-scale with two anchor points — 5 as “very
important” and 1 as “not a factor.” For each scenario, every participant’s ratings of six internal
causes were averaged to obtain one internal rating score (RS-Int) and his or her ratings of seven
external causes were averaged to obtain one external rating score (RS-Ext). The final attribution
proportion score (RS-Pref) for each participant was obtained by dividing the internal attribution
score by the total attribution score. Proportion scores smaller than .5 indicate a favoring of
external attributions. Proportion scores larger than .5 indicate a favoring of internal attributions.
All of the above dependent measures are summarized in Table 5. Cronbach coefficient of the
thirteen items of the bullying scenario is .742 and that of the campus-shooting scenario is .715,
which means the internal reliabilities across the thirteen items of both scenarios are acceptable.
37
Table 5 Dependent Measures
Variables for Each Scenario
Question
Dave-De
Description of Each Variable
Michael-Ming
Format
Open-
OE-Ext-D
OE-Ext-M
Sum of causes coded as external causes
ended
OE-Int-D
OE-Int-M
Sum of causes coded as internal causes
Questions OE-Pref-D
OE-Pref-M
Proportion of internal responses/total responses
Rating-
RS-Ext-D
RS-Ext-M
Mean of ratings of 7 external items
scale
RS-Int-D
RS-Int-M
Mean of ratings of 6 internal items
RS-Pref-M
Proportion of internal score/total score
Questions RS-Pref-D
Distribution and Transformation
Tests for normality were conducted on the variables in Table 5, and results showed that
the open-ended measures (OE-Pref-D and OE-Pref-M) were not distributed normally. Therefore,
three transformations were conducted on the responses: a square-root transformation, a
logarithmic transformation, and a reciprocal transformation. However, none of the
transformations yielded a more normal distribution than did the original data. In addition,
ANOVAs conducted on the three sets of transformed data resulted in the same findings as those
from the original data. Therefore, results from the original data are presented in the following
discussion of the data analysis.
Data Analysis
Data analysis results are presented by type of dependent variable—attribution preference
scores, internal/external scores, and itemized scores.
38
Attribution Preference
In order to test the hypotheses that causal attributions are scenario-specific and culturespecific, two repeated-measure ANOVAs were conducted to evaluate the scenario effect and
cultural effect on participants’ causal attributions. Separate ANOVAs were conducted for the
open-ended responses and the rating-scale responses. Scenario type at two levels (Bullying or
Campus-shooting) was used as the within-subjects factor and culture at two levels (the
Americans or Chinese) was used as the between-subjects factor. All statistical tests used an alpha
level of .05.
Open-ended Responses
A repeated-measure ANOVA as described above were conducted to evaluate the openended questionnaire attributions (OE-Pref). A significant main effect was found for scenario, F
(1, 231) = 51.67, p < .00, η2 = .18. No significant cultural effect was found, F (1, 231) = .9, p
< .35, η2 = .00. A significant interaction effect was found between the two factors, F (1, 231) =
20.69, p < .00, η2 = .08.
Follow-up t-tests were conducted to aid in the interpretation of the interaction effect.
Independent t-tests were conducted to compare the two cultural groups’ causal responses for
each scenario. A significant difference between the two groups’ responses was found for the
bullying scenario, for which the American group provided more internal causes (M = .63, SD
= .26) than did the Chinese group (M = .50, SD =.25), t (231) = 3.64, p < .00. There was no
significant difference between the two groups’ responses of the campus-shooting scenario, t (231)
= -1.93, p < .06. Repeated measure t-tests were conducted to compare the scenarios in terms of
each group’s responses to them. Only the Chinese participants showed a significant difference in
39
their responses to the two scenarios. They provided more internal causes for the Ming scenario
(M = .77, SD = .26) than for the De scenario (M = .50, SD = .25), t (156) =10.09, p < .00.
In summary, both groups favored internal attributions for both scenarios; however, the
Chinese group provided stronger internal attributions for the campus-shooting scenario than for
the bullying school boy scenario. These results can be viewed in Figure 2.
Preference for Internal Causes
(OE-Pref)
1
USA
0.5
China
0
Dave/De
Michael/Ming
Scenarios
Figure 2 Scenario and Cultural Effects on Causal Attributions of Open-ended Questions
Rating-Scale Responses
A repeated-measure ANOVA was conducted to evaluate the scenario and cultural effects
on participants’ rating-scale attributions (RS-Pref). A significant main effect was found for the
within-subjects scenario effect, F (1, 231) = 527.35, p < .00, η2 = .70. No significant cultural
effect was found, F (1, 231) = .29, p < .59, η2 = .00. A significant interaction effect was found
between the two factors, F (1, 231) = 15.39, p < .00, η2 = .06.
To aid in the interpretation of the interaction effect, independent t-tests were conducted to
compare the two cultural groups’ causal statement ratings of each scenario. For the bullying
scenario, both groups’ internal preference scores are below .5, indicating the preference for
external causes. However, the American group (M = .47, SD = .06) gave more weight to these
40
causes than did the Chinese group (M = .45, SD = .07), t (231) = 2.48, p < .01. For the campusshooting scenario, although both groups considered internal causes more important than external
causes, as predicted, the Chinese group (M = .63, SD = .09) gave more weight to these causes
than did the American group (M = .60, SD = .09), t (231) = -2.54, p < .01.
Repeated measure t-tests were conducted to compare each cultural group’s ratings of both
scenarios. The American group favored external explanation of the Dave scenario (M = .47, SD
= .06) and internal explanation of the Michael scenario (M = .60, SD = .09), t (75) = -11.18, p
< .00. The Chinese group also favored external attributions of the De scenario (M = .45, SD = .07)
and internal attributions of the Ming scenario (M = .63, SD = .09), t (156) = -23.98, p < .00.
In summary, both groups made external attributions for the bullying scenario and internal
attributions for the campus-shooting scenario; however, for the bullying scenario, the Chinese
group made stronger external attributions than did the American group. For the campus-shooting
scenario, the Chinese group made stronger internal attributions than did the American group.
Preference for Internal Causes
(RS-Pref)
These results can be viewed in Figure 3.
1
USA
0.5
China
0
Dave/De
Michael/Ming
Scenarios
Figure 3 Scenario and Cultural Effects on Causal Attributions of Rating-scale Questions
41
Internal Versus External Attributions
Morris and Peng (1994) compared participants’ ratings of external (situational) and
internal (dispositional) items and found in the campus-shooting scenario that American
participants had given internal causes greater weight than had Chinese participants whereas
Chinese participants had given greater weight to external causes than had American participants.
Therefore, in the current study, similar analyses were conducted to find out if the results would
be replicated. A series of four repeated-measure ANOVAs were conducted to evaluate the
cultural effect (Americans versus Chinese) and the type-of-cause effect (internal versus external)
on participants’ attributions of the two scenarios for the rating-scale and open-ended responses.
The alpha level used was .05.
Open-ended Responses to the Dave/De (Bullying) Scenario
A repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted to evaluate the cultural effect and type- ofcause effect on participants’ open-ended attributions to the Bullying scenario. A significant
cultural effect was found, F (1, 231) = 35.33, p < .00, η2 = .13. A significant main effect was also
found for the within-subjects factor, the type of cause, F (1, 231) = 27.63, p < .00, η2 = .11. Last,
a significant interaction effect was found between the two factors, F (1, 231) = 20.87, p < .00, η2
= .09.
Independent t-tests were conducted to aid in the interpretation of the interaction effect by
comparing the two cultural groups’ open-ended responses of the Bullying scenario. For the
internal categories, American participants (M = 2.39, SD = 1.2) provided significantly more
causes than did the Chinese participants (M = 1.45, SD = .89), t (231) = 6.76, p < .00. Repeated ttests were conducted for each cultural group’s open-ended internal and external responses. The
American group provided more internal causes (M = 2.39, SD = 1.2) than external causes (M =
42
1.39, SD = .97), t (75) = 5.29, p < .00. In summary, the American group gave many more internal
causes than external causes; they also provided many more internal causes than did the Chinese
group.
These results can be viewed in Figure 4.
Causal Category Endorsement
3
2
USA
China
1
0
Dave/De Internal
Dave/De External
Figure 4 Cultural Effect and Type-of-Cause Effect in Open-ended Attributions of the Dave/De
(Bullying) Scenario
Open-ended Responses to the Michael/Ming (campus-shooting) Scenario
A repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted to evaluate the cultural type-of-cause
effect on participants’ open-ended responses to the Campus-shooting scenario.
A significant cultural effect was found, F (1, 231) = 16.12, p < .00, η2 = .07. The
American group provided more internal causes (M = 2.41, SD = 1.26) than did the Chinese group
(M = 2.23, SD = 1.01); the Americans also gave more external causes (M = 1.18, SD = 1.10) than
did the Chinese (M = .69, SD = .78). Also, a significant within-subjects effect was found for the
type of cause, F (1, 231) = 151.71, p < .00, η2 = .4. Overall, for the Campus-shooting scenario,
participants provided more internal causes (M = 2.29, SD = 1.1) than external causes (M = .85,
43
SD = .93). However, there was no significant interaction effect between the two factors, F (1,
231) = 2.00, p < .16, η2 = .01. These results can be viewed in Figure 5.
Causal Category Endorsement
3
2
USA
China
1
0
Michael/Ming Internal
Michael/Ming External
Figure 5 Cultural Effect and Type-of-Cause Effect in Open-ended Attributions of the
Michael/Ming (campus-shooting) Scenario
Rating-scale Responses to the Dave/De (Bullying) Scenario
A repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted to evaluate the cultural and type-of-cause
effect on participants’ rating-scale attributions of the Bullying scenario. A significant cultural
effect was found, F (1, 231) = 33.72, p < .00, η2 = .13. The American group (M = 2.68, SD = .53)
gave internal causal items more weight than did the Chinese group (M = 2.15, SD = .61); the
Americans (M = 3.07, SD = .73) also gave external causal items more weight than did the
Chinese group (M = 2.67, SD = .72). A significant main effect was found for the within-subjects
factor, the type of cause, F (1, 231) = 99.68, p < .00, η2 = .30. Overall, participants rated external
causal items (M =2.80, SD = .74) significantly more important than they did the internal items
(M = 2.32, SD = .63). However, there was no significant interaction effect between the two
factors, F (1, 231) = 2.17, p < .14, η2 = .01. These results can be viewed in Figure 6.
44
Weight of Rating-Scaled Items
5
4
USA
3
China
2
1
Dave/De Internal
Dave/De External
Figure 6 Cultural Effect and Type-of-Cause Effect in Rating Attributions of the Dave/De
(Bullying) Scenario
Rating-scale Responses to the Michael/Ming (campus-shooting) Scenario
A repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted to evaluate the cultural and the type-ofcause effects on participants’ rating-scale attributions of the Campus-shooting scenario. A
significant cultural effect was found, F (1, 231) = 19.20, p < .00, η2 = .08. The American group
(M = 3.64, SD = .68) gave more weight to the internal items than did the Chinese group (M =
3.39, SD = .72); the Americans (M = 2.47, SD = .81) also gave more weight to the external items
than did the Chinese (M = 2.02, SD = .75). A significant within-subjects effect was found for the
type of cause, F (1, 231) = 380.93, p < .00, η2 = .623. Overall, participants rated internal cause
items (M = 3.47, SD = .72) significantly more important than they did the external items (M =
2.16, SD = .80). However, there was no significant interaction effect between the two factors, F
(1, 231) = 2.39, p < .12, η2 = .01. These results can be viewed in Figure 7.
45
Weight of Rating-Scaled Items
5
4
USA
3
China
2
1
Michael/Ming Internal
Michael/Ming External
Figure 7 Cultural Effect and Type-of-Cause Effect in Rating Attributions of the Michael/Ming
(campus-shooting) Scenario
Itemized Scores
In order to determine if one cultural group favored any specific cause(s) significantly
than the other group, repeated-measure MANOVAs were conducted.
Analysis of Open-ended Category Endorsement of the Dave/De (Bullying) Scenario
In order to determine if one group provided certain causes of the bullying behavior
significantly more than the other group, a repeated-measures MANOVA was conducted for
participants’ endorsement of the eight individual categories (four internal causes and four
external causes) of the bullying scenario. Overall, analyses showed significant cultural effects, as
the two cultural groups differed significantly on six categories. The American group endorsed
significantly more often the categories of anger, self-esteem, and teacher’s responsibility
whereas the Chinese group endorsed more often the categories of personality, parenting, and
social-cultural influences.
Each group’s endorsement rates for the eight categories showed that more than half of the
American group believed that anger, self-esteem, and parenting were the important causes for
46
Dave’s bullying behavior. The majority of the Chinese group considered parenting as the major
cause, and half of the Chinese group regarded personality as the most important cause. Table 6 is
a summary of the percentage of each group’s participants who endorsed the eight categories and
the F-values of the repeated-measure MANOVA.
Table 6 Endorsement of Dave/De (Bullying) Open-ended Categories
Dave/De (Bullying) OpenAmerican Chinese
F
ended Categories
% of 76
% of 157
(1, 231)
Internal Category
D1
Angry at others; acts for self-
68.40%
16.60%
91.811*
51.30%
15.30%
43.478*
enhancement or scapegoat.
D2
Low self-esteem & needs
attention.
D3
Poor social & coping skills.
28.90%
32.50%
.097
D4
Personality or mental problems. 34.20%
56.10%
9.428*
External Category
D5
Parenting problem.
57.90%
86.60%
7.776*
D6
Teacher’s responsibility.
39.50%
7.60%
42.352*
D7
Peer provoked him or not
9.20%
6.40%
.607
1.30%
8.30%
4.343
reported to adults.
D8
Social & cultural influences.
Note: * p < .006 (adjusted error rate). F=4.343 was significant before adjusted error rate.
Analysis of Open-ended Category Endorsement of the Michael/Ming (campus-shooting)
Scenario
In order to determine if one group provided certain causes of the shooting behavior
significantly more than the other group, a repeated-measures MANOVA was conducted for the
open-ended responses of the 10 categories (five internal causes and five external causes) of the
Campus-shooting scenario. Cross-culturally, the American group provided significantly more
47
causes concerning emotion, revenge, school, advisor, peer, and job; the Chinese group gave
significantly more causes concerning Ming’s social skills and personality problems.
The majority of American participants regarded emotional cause and vindictive purpose
as the major reason for Michael’s tragedy. Half of the Chinese groups considered mental health
problems as the major cause of the campus shooting. The details can be viewed in Table 7.
Table 7 Endorsement of Dave/De (Bullying) Open-ended Categories
American Chinese
F
% of 76
% of 157
(1, 231)
73.70%
29.90%
89.172*
18.40%
42.70%
13.586*
Internal Category
M1
Emotional, vindictive, or selfenhancement.
M2
Lack of social or communication
skills
M3
Personality problem
11.80%
40.10%
21.475*
M4
Flawed belief or value system
27.60%
27.40%
.002
M5
Mental health problem
46.10%
51.60%
.568
32.90%
19.10%
4.656
External Category
M6
School-related problem and failed
job search
M7
Social, cultural influence, esp. media
15.80%
14.60%
.978
M8
Family background, parenting
14.50%
19.10%
.732
22.40%
5.10%
18.906*
9.20%
6.40%
3.136
problem, traumatic childhood
M9
Advisor, peer, or administration
being unfair
M10
Drug abuse, health issue,
relationship issue
Note: * p < .005 (adjusted error rate). F=4.656 was significant before adjusted error rate.
Analysis of Rating-scale Items for the Dave/De (Bullying) Scenario
48
In order to determine if one group favored certain causes of the bullying behavior
significantly than the other group, a repeated-measured MANOVA was conducted to evaluate
the cultural differences in participants’ responses across the thirteen rating-scale items of the
Bullying scenario. Overall, the American group gave more weight than did the Chinese group to
11 out of 13 items, among which 7 were significantly different between the groups. The Chinese
group (M = 4.08, SD = 1.15) only gave significantly more weight to item 1 (“He is self-centered
and spoiled”) compared to the American group (M = 3.29, SD = 1.24), F = 23.01, p < .00, η2
= .09. The Chinese group also gave more weight to item 13 (“His parents spoiled him but did not
discipline him enough”) although this rating was not significantly higher than the American
group’s rating. The details can be viewed in Table 8.
49
Table 8 Cultural Effects Among the Dave/De (Bullying) Rating-Scale Items
Items in Rating-scale Questionnaire
American
Chinese
(N=76)
Internal Causes
(N=157)
M
SD
M
SD
F
(1, 231)
D1
He is self-centered and spoiled.
3.29
1.24
4.08
1.15
23.01**
D2
He was acting aggressively to gain
3.99
1.05
2.11
1.29
122.01**
2.95
1.22
1.63
0.96
80.64**
attention from peers.
D4
He was acting aggressively so that his
peers would not bully him.
D5
He did not like school.
1.91
0.85
1.64
1.09
3.639
D6
He did not like his schoolmates and
1.99
0.97
1.93
1.2
.130
1.93
0.81
1.49
0.92
12.95*
3.7
1.08
2.7
1.28
34.46*
2.4
1.13
2.28
1.25
.509
2.79
1.27
2.17
1.28
12.30*
2.96
1.3
1.69
1.13
58.15*
2.49
1.22
2.37
1.32
.418
3.26
1.3
3.25
1.37
.003
3.87
1.12
4.26
1.19
5.63
teachers.
D7
He did not like the classmate he bullied.
External Causes
D3
His teacher mentioned his low grade in
front of the whole class.
D8
Movies, television, and other mass media
glorify this type of behavior.
D9
Most of his peers don't like him and make
fun of him.
D10
He is friend with peers who behave like
him.
D11
Peers who had been bullied by him did not
report him.
D12
Teachers and school did not attend to his
bullying behavior effectively and
immediately.
D13
His parents spoiled him and did not
discipline him enough.
Note. * p< .000 (adjusted error rate).
Analysis of Rating-scale Items for Michael/Ming (campus-shooting) Scenario
50
In order to determine if one group favored certain causes of the shooting behavior
significantly than the other group, a repeated-measures MANOVA was conducted for the
responses to the 13 rating-scale items for the Campus-shooting scenario. The American group
gave 11 out of 13 items more weight than did the Chinese group. Among the 11 items, 7 items
were given significantly higher ratings by American participants. Chinese participants only gave
slightly more weight than the American group to item 4 (“He has some personality problems”)
and item 13 (“There is no third-party entity for appealing”). Results are shown in Table 9.
51
Table 9 Cultural Effects in Michael/Ming (campus-shooting) Rating-Scale Items
Items in Rating-scale Questionnaire
American
Chinese
(N=76)
Internal Causes
M1
He is stressed out by school and
(N=157)
F
(1, 231)
M
SD
M
SD
4.03
1.03
3.59
1.19
7.45
3.82
1.17
3.66
1.28
.75
unpromising job hunting.
M2
He did not know other ways to seek help
to release his frustration and anger.
M4
He has some personality problems.
3.74
1.14
3.86
1.22
.55
M5
He was too obsessed with the award.
3.37
1.09
2.96
1.19
6.28*
M6
He was mentally instable and ill.
3.78
1.16
3.27
1.22
9.24*
M7
He had unrealistic fantasies of social
3.13
1.28
3.00
1.42
.45
2.80
1.32
2.15
1.26
13.41*
2.47
1.29
1.87
1.12
13.64*
2.08
1.03
2.01
1.30
.18
2.16
1.22
1.58
1.04
14.11*
2.32
1.35
1.81
1.27
7.70*
3.14
1.48
2.04
1.32
33.20*
2.30
1.21
2.65
1.49
3.15
justice.
External Causes
M3
The vice president did not deal with the
case fairly.
M8
Movies, television, and other mass
media glorify this type of behavior.
M9
People around are individualistic and
selfish.
M10
His friends like to play with guns and
solve problems by force.
M11
The availability of gun and shooting
training where he was living.
M12
His advisor and fellow students were
cheating.
M13
There is no third-party entity for
appealing.
Note: * p < .003 (adjusted error rate), F=7.45 was significant before adjusted error rate.
52
Question Format Effect
Descriptive statistics were used to detect question format effects due to the fact that
rating-scale attribution scores (RS-Pref) and open-ended attribution scores (OE-Pref) were two
measures on different scales and cannot be compared directly. Based on their RS-Pref and OEPref scores, participants from each cultural group were classified as an internal, neutral, or
external attributor. Participants with RS-Pref and OE-Pref larger than .5 were classified as
internal attributors and those with RS-Pref and OE-Pref smaller than .5 were classified as
external attributors. The number and percentage of participants for each category can be viewed
in Table 10.
Results show that most participants made internal attributions of the campus-shooting
scenario in both the rating-scale and open-ended questionnaires. This indicates that question
format did not make much difference in the attributions of the campus-shooting scenario.
However, question format made a difference in the bullying scenario to which most participants
attributed external causes for the rating-scale questionnaire and internal causes for the openended questionnaire. Also, in the open-ended responses of the bullying scenario, Chinese
participants’ responses were divided into three approximately equal attribution types . Finally,
for both scenarios, there were more participants favoring a neutral attribution for the open-ended
questionnaire than for the rating-scale questionnaire. Overall, question format made a difference
in causal attribution in that rating-scale questions evoked participants’ favoring either internal or
external causes depending on the scenario but open-ended questions inspired more diverse
responses.
53
Table 10 Participants’ Percentages for Each Scenario and Attribution Type
Type of
Culture
Dave/De (Bullying) Scenario
Michael/Ming (campusAttribution
Internal
Neutral
External
shooting) Scenario
Rating-scale
Open-ended
Rating-scale
Open-ended
Am
19
(25%)
45
(59.2%)
58
(76.3%)
53
(69.7%)
Ch
30
(19.1%)
50
(31.8%)
140
(89.2%)
130
(82.8%)
Am
6
(7.9%)
18
(23.7%)
1
(1.3%)
14
(18.4%)
Ch
4
(2.5%)
58
(36.9%)
3
(1.9%)
32
(20.4%)
Am
51
(67.1%)
13
(17.1%)
17
(22.4%)
9
(11.8%)
Ch
123
(78.3%)
49
(31.2%)
14
(8.9%)
13
(8.3%)
Note: Am=American, Ch=Chinese. American N=76, Chinese N=157.
54
IV. DISCUSSION
Interpretation
Previous studies showed incompatible attribution patterns of Americans and Chinese.
Some studies found that Americans, being individualists, tend to make external attributions to
achieve self-enhancement and protect the self, whereas the Chinese, being collectivists, tend to
make internal attribution to blame individuals and protect the group. Other studies claimed that
Americans, influenced by ancient Greek philosophy, tend to make more internal and
dispositional attributions whereas the Chinese, influenced by Taoist and Confucian philosophy,
tend to make more external and situational attributions.
However, the results of the current study did not replicate the cultural differences claimed
by any of these previous studies. Overall, American and Chinese participants favored the same
type of attribution, whether it was internal or external, although they did show different extents
to which they favored those attributions. The participants’ causal attributions and evocation of
different type of causes differed significantly by scenario. Question format—either rating-scale
or open-ended—was associated with different types of causal attributions as well. In this chapter,
the interpretation of the analysis results will be discussed in the same order as the research
questions and hypotheses.
Causal Attribution and Scenario Effect
The first research question of this study concerned whether the type of scenario used in
the survey led the participants to make certain type of attributions, either internal (dispositional)
or external (situational). The predictions for the first research hypothesis were that participants
would make external attributions of the bullying schoolboy scenario but internal attributions of
the campus-shooting scenario. These predictions were confirmed only by the rating-scale
55
responses. In the open-ended responses, participants made internal attributions of both scenarios,
but participants made stronger internal attributions for the campus-shooting scenario than for the
bullying scenario.
The tentative explanation for this result is that people allow children external excuses for
their misbehaviors but hold adults accountable for their own wrong-doings. The study findings
are consistent with the view that the perpetrator will be attributed with greater responsibility
under conditions of a serious nature (high severity) than those of a less serious nature (low
severity) (Gleason & Harris, 1976). The campus-shooting scenario yielded stronger internal
attributions than did the bullying scenario because the outcome of a campus shooting is much
more tragic and severe than that of bullying; therefore, participants attributed more internal
attributions to the shooter than they did to the bully. In summary, the content of a situation
appears to play an important role in participants’ causal attributions and different events or
behaviors may be interpreted quite differently due to the nature of the events or behaviors.
Scenario type also interacted with culture in participants’ causal attribution, as will be revisited
in the discussion of cultural effect.
Causal Attribution and Question Format Effects
The second research question of the study involved whether the question formats (openended versus rating-scale) had an impact on participants’ causal attributions. The results
confirmed that question format made a difference in participants’ causal attribution patterns. It
was predicted that both cultural groups would favor neither internal nor external causes in their
responses to the open-ended questions. Therefore, participants should have provided more
neutral attributions than internal or external attributions. However, the results cannot confirm this
prediction because, for both scenarios, there were more people endorsing internal attributions
56
than neutral attributions. A second prediction was that both cultural groups would endorse either
internal or external causes in their responses to the rating-scale items. This is confirmed by the
results in that both groups favored external attributions for the bullying scenario and internal
attributions for the campus shooting scenario.
Overall, question format showed an impact on the bullying scenario in which participants
attributed external causes for the rating-scale questionnaire but attributed internal causes for the
open-ended questionnaire. The number of external attributions decreased dramatically and the
number of internal attributions increased significantly when participants responded to the openended questions. In addition, the majority of the American participants responded with internal
attributions to open-ended questions. Thus, some evidence exists to support the prediction that
question format makes a difference in people’s causal attributions.
Last, the majority of participants in both groups made internal attributions regarding the
campus-shooting scenario based on their responses to the rating-scale and open-ended questions.
A possible explanation for this result is that a campus shooting may be considered by most
people to be more severe of an event, and therefore the perpetrator was held responsible for the
consequence of his behavior.
Causal Attribution and Cultural Effects
The third research question investigated whether causal attributions are culture-specific.
It was predicted that the two cultures would attribute internal and external causes to the scenarios
to a different extent; however, they would not show opposite attribution patterns. In the previous
chapter, cultural comparisons of attributions were presented using three sets of scores:overall
attribution preference scores, internal versus external attribution scores, and the itemized
attribution scores. Results confirmed the prediction and showed that cultural background had an
57
impact on causal attributions. However, the opposite attribution patterns claimed by previous
studies was not found. Other interesting findings emerged from the results and are discussed
below.
This study aimed to find out whether American and Chinese groups favored different
type of causal attributions (i.e., did Americans make more internal attributions and did the
Chinese make more external attributions or vice versa). The results of the attribution preference
analysis showed that in their open-ended responses, both cultural groups favored internal causes
over external ones for both scenarios. Also, in their rating-scale responses, both groups favored
external causes for the bullying scenario and internal causes for the campus-shooting scenario.
Thus, the opposite attribution patterns claimed by previous studies were not duplicated in this
study.
However, a different magnitude of internal and external attributions was found between
the two cultural groups. An interesting finding is that, compared to their Chinese counterparts,
American participants were found to consistently provide more internal and external causes in
the open-ended responses and give more weight to both internal and external causes in the
rating-scale responses. This is validated by the itemized analysis of both open-ended categories
and rating-scale items. Since the American group showed the tendency to rate most causes as
important and provided more causes relative to the Chinese group, it will be more illuminating to
view the few causes that the Chinese group provided more often and rated as more important
than did the American group.
Chinese participants emphasized personality as the main cause for both scenarios in both
question formats. In the campus-shooting scenario, social skills and no third-party for appeal
were the other two causes besides personality that received more weight from Chinese
58
participants. For the bullying scenario, besides the personality factor, the Chinese group
considered being self centered and parenting as more important for the boy’s bullying behavior.
This may be explained by China’s one-child policy. Since the 1980’s when this policy was
adopted, most families in urban areas have only one child who are lavished with attention and
love and usually get what they want. Trimetric Classic, the 13th century children’s book about
Confucian principles, says that a father is at fault if he raises his children but doesn’t teach them;
a teacher is lazy if he only teaches his students but doesn’t discipline them. It seems that the
Chinese participants’ answers to the survey reflect both traditional beliefs and today’s realities.
However, the bullying scenario happened to provide both the only child and busy parents as
possible causes of the bullying behavior. Therefore, the Chinese emphasis on being self-centered
and parenting as causes may be a product of both scenario and culture effects.
In summary, culture does make a difference in people’s causal attributions. However, this
difference is the relative extent to which the participants make either internal or external
attributions. The pattern of an American preference for internal or dispositional attributions
compared to the Chinese preference for external or situational attributions has not been found in
this study.
Limitations
Some limitations of the study may have affected the conclusions drawn from the analysis.
First, the samples of American and Chinese groups are not completely equivalent, although
participants were recruited from university settings to help ensure equivalency. The data showed
that all the participants were well-educated and computer literate. However, the American
sample was a little more diverse in their education level and age compared to their Chinese
counterparts. For example, 60.5% of the American group were from 17 to 26 years old, 26.3%
59
were from 27 to 36 years old, and 13.2% were from 37 to 61 years old. Also, 67.1% of the
Americans were undergraduates, 7.9% were graduate students, and 24.0% had finished graduate
school. The Chinese sample was more homogeneous; the majority of these participants were
college students in their early 20s. Also, 97.5% of this group were from 17 to 26 years old, and
87.5% were college students. Gender and social-economic status can be influential in
participants’ causal thinking as well. However, this information was not included in the survey;
otherwise, the results may be better interpreted and understood.
A second limitation is that both scenarios employed in the survey described anti-social
behaviors. This was done for comparison purposes with previous studies that used such
behaviors. However, valence of the behavior and severity of the consequences of anti-social
behavior have been proven to affect people’s causal attributions of such behaviors. Based on the
results of the current study, scenarios have an important impact on such causal attributions;
therefore, scenarios using pro-social behaviors or events may evoke different attribution patterns
from the participants. Therefore, the attribution patterns found in the current study might vary if
the participants had been presented with scenarios of pro-social behaviors with positive
consequences or with scenarios of daily events without any apparent consequences.
Third, the psychological constructs are not consistent between the two cultural groups.
That is, the American and Chinese groups perceived the internal and external causes in the
rating-scale questionnaire differently. As was referenced in Table 3 and Table 4, factor analysis
of each group extracted different factors and the two cultural groups’ ratings of the 13 causes for
each scenario did not load on two factors—internal and external as intended by the researcher.
Therefore, the analyses were done based on the face validity of the two factors which may affect
the results and hence the conclusions, discussed below.
60
Conclusions and Implications
Results suggest that the content of the scenarios evoked different attribution patterns in
each culture. There is also some evidence to support the hypothesis that question format affects
causal attributions. Overall, the results showed that American and Chinese participants made
similar attributions for the same scenario, which does not support the occurrence of opposite
attribution patterns as claimed by previous research. One explanation for the different findings is
that culture is changing quickly due to the fast technology development. The studies by Morris
and Peng was done in 1994 when personal computers were rarely seen in average household in
China. Nowadays personal computers are quite usual in average households in China. Today’s
internet technology and international transportation make global communication more
convenient and efficient which provides both Americans and Chinese more exposures to the
world on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. People learn more about and from other cultures
and are influenced by other cultures as well. College and graduate students, this study’s major
participants, are usually the most technology savvy population who benefit greatly from the
internet communication. They also have more opportunities to mingle with international students
on campus and learn from other cultures. They may represent the converging trend how people
will think when the national boundaries become blurry and the true global village come into
being.
Different cultures may differentially affect people’s thinking and attribution patterns;
however, these differences do not appear to be fundamental or absolute. Then why does so much
research claim significant cultural differences in causal attributions? First, one possible
explanation comes from the culture-as-similarities-or-differences debate. When culture is treated
as differences between cultural groups, it is assumed that the differences are stable features that
61
distinguish one group from another. Some cultural heuristics might occur in certain instances,
and cultural differences might appear and disappear under different circumstances (N. Ross,
2004). However, such differences have been overemphasized and universalized. Educators
devote great amounts of attention to cultural diversity, and many schools have cultural activities
to teach children about other cultures and people. What are we teaching children?—essentially,
the difference between the U.S. culture and other cultures. It is true that certain cultural
influences are internalized in the process of our cognitive development; however, we might not
think as differently from each other as some researchers have proposed.
Another explanation for the differences is that a variety of instruments and scenarios have
been employed in previous studies (e.g., computer art clips, hypothetical scenarios, vignettes,
video or audio clips, rod-and-frame, etc.). This variety may contribute to the different causal
attributions made by participants. Third, the interpretation of the results may contribute
significantly to the differences among the conclusions. Participants are usually presented with
one or a few scenarios and requested to make causal attributions accordingly. The attribution
differences for a particular event may not represent cultural differences in attribution styles.
Finally, one last possibility is that “researchers in the field virtually ignore each other’s findings,
explaining their data with radically different theories as if their individual data were completely
isolated from other research” (N. Ross, 2004, p. p.6).
Culture is still a growing area of research for psychologists; researchers are still working
toward the convergence of different theories and approaches. It would be easier for educators
and researchers if we could claim apparent or opposing cultural differences in people’s behaviors
or reasoning. For instance, when we teach children different food made by different cultures,
Chinese children learn that Americans like hamburgers and Italians make pizzas; American kids
62
learn that Chinese make dumplings and Japanese like sushi. Those concepts easily become
stereotypes which could stop children or anyone from exploring more about other cultures. When
American children are exposed to a Chinese context, they will realize that Chinese make
dumplings occasionally and during their daily lives, they cook rice, steamed bun, noodles, and all
sorts of food that they could imagine. Unless Chinese children come to the United States, they
rarely will find out that Americans make all kinds of food as well and hamburger is only for
convenience and picnic.
Researchers have to claim cultural differences cautiously bearing in mind that a great
deal of other variables that may contribute to the differences. As of today, the international
cooperation is growing and the availability of internet is increasing; inter-cultural exchanges are
more convenient and frequent due to the advanced traveling and communication technology;
people learn from each other quickly and adapt to the new environment fast to keep up with the
changes. Those factors may contribute to less and less cross-cultural differences and more and
more individual differences when we eventually become a global village one day. Future study
should address how changing culture influences people’s thinking and how people adapt to
changing culture.
63
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71
APPENDIX A
Recruitment Letters in English
72
Participants Needed for Psychology
Study by a Ph.D. student at University
of Cincinnati
Don’t you wonder all the time
why people do what they do?
Help us in this psychology research and
you will contribute to the explanation.
Please visit the website to participate:
http://homepages.uc.edu/cnc/2
00701/consent.php
We’d be delighted to have
your inputs. It’s
absolutely confidential and
we won’t ask for your
name or any other
identification.
73
APPENDIX B
Recruitment Letters in Chinese
74
辛辛那提大学的心理学博士研究需要您的参与
你是否经常纳闷：
人们行为背后的动机和原因是什么呢？
参加我们的问卷调查，找到问题的答案。请访问：
http://homepages.uc.edu/cnc/2007ch/
我们真诚地感谢您的参与。您的观点将被完全保密；
我们不会在问卷里问及您的姓名和任何私人问题。
75
APPENDIX C
Cognition and Culture Survey in English
76
Welcome to the Cognition and Culture Project!
We really appreciate your taking time to consider participating in our study. This page explains the study and gives you the
information you need to make a decision about whether to participate. If you agree to participate after reading this page, please
click the YES button at the bottom of the page.
University of Cincinnati
Consent to Participate in a Research Study
College of Education, Human Services, and Criminal Justice / Division of Educational Studies
Yan Yang <[email protected]> 513-556-4596
Title of Study: Cognition and Culture
Introduction: I am inviting 10 to 20 students to take part in a research study that I am doing as part of my doctoral degree
program. Please read the following explanation carefully and then make a decision about whether you wish to participate.
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to try out and improve a questionnaire created for my doctoral dissertation which will be
focused on the cultural differences in cognition between Chinese and Americans.
Duration: Completing the web survey for this study will probably take 10 to 15 minutes.
Procedures: There are two web forms for this study. The first part of Form I presents a brief scenario describing someone's
actions and asks you to give possible reasons for the person's behavior. The second half of Form-I asks you about whether the
first half was clear and asks for your suggestions for improving them. The first half of Form II presents the same scenario again,
lists possible reasons, and asks you to rate their importance. The second half of Form II asks you about whether the first half was
clear and asks for your suggestions for improving them. Since I'm trying to improve the questionnaire, both your answers to the
questions on the form and the comments about the form are very important to me.
Risks/Discomforts: I do not believe there are any risks associated with your participation in this study. The scenario may include
violent actions but I do not think that it will be upsetting to adults.
Benefits: You will receive no direct benefit from your participation in this study, but your participation may help teachers,
cognitive psychologists, and researchers better understand the cultural differences between Americans and Chinese.
Confidentiality: The survey is anonymous so there will be no record of what answers you gave or even whether you participated.
Offer to answer questions: If you have any other questions about this study, you may contact me at
<[email protected]>/513-556-4596 or my faculty advisor, Dr. Daniel D. Wheeler at <[email protected]>/513-556-3607.
If you have any questions about your rights as a research participant, you may contact the Chair of the Institutional Review
Board—Social and Behavioral Sciences at <[email protected]>/513-558-5784.
Voluntary Participation: I will have no way of knowing whether you have participated in this study. You may QUIT AT ANY
TIME just by closing your web browser.
Agreement: By clicking on the YES button below, you are indicating your understanding of this consent document and agreeing
to participate in the study. If you wish to keep a copy of this consent form, you may print it from your web browser.
I HAVE READ THE INFORMATION PROVIDED ABOVE
AND I VOLUNTARILY AGREE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS STUDY.
NO
YES
77
Before you proceed to the questionnaire, please answer the following questions by checking the button in
front of your answer or fill in the blank:
1. What is your nationality?
American
Mainland Chinese
Others, please specify
2. Where do you live?
USA
Mainland China
Others, please specify
3. How old are you?
4. What is your education level?
High school
Some college
Completed college
Some graduate school
Completed graduate school
Please proceed to the survey by clicking
Submit
78
Please read the following scenario:
Dave was an only child and both his parents gave him a lot of attention. His parents were doctors
so they worked very hard and weren’t home very much. Dave didn’t have much patience if
things didn’t go his way. One day, Dave’s teacher mentioned Dave’s low grade on a recent test
in front of the class. After class, Dave was walking in the school hallway when someone
accidentally bumped into him. He grabbed the other person, pushed him up against the wall, and
demanded he apologize. At lunch, a particularly short kid who was in Dave’s class stood in front
of him on the food line. Dave began to tease him and call him names. That afternoon, during a
chemistry lesson, Dave tripped this same kid as he was walking down the aisle carrying a tray of
glass beakers.
Now speculate about why Dave behaved the way he did and fill in your answers in the
boxes below. Try to give at least two reasons. If you think of more than five reasons, you
can put the rest of them in the "More" box.
First Reason
Second
Third
Fourth
More
Submit Answers
79
Please read the following scenario:
Ming was a Chinese graduate student who was admitted to a major university in the USA and
had been studying in the school for five years. He had recently lost an award competition which
was given to his advisor’s other graduate student. Ming suspected that his advisor and the other
fellow student cheated on him. He unsuccessfully appealed it and subsequently failed to get an
academic job. One day he entered the faculty meeting in his department and shot his advisor, the
fellow student, and another two professors. He then proceeded two blocks to the administration
building where he shot the associate vice president of academic affairs who was handling his
case and a student helper. He then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.
Now speculate about why Ming behaved the way he did and fill in your answers in the
boxes below. Try to give at least two reasons. If you think of more than five reasons, you
can put the rest of them in the "More" box.
First Reason
Second
Third
Fourth
More
Submit Answers
80
Here is the scenario again:
Dave was an only child and both his parents gave him a lot of attention. His parents were doctors
so they worked very hard and weren’t home very much. Dave didn’t have much patience if
things didn’t go his way. One day, Dave’s teacher mentioned Dave’s low grade on a recent test
in front of the class. After class, Dave was walking in the school hallway when someone
accidentally bumped into him. He grabbed the other person, pushed him up against the wall, and
demanded he apologize. At lunch, a particularly short kid who was in Dave’s class stood in front
of him on the food line. Dave began to tease him and call him names. That afternoon, during a
chemistry lesson, Dave tripped this same kid as he was walking down the aisle carrying a tray of
glass beakers.
For each listed cause, please click a button to indicate to what extent you think the cause
contributed to Dave's behavior.
Very
important
Important
Not a
factor
1. He is self-centered and spoiled.
2. He was acting aggressive to gain attention from peers.
3. His teacher mentioned his low grade in front of the whole
class.
4. He was acting aggressive so that his peers would not bully
him.
5. He did not like school.
6. He did not like his schoolmates and teachers.
7. He did not like the classmate he bullied.
8. Movies, television, and other mass media glorify this type of
behavior.
9. Most of his peers don't like him and make fun of him.
10. He is friend with peers who behave like him.
11. Peers who had been bullied by him did not report him.
12. Teachers and school did not attend to his bully behavior
effectively and immediately.
13. His parents spoiled him but did not discipline him enough.
Submit Answers
81
Here is the scenario again:
Ming was a Chinese graduate student who was admitted to a major university in the USA and
had been studying in the school for five years. He had recently lost an award competition which
was given to his advisor’s other graduate student. Ming suspected that his advisor and the other
fellow student cheated on him. He unsuccessfully appealed it and subsequently failed to get an
academic job. One day he entered the faculty meeting in his department and shot his advisor, the
fellow student, and another two professors. He then proceeded two blocks to the administration
building where he shot the associate vice president of academic affairs who was handling his
case and a student helper. He then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.
For each listed cause, please click a button to indicate to what extent you think the cause
contributed to Ming's behavior.
Very
important
Important
Not a
factor
1. He is stressed out by school and unpromising job hunting.
2. He did not know other ways to seek help to release his
frustration and anger.
3. The vice president did not deal with the case fair and square.
4. He has some personality problems.
5. He was too obsessed with the award.
6. He was mentally instable and ill.
7. He had unrealistic fantasy of social justice.
8. Movies, television, and other mass media glorify this type of
behavior.
9. People around are individualistic and selfish.
10. His friends like to play with guns and solve problems by
force.
11. The availability of gun and shooting training where he was
living.
12. His advisor and fellow students were cheating.
13. There is no third-party entity for appealing.
Submit Answers
82
APPENDIX D
Cognition and Culture Survey in Chinese
83
欢迎访问“认知与文化＂研究！
我们真诚地感谢您花时间来考虑参加我们的研究。本网页向您介绍我们的研究，并提供您在参加问卷之前
需要了解的信息。当您阅读之后并同意参加我们的问卷，请点击页底的按钮“是＂。
辛辛那提大学
参加认知与文化研究的同意书
教育学院 教育研究系
杨彦 <[email protected]>(513)556-4596
论文题目： “认知与文化＂
介绍： 我 邀请大约 100 名学生参加我的博士学位科研项目。在同意参加本研究之前，请仔细阅读所提议的
研究过程。
目的： 这份问卷的目的是了解不同文化背景的人对他人行为的解释。
历时： 完成问卷将需要您大约 10 至 15 分钟。
过程： 包括本页在内，问卷一共有 7 页。其中 4 页是研究内容的核心，在完成每页的问题之后，点击
“是＂或者“提交＂进入下一个页面。
风险： 参加这份问卷不会给您带来任何的风险。虽然问卷提及暴力行为，但应该不会给成年人造成困扰。
利益：本研究将不会让您直接受益。不过通过参加研究并和采访人讨论有关的话题将会有助于教师，认知
心理学家，和科研人员更好地了解人们如何解释行为。
机密性： 问卷是匿名的，所以没有记录显示您给出哪些回答或者您是否参加了问卷。
如果您对研究有疑问： 如果您对此还有疑问，您可以和我联系 <[email protected]>/513-556-4596 ，或者
联系研究人的导师 Daniel Wheeler 博士 <[email protected]>/513-556-3607。如果您就作为研究参加者的
权利有什么问题的话，您可以打电话给辛大社会与行为科学检查管理委员会的主席 Claudia Norman
<[email protected]>/513-558-5784 。
自愿参加的权利： 我无法可知您是否 参加这份问卷。您可以随时关闭您的网络浏览窗口而退出问卷。
同意： 阅读了如上信息之后，如果您愿意参加这份问卷，请点击下面的按钮“是＂。如果您想保留此同意
书，请打印本页。
我已经阅读了如上信息，并愿意回答这份问卷。
是 否
84
正式回答问卷之前，请回答以下问题；点击选择您的答案前面的按钮，或者将您的答案填
写在空格里。
1. 您的国籍是：
美国
中国大陆
其它
2. 如果您问题 1 的答案是“其它”，那么请将您的国籍填写到下面的空格里：
3. 您现在的居住地是：
美国
中国大陆
其它
4. 如果您问题 3 的答案是“其它”，那么请将您的居住地填写到下面的空格里：
5. 您的年龄，请在空格里填写数字：
6. 你接受的最高教育水平是：
高中
一些大学
大学毕业
一些研究生学习
研究生毕业
请点击“提交”按钮进入正式的问卷调查
提交
85
请仔细阅读下面的材料，并回答随后的问题。
德是家里的独子，他的父母都是医生， 工作很忙，在家里的时间有限。可是，他们尽可
能给了德许多的关注。如果事情不和德的意，他就发脾气。有一天，德的老师在全班同学
面前提到了他一次近期测验的成绩分数很低。下课后，在走廊里，一个同学不小心撞到德
身上。德揪住这个同学，把他推到墙上，要求他立刻道歉。午餐时间，大家排队等待就
餐。班里的一个小个子同学排在德前面。德戏弄他，辱骂他。下午化学课，这个小个子同
学端着一盘子的试管从德的身边走过时，德把他拌倒了。
请发挥想象，推测德为什么会有以上的行为，并把这些原因填写在下面的空格里。请给出
至少两个以上的原因。如果您可以想象得出五个以上的原因，请把第五个和更多的原因填
写在“更多＂之后的空格里。
第一个原因
第二个
第三个
第四个
更多
提交
86
请仔细阅读下面的材料，并回答随后的问题。
明是一名在校五年的研究生。近期，他申请了一项奖学金，未获批准；他的一个同学得到
了这份奖学金。明怀疑是他的导师偏向这个同学，这位同窗作了弊，抢走了他该得的奖学
金。明向校方申诉未果。此后，明申请一所大学的教职，也没成功；对此他归咎于其导师
写的推荐信不力。不久后的某日，他走进本系的教授例会，开枪打死了他的导师，获奖的
那位同窗，和另外两位教授。然后，明来到两个街区以外的行政楼，找到当初处理他的申
诉的教务助理副校长。明开枪打死了这位副校长和一位在现场的学生；随后，明开枪自
尽。
请发挥想象，推测明为什么会有以上的行为，并把这些原因填写在下面的空格里。请给出
至少两个以上的原因。如果您可以想象得出五个以上的原因，请把第五个和更多的原因填
写在“更多＂之后的空格里。
第一个原因
第二个
第三个
第四个
更多
提交
87
请仔细阅读下面的材料，并回答随后的问题。
德是家里的独子，他的父母都是医生， 工作很忙，在家里的时间有限。可是，他们尽可
能给了德许多的关注。如果事情不和德的意，他就发脾气。有一天，德的老师在全班同学
面前提到了他一次近期测验的成绩分数很低。下课后，在走廊里，一个同学不小心撞到德
身上。德揪住这个同学，把他推到墙上，要求他立刻道歉。午餐时间，大家排队等待就
餐。班里的一个小个子同学排在德前面。德戏弄他，辱骂他。下午化学课，这个小个子同
学端着一盘子的试管从德的身边走过时，德把他拌倒了。
以下是有可能导致德的行为的原因，请在每一项原因前选择您认为该原因对德的行为的决
定程度
非常重要
重
要
无
关
1. 他很自私，被宠坏了。
2. 他欺负别人，以获得同学们的注意。
3. 老师在全班面前提到他的成绩不好。
4. 他欺负别人，这样同学就不会欺负他。
5. 他讨厌上学。
6. 他讨厌他的同学和老师。
7. 他讨厌那个被他欺负的同学。
8. 电影，电视，和其他的媒体宣扬暴力行为。
9. 他的很多同学讨厌他，取笑他。
10. 他的朋友和他一样爱欺负别人。
11. 那些被他欺负了的同学没有告发他的行为。
12. 学校和老师没有及时并有效地处理 D 的不良行为。
13. 德的家长对他宠爱有加，管教不足。
提交
88
请仔细阅读下面的材料，并回答随后的问题。
明是一名在校五年的研究生。近期，他申请了一项奖学金，未获批准；他的一个同学得到
了这份奖学金。明怀疑是他的导师偏向这个同学，这位同窗作了弊，抢走了他该得的奖学
金。明向校方申诉未果。此后，明申请一所大学的教职，也没成功；对此他归咎于其导师
写的推荐信不力。不久后的某日，他走进本系的教授例会，开枪打死了他的导师，获奖的
那位同窗，和另外两位教授。然后，明来到两个街区以外的行政楼，找到当初处理他的申
诉的教务助理副校长。明开枪打死了这位副校长和一位在现场的学生；随后，明开枪自
尽。
以下是有可能导致明的行为的原因，请在每一项原因前选择您认为该原因对明的行为的决
定程度。
非常重要
重
要
无
关
1. 因为学校和就业的事情，明的精神压力很大。
2. 明没有寻找其它途径释放自己的挫折感和愤怒。
3. 教务副校长的处理不够公正，没有到位。
4. 明的性格有缺陷。
5. 明对奖学金一事太过斤斤计较。
6. 明的精神状态不稳定。
7. 明对社会公平抱有不切实际的幻想。
8. 电影，电视，和其他的媒体宣扬暴力行为。
9. 明身边的人都很自私，自我中心。
10. 明的朋友也舞枪弄棍，以暴力解决问题。
11. 明所处的环境允许拥有枪支，并有射击训练的场
所。
12. 明的导师和同窗确有作弊行为。
13. 明找不到可以公正裁决奖学金纠纷的第三方机构。
提交
89
APPENDIX E
Coding Rubric of Open-ended Responses
90
1
Scape
goat/selfenhance
Anger,
frustration,
irritation @
parents/teacher,
Make others feel
bad,
Embarrassed to
revenge,
humiliated,
Selfenhancement, to
make himself look
better, Control
Take out on
others, pick the
weak one
Divert
focus/attention
Poor grade,
ashamed of
grades,
consequence
讨厌同学，老
师，学校
面子，心情不好
Coding Rubric of Open-ended Responses to Dave/De (Bullying) Scenario
2
3
4
5
6
7
Parenting
Teacher
Peer
Poor
Personality,
Low selfsocial/coping
Mental
esteem,
skills
health
desire
(brat)
attention
Get/need
attention, Selfesteem, dignity,
insecure at height,
too high/low
esteem, think
himself is better
than others
Lonely, insecure,
Feel
abandoned/neglec
ted, Unworthy,
inadequate,
inferior, loser
自闭,自尊心强，
自以为是
Social/coping skills,
not get along with
others, deal with
problems/criticisms
/anger, He does
Poor self
control/self
discipline/patience,
There is no one to
talk to, no social
network, no
friends, No self
reflection
认不清自己的缺点,
修养差, 缺少交流，
心理承受力差，不
会自我调节
Brat, have his
way, Only-child,
get his way, He is
bully/mean,
Selfish, selfcentered,
inconsiderate, no
respect to others,
Psychological
problems, bipolar,
psy-disorder
心理不健全/扭曲/
不平衡
孤僻，不乐观,
个人主义，小皇
帝，唯我独尊, 无
道德，无礼,
无心之失
虐待，暴力倾
向，恶作剧
脾气坏，钻牛角
尖，不知羞耻，
逆反心理
91
Parent/home: no
love/affection, no
attention/time,
spoil, high
expectation,
wealthy,
neglect/ignore,
can’t rely on, no
Ed./discipline/soc
ialize
Teacher mention
grade/negative
attention
Mean peer, he
was bullied,
There is no
correction from
peers,
Peers didn’t
report him and
let him get away
with his
misbehavior
同学放纵他
8
Social/cultur
al
学校，社会（德
育）教育不足
Coding Rubric of Open-ended Responses to Michael/Ming (campus-shooting) Scenario
1
Self-enhance,
Vindictive
(Emotion, revenge, selfenhance)
Anger, upset,
frustrated, worked up,
jealous(no one gets it if
he doesn’t), pride hurt,
feel cheated/ betrayed/
victimized/discriminate
d/ignored/rejected/not
appreciated
Fear, avoid penalty,
afraid of losing, regret
killing,
Hurt to revenge,
to feel good,
Blame others, take out
on others, victims
wronged him
&responsible for his
problems
Prove self, empower
self, no control/to take
control, kill to fix
problems,
找客观原因，推脱责
任，怨天尤人, 挫折
2
3
Social,
communicat
ion skills
Personality,
Belief/value Mental
health
School
(award),
Job
Lack of
skills/abilities to
handle failure,
No social/coping
skills, bad
relationship with
people around,
no friends, don’t
get along,
no self reflection,
no self criticism,
history of
violence=a bully,
not competent,
isolated, no
communication,
人际关系不好，
人情冷漠
读死书，书呆子
暴力倾向，爱欺
负人，
看不到自己的缺
点.
心理承受力差，
素质差，不能应
对失败，不会自
我调节/发泄
Pessimistic,
hopeless, life
goes nowhere,
sense of loss,
insecure,
introvert, ,
skeptical,
self-centered,
selfish,
rebellious,
self esteem, feel
like a loser,
disappointed at
self,
Cloudy
view/value of
reality, social
justice, antisocial, sociopath, false
assumptions
about justice,
vanity, money,
success, award,
value
school/award
too much,
Denial of
loss/failure
计较得失/名利
不满社会，不
接受现实，只
看丑陋
自大，好胜，
期望过高，天
之骄子，过于
自信/自卑.
hardworking but
NO reward
& NO
recognition,
Lose
award/appe
al, deserve it
but lost
Stress,
fatigued,
pressure,
grad school,
length of
time at
school,
no job offer,
逆反心理，叛
逆
猜疑，不信任
别人，疑心,
执着，性格缺
陷，悲观，小
心眼，内向，
冲动，想不
开，主观，心
胸狭窄，脆
弱，心态不
好，计较，
梦想破灭
4
5
depressed,
inhibited,
psychologica
l problems,
emotional/m
entally
unstable,
insane,
schizophreni
a, nuts,
suicidal,
心理变态，
心理疾病, 一
时冲动/不平
衡，情绪不
稳定
6
不如人意,
学习压力,
无回报
92
7
8
9
10
Social,
Cultural,
Media
Famil
y,
Parent
childh
ood
Victim
(advisor
/ fellow
student/
adminis
tration)
Other
s
society/school
/culture value
grades but
value neither
morality nor
personality
ed.,
gun control
Racism
No other
choice, no
way out, no
legal solution,
no proper
channel, no
third party
for further
appeal
Media/movie/
internet/mag
azine
学校社会不
关心学生的
心理/德育教
育
childhoo
d or past
experien
ce(he
was
ignored/
betrayed
; was
cuddled
too
much,
his past
was too
smooth
& easy)
Parents/
home:
no
commun
ication,
no trust,
spoiled
him &
no
disciplin
e
没有阅
历，太
顺利
advisor:
favoritism,
no
attention,
no help, no
communic
ation, no
recognition
, unfair
treatment
Unfair
treatment,
misfortune,
world
against
him,
wronged
him,
cheated,
Fellow
student,
cheater
drug
addict,
offmeds,
illness,
girlfrien
d,
打击，委
屈，自己
伸张正义