TY - JOUR
T1 - Culture as automatic processes for making meaning
T2 - Spontaneous trait inferences
AU - Shimizu, Yuki
AU - Lee, Hajin
AU - Uleman, James S.
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Japanese Scientific Research (No. 26380868) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to Yuki Shimizu.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2017/3/1
Y1 - 2017/3/1
N2 - Culture shapes how we interpret behavior, symbols, customs, and more. Its operation is largely implicit, unnoticed until we encounter other cultures. Therefore deep cultural differences should be most evident in automatic processes for interpreting events, including behavior. In two studies, we compared American and Japanese undergraduates’ spontaneous (unintended and unconscious) trait inferences (STIs) from behavior descriptions. Both groups made STIs but Japanese made fewer. More important, estimates of the controlled (C) and automatic (A) components of their recall performance showed no differences on C, but A was greater for Americans. Thus westerners’ greater reliance on traits, in intentional and spontaneous impressions, may reflect cultural differences in automatic processes for making and recalling meaning. The advantages of locating cultural differences in automatic processes are discussed.
AB - Culture shapes how we interpret behavior, symbols, customs, and more. Its operation is largely implicit, unnoticed until we encounter other cultures. Therefore deep cultural differences should be most evident in automatic processes for interpreting events, including behavior. In two studies, we compared American and Japanese undergraduates’ spontaneous (unintended and unconscious) trait inferences (STIs) from behavior descriptions. Both groups made STIs but Japanese made fewer. More important, estimates of the controlled (C) and automatic (A) components of their recall performance showed no differences on C, but A was greater for Americans. Thus westerners’ greater reliance on traits, in intentional and spontaneous impressions, may reflect cultural differences in automatic processes for making and recalling meaning. The advantages of locating cultural differences in automatic processes are discussed.
KW - Automatic and controlled processes
KW - Culture
KW - False recognition paradigm
KW - Process dissociation procedure (PDP)
KW - Spontaneous trait inference (STI)
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jesp.2016.08.003
DO - 10.1016/j.jesp.2016.08.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84994137858
VL - 69
SP - 79
EP - 85
JO - Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
JF - Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
SN - 0022-1031
ER -