Attribution Bias in Cultural Comparison: Dispositional versus Situational Attribution in South Korea and Germany

Introduction

The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

Causal attribution • is the individual’s explanation for observed or experienced behavior. • has either dispositional (traits, opinions, and temper, e.g., “she jumps the queue

because she is egoistic”) or situational locus (situation, atmosphere, and relations, e.g. “she jumps the queue because her car is parking in a prohibition zone”).

The FAE • is the general attribution tendency to overestimate dispositional influence and

underestimate situational influence on observed behavior.• has been robustly replicated in Western countries.

Self-construal: Interdependence and Independence and the FAE

• Self-construal structures cognition, emotion, and motivation • Cultures differ in type of self-construal (Markus & Kitayama, 1991)• Asians’ self-construal more interdependent, less independent: They focus on the

connectedness of individuals when observing an actor, Asians have attention on the situation and assumption of interconnectedness reduced FAE•Westerners more independent, less interdependent: They focus on the expression

of the individual’s dispositions when observing an actor, Westerners have attention on the actor and assumption of internal locus of control pronounced FAE

Discussion

Korean participants show a reduced FAE compared to Germans. This study replicates the same pattern as studies between the USA and Japan. Koreans differ significantly from Germans in their attribution style, hence in a basic cognitive principle. Different attribution style has various consequences on our thoughts and actions. Hence, cultural imprint is a factor that affects our everyday experience and behavior and should thus be included in psychological research.

Results

Methods

Sample

Our study included a total N of 243 participants in secondary analysis (Kitayama et al., 2009). None of the collected demographical variables (gender, age, religion, time spend abroad, etc.) did correlate nor interact with the dependent variables and they are therefore omitted from further discussion.

Measure of FAEParticipants were asked to complete a task on dispositional bias in social judgment (Kitayama et al., 2006).• Four vignettes: In half of the vignettes the protagonist engaged in a socially desirable behavior, in the other half in socially undesirable behavior. • Rating of protagonists’ behavior on four scales: Factual and counterfactual dispositional attribution (α = .73), and factual and counterfactual situational attribution (α = .67), on 1-7 scales (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree).

Sample characteristic Germany South Korea

Sample size N 125 118

Gender Female/ Male/ Unidentified % 67/ 31/ 2 49/ 47/ 4

AgeMage / SD 26.84 / 7.06 21.65 / 2.55Range 19 – 50 18 – 29

ReferencesKitayama, S., Ishii, K., Imada, T., Takemura, K., & Ramaswamy, J. (2006). Voluntary settlement and the spirit of independence:

Evidence from Japan's "Northern Frontier.". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(3), 369 384. ‐Kitayama, S., Park, H., Sevincer, A. T., Karasawa, M., Uskul , A. K. (2009). A Cultural Task Analysis of Implicit Independence:

Comparing North America, Western Europe, and East Asia. Manuscript submitted for publication.Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the Self Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation. ‐ Psychological

Review, 98(2), 224 253.‐Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I., & Norenzayan, A. (2001). Culture and systems of thought: Holistic versus analytic cognition.

Psychological Review, 108(2), 291 310. ‐

Thanks for the friendly financial support of German Academic Exchange Service and of the University of Hamburg

• Example vignette (socially desirable):Professional pitchers, like Tom Lyons, are very busy almost everyday during the regular season. The pitchers work hard practicing and playing in games. In the off-season, therefore, many professional pitchers take vacations. However, Tom Lyons holds several free baseball camps for kids living in poor neighborhoods instead of taking a vacation.

•All participants displayed the FAE; planned simple main-effect analyses on attribution style revealed that participants in all countries showed the FAE (ps < .001). Participants attributed the protagonists’ behavior more to dispositional than to situational causes.

•The degree of FAE varied between the countries; in a mixed within-between ANOVA we found an interaction of style of attribution with country, F (1,241) = 4.62, p = .03. Koreans tended to attribute more to situational causes (p < .07) than Germans, resulting in a smaller FAE for Koreans compared to Germans.

Andrea Zo-Rong WucherpfennigUniversity of Hamburg

Henrik SingmannUniversity of Hamburg

A. Timur SevincerUniversity of Hamburg

Karl Wegscheider University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf

Poster presented at the Conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Tampa, FL, February 2009

Past research found that people from different cultures differ in the way they explain behavior (Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001): Whereas Asians tend to consider situational factors stronger (e.g., social norms) in their explanations, Westerners tend to focus stronger on dispositional factors (e.g., the personality). Hence, a dispositional attribution bias seems to be typical for individualistic, Western countries and a reduced dispositional attribution bias seems to be typical for collectivistic, Asian countries. However, in most of the studies the USA represented Western countries, and Japan represented Asian countries. This might lead to criticism that findings of single countries are over-generalized to a cultural dichotomy of East versus West. Therefore, we compared South Koreans’ and Germans’ attribution style.