Premium
Do people believe behaviours are consistent with attitudes? Towards a cultural psychology of attribution processes
Author(s) -
Kashima Yoshihisa,
Siegal Michael,
Tanaka Kenichiro,
Kashima Emiko S.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
british journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.855
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 2044-8309
pISSN - 0144-6665
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8309.1992.tb00959.x
Subject(s) - attribution , collectivism , psychology , social psychology , consistency (knowledge bases) , individualism , relation (database) , developmental psychology , geometry , mathematics , database , political science , computer science , law
In individualistic English‐speaking cultures such as Australia, the United Kingdom, or the United States, attitudes and behaviours are often believed to be consistent. By contrast, in the Japanese culture, people may be primarily conceptualized as embedded within social contexts; the belief in consistency between attitudes and behaviour (the ABC belief) may be less strong and behaviours seen to be less consistent with attitudes. In this paper, we report two studies designed to examine the hypothesis that the strength of ABC beliefs underlies inferences in attributions of behaviour to attitudes. In Study 1, the relation of ABC beliefs to attitude attributions was examined in a sample of Australian undergraduate students. In Study 2, ABC beliefs and attitude attributions were compared in Australia and in Japan. As predicted, the ABC beliefs of Australians were related to the extremity of attributions for unconstrained behaviours and the Australians had stronger ABC beliefs than the Japanese. The results are discussed in relation to global cultural dimensions of individualism and collectivism.