Exploring Correspondence Bias And Cross-Cultural Differences

The Theory of Correspondence Bias and Its Impact on Human Behavior

Discuss about the Journal of Personality Disorders for Geography of Thought.

The most debatable issue of society and the most searched issue of the humanity; in recent years is person-perception literature by Gilbert & Malone (1995). The theory evaluates temperamental qualities of human behavior. Constrained behavior is the inclination of human character for the obvious actions in presence of another human character. Constrained behavior can be revealed by a true mind-set during the composition of an article with pro or anti point of view for a certain piece of writing. Perception about a situation or a person comes from senses of the body, expectations from life and other external factors. Stimulating the mind to study a subject due to a certain reaction is a common attribute; the phenomenon is also universal in nature. Personal traits, psychological features help a human mind to recognize the external qualities of another person (Zengel, B., 2017). The tendency to explain behavior of the others, generally by drawing conclusion based on dispositional attributes of the subject irrespective of peripheral or situational conditions leads to contained behavior. An internal natural attribution is a spontaneous incident, but correspondence bias gets generated if this process does not get rectified for external or situational grounds. Taking the right foot forward by assessing others based on peripheral situations can minimize the initial effect of the biasness. Previous knowledge of adverse behavior sometimes affects the overall decision and the chance of rectification fades away. Several theories have been developed for the analysis of situational behavior of human mind. Earlier in a study by Choi & Markus (1998) it got revealed that casual ascription for Asian and American were completely different.

Internal and external are two types of ascription as pointed by Heider (1958). People are inclined to elucidate behavior of others in terms of internal or dispositional attributes, rather than external or situational attributes. This nature of bias is called correspondence bias (book and Koenig). The two common paradigms in correspondence bias are attitude attribution paradigm as enlightened by Jones and Harris in 1967. Participants expressed their opinion on Fidel Castro, the Prime Minister of Cuba either by praising or by critically abusing. This way they created their attributions towards the writer (Koenig and Dean, 2010). The second type of exemplar was a quiz role where the quiz was based on the study of Ross, Amabile and Steinmetz (1977). Participants anonymous to each other were arbitrarily assigned as questioner, answerer and observer. Universality of the theory for correspondence bias was the major achievement since it considered cultural contrast as an ingredient.

Comparing Cultural Aspects of Malaysian and Australian Societies

Prior research work has also established the fact that association between human personality structure and personality traits is universal (Alik, 2002). It was hypothesized that mutual surroundings had no effect no individualism; impact of inherent traits was negligible in nature (Eysenck, 1990). The five factor model generalized the cross cultural study; a general conception for people around the globe was established (McCrae and Costa, 1997).

The cultural insights of Malaysia reflect that people staying in that country is happy with the social hierarchy and do not propose for any modification. Leadership challenges are not at all greeted with pleasure and the society is overall happy with inherent impartiality. Relationship is the most important pillar of the Malaysian culture, irrespective of family or office affairs. People care for others and they learn these values from childhood. Due to importance of profound relationship people generally stay in relaxed manner and deviation from the rules is not considered heinous. Peace and self-control are the two major ingredients which injects respect for history and traditions (Pekerti, A. A., & Arli, D., 2017). Self containment provides happiness to the people of this culture, and naturally creates optimistic views towards life.  Along with materialistic well being, enjoyment through spare time with near and dear ones reflects the strong cultural orientation of the society.

Australian society is more inclined towards opportunist hierarchy system, where employee and employers share a casual but direct relationship. Nature of the people is highly individualistic, and they prefer to stay in small and closed family group. Unlike Malaysian culture, work place atmosphere is not relaxed, rather merit based. Australians are more success bound race and masculine nature of society is the reflection of that. Due to their aggressiveness in nature, Australians like to deal with uncertainty in a positive manner. Countrymen are also apt towards speedy result and do have little inclination to bank money for the future. The country, with its developed economy offers ample opportunity to its residents for utilizing the leisure time on vacations.

In the current study Malaysian culture and Australian cultures were put side by side. The Malaysian culture is more inclined towards Asian ethnicity whereas Australian culture resembles primarily with Western culture. Asian culture is more inclined towards favor situational elucidations rather than dispositional behaviors (Morris & Peng, 1994). This inclination is not only narrowed to human aspect, but mammal behaviors are also explained by peripheral circumstances, not by the instinct as explained by Lee at al. (1996).

Cross-Cultural Analysis of Correspondence Bias

Malaysia has a communalist and mutually dependent background. Australia has a self-determining and individualistic culture as shown by Bochner (1994). In relation to earlier studies, a higher level of correspondence bias was predicted for people for the two countries, Malaysia and Australia. It was hypothesized that there was significant level of difference in correspondence bias due to cross cultural diversity of the two countries.

The outcome of the experiment reflected no cross cultural biasness for Malaysian and Australian people. The hypothetical view about the contrast in correspondence bias of two countries due to their distinct and unique culture was refuted by the results. This established the fact that crosswise over members, examiners were more educated than answerers. Absence of critical communication by culture, confirmed that no dissimilarity was there in correspondence predisposition by the two societies. Similarly no significant primary impact of culture was observed and it represented that there was no critical contrast by culture in the evaluations of examiner’s and answerer’s learning. The average knowledge scores of the participants revealed it all. Result of the analysis of the variances was in favor of the theory of independence of cross cultural effect on correspondence biasness. The results were in line with the results of Krull et al. (1999) where perceivers did not succeed in front of the questioners knowledge, and the questioner were proved to be more intelligent than answerer.

The division of the study population in three categories created the insignificant nature of the results. The answerer, observer and questioner were divided randomly and this created a normal trend of the data, where the situational conditions and genetic diversity were overlooked. Non probability sampling was probably a better choice when various attributes of the people are studied. In an arbitrary selection the cultural background, language proficiency and peripheral circumstances were ignored (de Oliveira, S., & Nisbett, R. E., 2017). The age group of the participants was based on the university students. Therefore broader sample was not chosen for the study and cultural along with genetic variation of the genders got nullified since equal number of male and females in the sample of the study.

The culture– level factor examination of identity qualities has uncovered just humble deviations from the individual– level factor structure (McCrae, 2001; 2002). This appears to show that if the culture– level collection includes anything that goes past inter individual variety then it is generally humble in its size.

No Significant Cross-Cultural Differences in Correspondence Bias

The cross cultural studies normally compared Eastern and Western cultures due to diverse and contrasting nature of the cultures (Allik, J., 2005). While comparing, various languages spoken, age old traditions, history of the civilizations and political scenarios were considered as main aspects of study. From earlier research works it can also be inculcated that Eastern cultures (Malaysian culture in the current study) contribute to collective aspects of cultural orientations, whereas, the Western culture (Australian culture for current study) is inclined towards individual charisma. The comparative study of the two cultures also expressed that instead of indifference in thought process or behavior of an individual, the collective psychology or cultural platform becomes dissimilar (Kitayama et al., 1997).

There are many instances where two cultures have been compared for cross cultural similarities and differences (Carlota & del Pilar, 2002). But only a few significant universal dataset were available for statistically meaningful comparison until 2004, when a methodical pattern of personality trait distribution was observed (Allik & McCrae, 2004). The geographical diversity was discovered to be the primary reason for different style of answer pattern for individuality questionnaires. Biological multiplicity and genetic structuring were considered as the key reasons for cross cultural distances.

With increasing number cultures and related studies it has become easier to analyse the cultures individually. Hofstede identified these dimensions of different cultures and pointed out the entire process as “ecological factors” (Hofstede, 1983). Other than gender and age, various parameters were prescribed to find the correlation between cultures at different geographical locations. Aggregate cultural analysis, as prescribed in the Hofstede model may or may not reflect the exact correlation between two cultures compared to individual interactive investigation (Ostroff, 1993). Ground level investigation on the effect of restrictions and mutually exclusive genetic parameters of different cultures on extraversion found that, correspondence bias for cross cultural diversities can hardly be analyzed from personality traits such as talkativeness or happiness (McCare, 2002). Deviation of individual level factor analysis from aggregate culture level factor analysis was observed for cross cultural study, but the deviation in results was statistically inadequate in nature to be identified (McCare, 2002).

The future scope of the entire process of the experiment with consideration of diversified ethnic groups was bright. Consideration of peripheral situation and various genetic orders of the participants will help to study the effect on correspondence bias with an aggregate basis. Unequal mixing of gender and age group will create a heterogeneous population in nature, which in turn will help to analyse the cross cultural effect in an unbiased way. Again if the both the nonconformist and collectivists group agree on the fact that questioner is more intellectual than contestant, and then support of correspondence bias will get generated.

According to Morris & Peng (1994) socialist cultures do not prefer dispositional rationalization, but according to Masuda & Kitayama (1996) prevalent correspondence bias exists among cross cultures.  Therefore the current model along with cognitive abilities and psychological traits can explain the cross cultural role in correspondence biasness.

References

Allik, J. (2005). Personality dimensions across cultures. Journal of personality disorders, 19(3), 212-232.

Allik, J., & McCrae, R. R. (2004). Toward a geography of personality traits: Patterns of profiles across 36 cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 35(1), 13-28.

Bochner, S. (1994). Cross-cultural differences in the self concept: A test of Hofstede’s individualism/collectivism distinction. Journal of cross-cultural psychology, 25(2), 273-283.

De Oliveira, S., & Nisbett, R. E. (2017). Culture Changes How We Think About Thinking: From “Human Inference” to “Geography of Thought”. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(5), 782-790.

Koenig, A. M., & Dean, K. K. (2010). and Similarities in Attribution. Cross-cultural psychology: Contemporary themes and perspectives, 475.

Krull, D. S., Loy, M. H. M., Lin, J., Wang, C. F., Chen, S., & Zhao, X. (1999). The fundamental attribution error: Correspondence bias in individualist and collectivist cultures. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(10), 1208-1219.

Kitayama, S., Duffy, S., Kawamura, T., & Larsen, J. T. (2003). Perceiving an object and its context in different cultures: A cultural look at new look. Psychological science, 14(3), 201-206.

Miyamoto, Y., & Kitayama, S. (2002). Cultural variation in correspondence bias: The critical role of attitude diagnosticity of socially constrained behavior. Journal of personality and social psychology, 83(5), 1239.

Maakip, I., Keegel, T., & Oakman, J. (2017). Predictors of musculoskeletal discomfort: A cross-cultural comparison between Malaysian and Australian office workers. Applied ergonomics, 60, 52-57.

McCrae, R. R., & Costa Jr, P. T. (1997). Personality trait structure as a human universal. American psychologist, 52(5), 509.

Pekerti, A. A., & Arli, D. (2017). Do cultural and generational cohorts matter to ideologies and consumer ethics? A comparative study of Australians, Indonesians, and Indonesian Migrants in Australia. Journal of Business Ethics, 143(2), 387-404.

Zengel, B., Ambler, J. K., McCarthy, R. J., & Skowronski, J. J. (2017). Spontaneous trait inference and spontaneous trait transference are both unaffected by prior evaluations of informants. The Journal of social psychology, 157(3), 382-387.