Influence of Japanese culture on the individual social cognition The third dimension beyond Individualism and Collectivism.

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

In the present study the Japanese cultural values were explored and the process of those Japanese cultural values affects on individual cognitive processes was investigated.In part 1, cultural values of Japanese students were examined by using the INDCOL measure and the Value Scale. The factor analysis of the results extracted the new fifth factor "the maintenance of self-interests through cooperation and competition (MSICC)" in addition to the four factors previously identified, horizontal individualism (HI), vertical individualism (VI), horizontal collectivism (HC), and vertical collectivism (VC). The characteristic of the new factor was analyzed in the relations to the other psychological scales and the associated personality.In part 2, Japanese proverbs were used to analyze Japanese cultural values. Their meanings were classified in terms of their relations to the Individualism/Collectivism and Maintenance of self-interests through cooperation and competition (MSICC). It was sugges … More ted that even in Japanese traditional culture, they contained values related to Individualism and MSICC as well as collectivism.In part 3, the cultural priming procedure was used to explore the influence of the individual's activated Individualism/Collectivism cognitive components on causal attributions. A lot of studies showed that causal attribution patterns in collectivistic culture tend to be external rather than internal and group rather than individual. In the present study, Japanese students exhibited the strong tendency to internal and individual attribution. Furthermore, it was showed that the cultural priming did not have an influence on causal attributions, although the cultural priming did affected individualistic/collectivistic components of self It was also showed that the effects of the cultural priming depended on an individual's dispositional Individualism/Collectivism. They all suggest the complicated relationship of the Individualism/Collectivism value to individual's cognitive process m the Japanese culture. Less