Relationship between a person's collectivistic and individualistic tendencies and intra-group influence process

在集体主义文化中，生存的单位往往是群体而不是个人。有人假设，在日本这样的集体主义文化中，人们在风险同伴的存在下会感到更安全（即，即使这种期望在规范上是不合理的，也要比独自承担风险的情况更好。在实验1中，被试被要求估计在六个假设的情况下，不同数量的风险同伴的风险水平。结果表明，被试的感知风险水平随着风险同伴数量的增加而降低。在实验2中，受试者暴露于真实的风险（即，电击），并伴有不同数量的风险。同样，受试者估计他们与更多的风险同伴更安全。因此，这两个实验验证了这一假设。本研究结果表明，在集体主义文化中，人们使用的认知启发式，这是命名为相互依存启发式，在风险感知。

In collectivist cultures the unit of survival has often been the group rather than the individual. It was hypothesized that people in a collectivist culture, like Japan, would feel safer in the presence of risk companions (i.e., those who are exposed to the same risk source) than when they are on their own, even when such expectations are not justifiable on the normative grounds. In Experiment 1, subjects were asked to estimate the risk level involved in six hypothetical situations with varying number of risk companions. The results indicated that the subjects'perceived risk level decreased as the number of risk companions increased. In Experiment 2, subjects were exposed to a real risk (i.e., electric shock) with varying number of risk companions. Again, the subjects estimated that they were safer with more risk companions. Thus, the two experiments verified the hypothesis. The present results suggest that people in a collectivist culture use a cognitive heuristic, which is named interdependence heuristic, in risk perception.