influencing inter-cultural and ntra-cultural variability

在我们之前的三个研究项目中，我们研究了美国和日本在社会判断上的差异，并假设人们不得不适应的近期社会制度的差异可以解释这种差异的一些特征。具体地说，从公元前16世纪开始的三个世纪里，日本对半封建社会等级制度和相对封闭的经济制度的调整，培育了一种关于事物应该是什么样子的信仰体系。另一方面，个人主义社会的平等主义本质和早期资本主义的开放市场体系塑造了另一种关于事情应该是什么样子的观点。我们的假设是，这种差异导致了我们所观察到的社会判断的差异。尽管这两个国家比几个世纪前更相似，但这种影响通过父母的社会化实践和社会期望得以持续。为了交叉验证这一假设，我们选择了日本江户时代封建主义影响程度不同的几个地区。当地群体之间的差异通常在预测的方向上，但差异通常比日本和美国之间的差异小得多。学校教育、课程内容、文化媒体等方面的文化内相似性可能解释了这一点。

In our previous three research projects, we have studied US-Japan difference in social judgments and hypothesized that the difference in social systems in near past to which people had to adjust could explain some features of this difference. More specifically, the adjustment to semi-feudalistic social hierarchy and relatively closed economical system of Japan in the period of three centuries from the 16th C. fostered a belief system about how things should be. On the other hand, the egalitarian nature of individualistic society and the open market system of early capitalism shaped another view of how things should be. It was our hypothesis that this difference caused the difference of social judgment that we have observed. Although two countries are much more alike than they used to be centuries ago, the ole influences are sustained through parental socialization practices and social expectations. In order to cross-validate this hypothesis, we have chosen several areas of Japan supposedly differ in the degree of the influence of Edo-period feudalism. The difference among local groups were generally in the predicted direction, but the differences were usually much smaller than those found between Japan and the US. Intra- cultural similarity of schooling, curriculum contents, cultural media, etc., may account for this.