A WEB-BASED GROUP EXPERIMENT SYSTEM FOR CROSS-SOCIETAL STUDIES.

本研究的目的是：(1)构建网络国际合作实验系统；(2)利用新构建的网络实验系统进行一系列实验；(3)评估跨社会网络实验存在的问题和困难。第一个目标主要是在1999年期间实现的，当时建造了实验系统的原型。2000年和2001年，使用新建立的系统进行了跨社会实验，首先是日本(北海道大学)和澳大利亚(拉特洛比大学)之间，然后是日本和美国(康奈尔大学)之间。我们遇到了一系列互联网通信不稳定的问题，特别是通信延迟和中断的问题。从那时起，系统引入了技术改进，我们在日美实验中遇到的问题要少得多。除了开发了一个可广泛用于跨社会实验的系统外，我们还从一系列跨社会实验中获得了以下主要发现。(1)刻板印象内容和历史背景对日本人的群体间行为有显著影响，而澳大利亚人的群体间行为受这些因素的影响较小。这些发现是从两个社会对群体的不同概念来解释的。(2)确定参与者愿意承担的风险水平的选项改善了在美国参与者和日本参与者之间建立相互信任和值得信赖的关系的过程，然而，能够选择社会风险水平的积极影响在美国参与者中比在日本参与者中要强得多。

The goals of this study were (1) to construct a system for international collaborative experiments over internet, (2) to conduct a series of experiments with the newly constructed internet experiment system, and (3) to assess problems and difficulties in conducting cross-societal experiments over the internet. The first goal was mostly achieved during 1999, when a prototype of the experiment system was constructed. In 2000 and 2001, cross-societal experiments were conducted using the newly constructed system, first between Japan (Hokkaido University) and Australia (La Trobe University) and then between Japan and the United States (Cornell University). We encountered a series of problems with unstable communications via internet, especially, problems of delayed and interrupted communications. Since then, technical improvement was introduced to the system, and we encountered much less problems in the Japan-US experiments. Besides having developed a system that can be widely used for cross-societal experiments, we obtained following major findings from the series of cross-societal experiments. (1) Stereotype contents and historical contexts heavily influence Japanese participants' inter-group behavior, whereas Australians' inter-group behavior was much less influenced by those factors. The findings were interpreted in terms of differential conception of groups in the two societies. (2) An option to determine the level of risks participants are willing to take improves the process of building mutually trusting and trustworthy relationships either among American participants or Japanese participants, and yet, the positive effect of being able to choose the levels of social risks was much stronger among Americans than among Japanese participants.