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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 31, No. 7, 925-934 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167204272166
© 2005 Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Culture and Diverging Views of Social Events

Hannah Faye Chua

University of Michigan, hchua{at}umich.edu

Janxin Leu

University of Michigan

Richard E. Nisbett

University of Michigan

The authors compared East Asians’ and Americans’ views of everyday social events. Research suggests that Americans tend to focus more on the self and to have a greater sense of personal agency than East Asians. The authors assessed whether, compared to East Asians, Americans emphasize main characters even when events do not involve the self and whether they see more agency or intentionality in actions, even when the actions are not their own. Whether East Asians would observe more emotions in everyday scenarios than would Americans also was investigated. In Study 1, Chinese and Americans read alleged diary entries of another person. Americans did focus more on main characters and on characters’ intentionality. Study 2 replicated these results comparing Taiwanese and Americans on free recall of events concerning the self and of narratives and videos concerning others. Study 2 also found that Taiwanese made more comments about the emotional states of characters.

Key Words: culture • cognition • agency • emotion • egocentric bias • intentionality


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