Cognitive Attribution Of Cultural Backgrounds And Differences

By means of cultural comparison, this study analyzes attribution theory's culturalcontext, and points out that the cultural essence of attribution theory lies inindividualism, liberalism, rationalism, and competitionism, which are popular in thewestern countries. Then, based on the results of the studies on the cultural differencesbetween the eastern and western obtained by cultural psychology and culturalanthropology, this study criticizes the limitations of attribution theory when it isused to explain attribution phenomena in other cultural contexts. In this way, the fablethat attribution theory reflects attribution laws of all human beings is denied. With thehelp of the insights from postmodern social psychology, this study points out that wemust hold a culturally critical attitude toward attribution theory when we use it. Onlyby studying attribution phenomena according to our own cultural context and explainits results in our own cultural words, will it be a scientific and valuable approach.Based on the views of philosophers, including Chinese, Japanese and Western ones,on the differences between eastern and western, and taking into considerationpeculiarities of attribution problems, this study abstracts four factors to express thecultural differences between the eastern and western: familism versus individualism,authoritarianism versus liberalism, fatalism versus rationalism, cooperationism versuscompetitionism. This study designs two questionnaires: the Attribution CulturalTendency Questionnaire, and the Achievement Attribution about Self and OthersQuestionnaire. Using these two questionnaires, this study tested 773 senior middlestudents and their parents to verify the relation between achievement attribution andcultural tendency. The results are: 1. there is significant difference about successattribution or failure attribution of self and others between the subjects, who showChinese cultural tendency, and the subjects, who show Western cultural tendency: theformer tend to attribute their or others'success and failure to external anduncontrolled factors, but the latter tend to attribute their or others'success and failureto internal and stable factors; the former have few "Self-serving bias", while the latterhave obvious "Self-serving bias"; 2. there is significant difference about successattribution or failure attribution among different cultural profile: Moderner, who showwestern cultural tendency, and Neutralist, who have both western (rationalism) andChinese (cooperationism) cultural character, have the same attribution character as thewesterners; Contradictionist, who are mainly like westerners but short of rationalism,have obvious "Self-serving bias"; Traditionist, who show Chinese cultural tendency,have particular attribution character: they do not brag nor do they debase themselveswhen they attribute their success, and they have self-protection conscious but do notrunaround their responsibility when they attribute their failure; especially, they alwayshave optimistic attitude and keep struggling for success whenever they face up withfailure. These results prove the hypothesis that there is close relation betweenattribution character and cultural tendency. Finally, the paper explains these results interms of Chinese culture.