Perspective Of Error-making Style In Understanding Thought Patterns During Decision-making Process In Chinese And American Culture

Objective: In our studies, we investiaged how thought patterns affect errors indecision making process in Chinese and American culural background. Do individualswith dialectial thinking style tend to make type II error while individuals with linearthinking style tend to make type I error? Three types of decision making paradigmswere adopted in our studies to examine these ideas.Method: Chinese and American subjects pariticipated in our studies. Americansubjects in studies3.1,5.1and Chinese subjects in studies5.2and5.3were ramdonlyassisgned to dialectial or linear group, texts priming were applied to induce differentthought patterns. And in study3.2,4.1and4.2, we included Chinese and Americansubjects, in these studies, we tried to examine whether individuals with differet thoughtpatterns make different mistakes in decision making. We conducted2perference taskexperiments (spontaneous and compulsive),3prediction experiments (short term andlong term) and3proclivity experiments (confidence interval, risk assessment and careerdevelopment).Results: Our hypothesis was supported in all7experiments:1. In spontaneous preference task, less discrimination between options wasobserved among dialectical thinkers therefore they were more tolerant of type II error.Linear thinkers were inclined to suggest additional alternatives therefore more tolerantof type I error. In compulsive preference task, linear thinkers (Americans) preferredType I error while dialectical ones (Chinese) prefer Type II if they have to make one,consistent with our hypothesis2. In prediction tasks, both short term and long term, individuals with dialecticalmentality showed a high level of moderacy rather than making stable predictions, whichis associated with increased level of Type II error.3. In proclivity experiments, larger standard deviations were found in dialecticalthinkers, who also had stronger risk-taking willingness and were more open-minded and less target-oriented in career development decision making, compared with indidivudalsof linear mentality.Conclusion：Chinese tends to use dialectical while Americans tends to use linearmentality. Dialectial thinking individuals tend to make type II errors while Linearthinking individuals tends to make type I errors.