TY - JOUR
T1 - How sucesful you have been in life depends on the response scale used
T2 - The role of cultural mindsets in pragmatic inferences drawn from question format
AU - Uskul, Ayse K.
AU - Oyserman, Daphna
AU - Schwarz, Norbert
AU - Lee, Spike W.S.
AU - Xu, Alison Jing
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - To respond to a question, respondents must make culturally relevant, context- sensitive pragmatic inferences about what the question means. Participants in a culture of modesty (China), a culture of honor (Turkey), and a culture of positivity (U.S.) rated their own (Study 1) or someone else's (their parents or people their parents' age, Study 2) success in life using either a rating scale that implied a continuum from failure to success (-5 to +5) or varying degrees of success (0 to 10). As predicted, culture and rating format interacted with rating target to influence response patterns. Americans, sensitive to the possibility of negativity, rated all targets more positively in the bipolar condition. Chinese were modesty-sensitive, ignoring the implications of the scale, unless rating strangers for whom modesty is irrelevant. Turks were honor-sensitive, rating themselves and their parents more positively in the bipolar scale condition and ignoring scale implications of rating strangers.
AB - To respond to a question, respondents must make culturally relevant, context- sensitive pragmatic inferences about what the question means. Participants in a culture of modesty (China), a culture of honor (Turkey), and a culture of positivity (U.S.) rated their own (Study 1) or someone else's (their parents or people their parents' age, Study 2) success in life using either a rating scale that implied a continuum from failure to success (-5 to +5) or varying degrees of success (0 to 10). As predicted, culture and rating format interacted with rating target to influence response patterns. Americans, sensitive to the possibility of negativity, rated all targets more positively in the bipolar condition. Chinese were modesty-sensitive, ignoring the implications of the scale, unless rating strangers for whom modesty is irrelevant. Turks were honor-sensitive, rating themselves and their parents more positively in the bipolar scale condition and ignoring scale implications of rating strangers.
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U2 - 10.1521/soco.2013.31.2.222
DO - 10.1521/soco.2013.31.2.222
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84879802914
SN - 0278-016X
VL - 31
SP - 222
EP - 236
JO - Social Cognition
JF - Social Cognition
IS - 2
ER -