Culture and Group Perception: Dispositional and Stereotypic Inferences
About Novel and National Groups
Julie Spencer-Rodgers
University of Victoria
Melissa J. Williams
University of California, Berkeley
David L. Hamilton
University of California, Santa Barbara
Kaiping Peng
University of California, Berkeley
Lei Wang
Peking University
In 3 studies, the authors tested the hypothesis that Chinese participants would view social groups as more
entitative than would Americans and, as a result, would be more likely to infer personality traits on the
basis of group membership—that is, to stereotype. In Study 1, Chinese participants made stronger
stereotypic trait inferences than Americans did on the basis of a target’s membership in a fictitious group.
Studies 2 and 3 showed that Chinese participants perceived diverse groups as more entitative and
attributed more internally consistent dispositions to groups and their members. Guided by culturally
based lay theories about the entitative nature of groups, Chinese participants may stereotype more readily
than do Americans when group membership is available as a source of dispositional inference.
Keywords: entitativity, stereotypes, dispositional inference, cross-cultural differences, Chinese cultural
groups
Recent cross-cultural work, particularly research comparing
members of East Asian and Western cultures, has revealed striking
differences in cognition, emotion, and behavior (e.g., Choi, Nis-
bett, & Norenzayan, 1999; Kashima, Siegal, Tanaka, & Kashima,
1992), as well as fascinating similarities in underlying psycholog-
ical processes and motives (e.g., attribution for group vs. individ-
ual behavior; Menon, Morris, Chiu, & Hong, 1999; and cognitive
dissonance; Hoshino-Browne, Zanna, & Spencer, 2005). Stereo-
typing processes, however, have been the focus of relatively little
cross-cultural investigation. Despite a vast literature on the content
of stereotypic beliefs about national and racial/ethnic groups
around the world (see Fiske, 1998; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu,
2002), it is surprising that both the cross-cultural and stereotyping
literatures have been largely silent on the question of whether there
is cultural variation in basic stereotyping processes. For instance,
little is known about whether members of East Asian cultures
stereotype more or less than do members of Western cultures and,
if so, whether the antecedents and consequences of stereotyping
are culture-specific or universal.
On the basis of previous work in the domain of culture and
causal attribution, one might guess that East Asians (in this case,
mainland Chinese) would be less vulnerable to stereotyping than
would Westerners (Americans). Whereas members of Western
cultures have been shown to underutilize available situational
information in explaining the actions of others (Ross, 1977),
members of East and South Asian cultures (particularly China,
Japan, Korea, and India) have been reliably shown to be more
context-dependent and to place relatively greater weight on situ-
ational factors when making causal attributions. For example, they
are less likely to commit the fundamental attribution error (Choi et
al., 1999; F. Lee, Hallahan, & Herzog, 1996; Miller, 1984; Morris
& Peng, 1994) and are less prone to the correspondence bias
(Kashima et al., 1992). Because East Asians are more inclined to
take contextual factors into account, one might speculate that
Chinese participants would be less likely to explain behavior in
terms of category memberships than would Americans.
Of course, causal attribution and stereotyping are distinct phe-
nomena: Attribution involves generating a causal explanation for a
Julie Spencer-Rodgers, Department of Psychology, University of Vic-
toria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada; Melissa J. Williams and Kaiping
Peng, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley;
David L. Hamilton, Department of Psychology, University of California,
Santa Barbara; Lei Wang, Department of Psychology, Peking University,
Beijing, China.
This research was supported by grants awarded to Julie Spencer-
Rodgers from the National Science Foundation, International Programs
Office, and the University of California Institute of Global Cooperation and
Conflict. We thank Yoshihisa Kashima, Molly Parker Tapias, Susannah
Paletz, Maria Logli Allison, Tammy English, Adam Cohen, and Diane
Velasco for their invaluable comments on drafts of this article. We also
thank Eva Liao and Xiang Yao for their assistance with data collection and
translation in China, and we thank Jane Lee, Reza Asgari, Erol Ari, Wayne
Chan, Kate Dong, Xiao He, Jung Yun Jang, Antje Schumacher, Christina
Qi, William Tov, Karin Voelker, Lawrence Wan, and Jo Wu for their
assistance with data collection and translation in the United States.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Julie
Spencer-Rodgers, Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, Vic-
toria, British Columbia V8W 3P5, Canada. E-mail: jrodgers@uvic.ca
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Copyright 2007 by the American Psychological Association
2007, Vol. 93, No. 4, 525–543 0022-3514/07/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.93.4.525
525
person’s behavior, whereas stereotyping involves ascribing a per-
sonality trait to an entire category of individuals (e.g., “Asians are
good at math”) and subsequently inferring personality traits on the
basis of category membership (e.g., “Isaac is Asian; therefore, he
is good at math”). Attributing causes and ascribing dispositions are
different psychological mechanisms, and stereotyping does not
necessarily involve attributional analysis (Hamilton, 1988, 1998).
Therefore, cultural differences in causal attribution may not be a
solid foundation for understanding cultural variation in stereotyp-
ing.
A number of findings imply that Chinese participants might
instead be more likely to see social groups as possessing coherent
dispositions or personalities. East Asians, and especially mainland
Chinese, hold more collectivist values (Bond, 1986; Oyserman,
Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002; Triandis, 1995), perceive social
groups as having greater agency (Menon et al., 1999), and may
view social groups as more cohesive and homogeneous entities,
relative to Americans. As a consequence, Chinese might be more
inclined than Americans to perceive collections of individuals as
having unique dispositions, referred to hereafter as group-level
stereotyping. Moreover, in the absence of salient contextual or
individuating information, they might be more likely to infer that
individuals possess the personality traits that are characteristic of
their social groups, referred to hereafter as individual-level stereo-
typing. This is often the state of affairs in everyday social percep-
tion: People frequently must make quick and imperfect social
judgments without access to contextual or individuating informa-
tion. Under these circumstances, it is possible that Chinese would
stereotype more than Americans would, in keeping with their
implicit beliefs about the entitative nature of social groups.
In the research reported here, we tested these two competing
hypotheses concerning the prevalence of stereotyping among Chi-
nese and American participants and examined a hypothesized
mechanism that might give rise to cultural differences in stereo-
typing, specifically the perception of group entitativity. To our
knowledge, these studies are the first to directly investigate these
questions. In the following sections, we review the culturally
relevant literature on stereotyping, dispositional thinking, and
group entitativity and then report the results of three studies.
Culture and Stereotyping
The literature on stereotyping phenomena around the world has
focused almost exclusively on the content of ingroup and outgroup
stereotypes among a wide variety of national and racial/ethnic
groups. These groups include Americans and Hong Kong Chinese
(Bond, 1986), Latin Americans (Marı´n & Salazar, 1985), residents
of English-speaking countries (McAndrew et al., 2000), Western
Europeans (Koomen & Ba¨hler, 1996), and Eastern Europeans
(Poppe, 2001), among others. In these studies, members of each
cultural group described their ingroup and the relevant outgroup(s)
in terms of personality traits. Several common themes have
emerged from this research: high levels of ingroup favoritism, a
high degree of consensus in outgroup stereotype content among
raters from multiple countries, and recurring patterns of stereotype
content among pairs of nations with relations characterized by
conflict or tension. This literature fits appropriately within recent
models that focus on understanding the origins of stereotype
content across groups, demonstrating that specific stereotypes
emerge reliably from particular relationships between ingroups
and outgroups (Alexander, Brewer, & Hermann, 1999; Fiske et al.,
2002). These models allow researchers to predict, for example,
which specific stereotypes two cultural groups will hold of each
other on the basis of the degree of resource competition between
the groups, or which stereotypes majority-group members will
hold of minority groups within their culture on the basis of the
degree of status inequity between the groups.
What remains unresolved, however, is whether culture affects
the readiness with which and the circumstances under which
people use stereotypes, independent of intergroup relationships.
Members of different cultures might draw disparate inferences
about the same social group and its members, not only because
they vary in their relationships with the group, but also because
they hold fundamentally different lay beliefs about the nature and
function of groups, particularly on the dimension of entitativity.
Entitativity refers to the quality of “groupness” or the extent to
which social aggregates come to be bona fide groups, rather than
mere collections of individuals (Hamilton, Sherman, & Castelli,
2002; Yzerbyt, Judd, & Corneille, 2004; Yzerbyt, Rocher, &
Schadron, 1997). A further distinction can be drawn between
ontological and epistemological entitativity (Kashima, 2004;
Kashima et al., 2004).
1
Because social groups are, in fact, more
cohesive and stable in East Asian societies, East Asian lay beliefs
about the nature of social groups might emphasize these group
properties. We next consider the culturally relevant literature on
dispositional thinking, ontological entitativity, and epistemological
entitativity and outline how they might be linked to stereotyping.
Culture, Dispositional Thinking, and Ontological
Entitativity
As described previously, a strong tradition in cross-cultural
research has demonstrated a tendency for Westerners to make
greater use of dispositional information, relative to East Asians.
Westerners (Australians and Italians) are also more likely to use
traits and adjectives in their open-ended descriptions of social
objects than are East Asians (Koreans and Japanese; Kashima,
Kashima, Kim, & Gelfand, 2006; Maass, Karasawa, Politi, &
Suga, 2006). Nonetheless, despite these attributional and linguistic
tendencies, more recent work on this topic has revealed that there
are many circumstances under which East Asians may be equally,
or even more likely, to engage in dispositional thinking. When
contextual information was not available or salient, Koreans ex-
hibited the same level of dispositional thinking as Americans did
(Choi & Nisbett, 1998; Choi et al., 1999). Second, although Hong
Kong Chinese were less apt than Americans to explain individual
behavior in terms of stable personality traits, they did make dis-
positional attributions when the behavioral unit was a group rather
than an individual (Chiu, Morris, Hong, & Menon, 2000; Menon et
al., 1999; Morris, Menon, & Ames, 2001). Although this research
has shown that East Asians readily explain the behaviors of groups
in terms of personality traits, it has not addressed the question of
whether groups and group members are stereotyped more in East
Asian cultures.
Why might groups be seen as possessing distinct personalities in
East Asian cultures? As outlined above, cultures differ in the
1
We thank Yoshihisa Kashima for raising this important point.
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SPENCER-RODGERS, WILLIAMS, HAMILTON, PENG, AND WANG
relative emphasis they place on persons versus groups. In Western
psychology, the individual holds the focal point in the layperson’s
perceptual field and is the primary unit of agentic will and action
(Heider, 1958; Masuda & Nisbett, 2001). As a result, lay people
expect a higher degree of coherence in the characteristics and
behaviors of a single person than they do in those of a group
(Hamilton & Sherman, 1996). In collectivist societies, however,
the group, rather than the individual, is the dominant unit of
perception and action. Groups are seen as having stable desires,
intentions, and agency—the ability to implement and achieve their
goals (Kashima et al., 2004; Menon et al., 1999).
Groups might also be perceived as having enduring dispositions
because they have greater permanence and continuity in their
memberships in East Asian countries relative to Western ones
(Chiu, Dweck, Tong, & Fu, 1997; Chiu et al., 2000; Su et al.,
1999). In all social groups, regardless of culture, individual group
members come and go, but new members are continually social-
ized into the norms of the group. In this way, the characteristic
features of the group are maintained over time, allowing for the
development of a group-level personality. This may be particularly
true in East Asian cultures such as mainland China, where there is
less freedom to choose one’s group memberships and groups often
possess greater stability and coherence among group members. As
a consequence, Chinese participants might expect greater internal
consistency in the attributes of groups and be more willing than
Americans to stereotype at the group level—that is, to ascribe a
disposition to an entire collection of individuals.
Why might the “personalities” of groups be transmitted to their
members? Groups demand greater conformity and exert greater
control over the actions of their members in collectivist societies
than in individualist ones. Members of collectivist cultures are
expected to suppress their private interests and adjust their per-
sonal attributes to fit in with the group (Markus & Kitayama, 1991;
Triandis, 1995). Over time, group members come to take on the
attributes of the groups to which they belong; in the parlance of
self-categorization theory, they self-stereotype (Turner, Hogg,
Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987). The adoption of group-level
characteristics does not simply reflect conformity or self-
presentation concerns. Studies using open-ended instruments re-
veal that East Asians describe themselves more in terms of their
group memberships and social roles than do Westerners (Cousins,
1989), indicating that these group identities have been incorpo-
rated more closely into the global self-concept.
In sum, knowing about a person’s group memberships might be
more diagnostic in a collectivist than in an individualist context.
As a consequence, Chinese might be more likely to stereotype at
the group level—that is, to apply an internally consistent disposi-
tion to a collection of individuals— because group members are
more likely to actually share group-specific personality traits and
to behave in a trait-consistent manner. They may also be more
likely to infer personality traits on the basis of a person’s group
memberships—that is, to stereotype at the individual level.
Culture and Epistemological Entitativity
If groups are ontologically more entitative in East Asian cul-
tures, it stands to reason that they will also be perceived as more
cohesive units. Scholars have become increasingly interested in
whether there are cultural differences in perceptions of entitativity
(e.g., Brewer, Hong, & Li, 2004; Kashima et al., 2004). Previous
research has shown that Hong Kong Chinese perceive groups as
more agentic (Chiu et al., 2000; Menon et al., 1999), and collective
agency is considered to be an important aspect of entitativity
(Abelson, Dasgupta, Park, & Banaji, 1998; Brewer et al., 2004).
Kashima et al. (2004) showed that whereas participants from five
Western countries believed that persons are more agentic than
groups, participants from three East Asian countries were equally
apt to attribute mental states and agentic will, such as desires and
intentions, to group actors as they are to individuals. Although
Brewer et al. (2004) reported that Hong Kong Chinese viewed a
variety of groups as less entitative than did Americans, most of the
limited research on this topic suggests that East Asians see social
groups as more cohesive entities. As a consequence, our Chinese
participants may perceive both known groups and newly encoun-
tered groups as more entitative than will the Americans.
Relationship Between Entitativity and Stereotyping
People use their lay theories about the nature of social groups to
guide social perception and to make dispositional and stereotypic
judgments. Certain lay theories about the nature of the social world
promote dispositional thinking and stereotyping more than do
others. For instance, perceivers who see persons as stable entities
are more likely to make trait-based inferences, to endorse stereo-
types, and to exhibit intergroup bias (Chiu, Hong, & Dweck, 1997;
Hong et al., 2004; Levy & Dweck, 1999; Levy, Stroessner, &
Dweck, 1998). In a similar vein, we contend that perceivers who
view groups as stable entities possess more internally consistent
mental representations of the dispositions of groups. Furthermore,
they should make stronger and more consistent inferences about
individuals on the basis of their group memberships—that is, they
should be more likely to stereotype.
Support for these predictions comes from literature on Western
participants showing that the perception of entitativity leads to
greater integrative processing (Hamilton & Sherman, 1996; Suss-
kind, Maurer, Thakkar, Hamilton, & Sherman, 1999), intergroup
categorization (Yzerbyt et al., 1997), dispositional attributions for
a group’s behavior (Yzerbyt, Rogier, & Fiske, 1998), and stereo-
typing (Spencer-Rodgers, Hamilton, & Sherman, 2007). When
forming impressions of highly entitative targets, perceivers make
stronger, faster, and more confident trait inferences and recall
more target-relevant information, relative to less entitative targets
(Susskind et al., 1999). The perception of entitativity also influ-
ences the processing of behavioral information about individual
group members. Perceiving highly entitative targets involves the
abstraction of a distinct group impression or stereotype and the
transference of that stereotype across all members of the group
(Crawford, Sherman, & Hamilton, 2002). Other research shows
that the perception of entitativity is related to greater stereotyping
for both social categories and task groups (Spencer-Rodgers, Ham-
ilton, & Sherman, 2007).
To summarize, we predicted that Chinese participants, relative
to their American counterparts, would perceive a wide range of
social groups to be more entitative and, as a result, would make
stronger and more internally consistent trait inferences about the
groups and their members. Specifically, in Study 1, we predicted
that Chinese participants would be more likely than Americans to
infer personality traits on the basis of membership in novel, ficti-
527
CULTURE AND GROUP PERCEPTION
tious social groups. In Study 2, using culturally neutral groups, we
predicted that Chinese participants would perceive groups as more
entitative and would hold more internally consistent group impres-
sions, compared with Americans. Finally, in Study 3, we tested
these hypotheses using existing national groups and examined
whether the findings would extend to perceptions of ingroups/
outgroups and their members.
Study 1
In Study 1, American and Chinese participants made inferences
about novel, fictional groups with which neither cultural group
could have had an existing relationship. We used fictional groups
to focus on the stereotyping process separately from the content.
Participants made two types of inferences: First, they made infer-
ences about group membership on the basis of traits provided; that
is, they estimated the likelihood that a target individual belonged
to one of the groups, given that the individual possessed a person-
ality trait stereotypical of that group. They then made inferences in
the opposite direction; that is, the likelihood that an individual
possessed a particular personality trait, given that the individual
was a member of the group for which that trait was stereotypical.
In both cases, we predicted that the Chinese participants would
make stronger inferences than would Americans—stronger trait
inferences on the basis of social-group membership and stronger
group-membership inferences on the basis of traits.
As outlined earlier, cultures differ in their implicit beliefs about
the nature of social groups and group membership. We explored
participants’ beliefs about group membership in the fictional so-
ciety by asking them to indicate the ease with which they believed
that group membership could be changed and the reasons why
individuals might belong to one group or another. In keeping with
an entitative view of groups, we expected that the Chinese partic-
ipants would be more likely than Americans to view group mem-
bership as stable and as deriving from uncontrollable factors (e.g.,
inborn traits, social forces, familial choices). In contrast, we ex-
pected the American participants to attribute group membership
more to individual choice or luck.
Method
Participants
University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), students who
self-identified as European American (N ⫽ 67; 61% female, 39%
male; M
age
⫽ 20.9 years) were selected as the American sample.
They participated in the study in exchange for course credit.
Peking University (Beijing, China) students (N ⫽ 76; 63% female,
37% male; M
age
⫽ 21.2 years) were selected as the Chinese
sample. They participated in exchange for 10 yuan ($1 US).
Procedure
After participants gave their informed consent, they were asked
to complete a questionnaire packet that included questions about
“how people group others into categories that are meaningful to
them or to society,” as well as several measures unrelated to the
present study. Upon completion of the questionnaire packet, they
were debriefed and thanked, and Chinese participants were paid.
Materials
Our aim was to develop stimulus materials that would not evoke
strong images of any well-known social groups but that nonethe-
less provided sufficient information to allow participants to make
group judgments. Participants read a description of two equal-
status social groups that inhabit a fictional society.
2
The descrip
-
tions were intended to generally imply that the Snoets were an
artistic group and the Frints were a scientific group. The descrip-
tion follows.
These two groups, called the Snoets and the Frints, are basically equal
in social status and have been known by these terms for many
generations. Snoet adults do not necessarily have Snoet offspring,
although that sometimes happens. Frints do not necessarily have Frint
offspring, although that sometimes happens. Snoets are traditionally
known for their fine arts, distinctive regional cuisine, and sturdy
dwellings. Frints, by contrast, are traditionally known for their ad-
vancements in science and agriculture, as well as their brightly col-
ored garments.
Pilot data revealed that the descriptions indeed suggested an artis-
tic or scientific impression for each group. Pilot participants (18
UC Berkeley students) read the descriptions and generated traits
they believed to be characteristic of each group. The most com-
monly generated traits were creative, adventurous, and sophisti-
cated for Snoets and intelligent, logical, and ambitious for Frints.
There was no overlap among the most commonly generated traits
for the two groups, suggesting that the impressions formed by pilot
participants about each group were distinct.
3
However, pilot par
-
ticipants did not perceive the stimulus groups to differ in mem-
bership desirability, societal respect, or wealth.
After reading the description of the groups, participants made
inferences about the likelihood that a hypothetically encountered
individual was a member of each group, given that the individual
possessed either a stereotypical or nonstereotypical trait. Partici-
pants were asked to imagine encounters with individual members
of each social group. Specifically, they were asked to “imagine
that you meet a member of this society who is extremely [creative],
perhaps the most [creative] individual you have met so far.” They
then rated ona1(extremely unlikely)to7(extremely likely) scale
the likelihood that this individual was a Snoet, the group for which
the trait creative was stereotypical, and the likelihood that the
individual was a Frint, for which creative was nonstereotypical.
These ratings were repeated for all six traits.
Next, participants made inferences about the likelihood that a
hypothetically encountered individual would possess a particular
2
In all three studies, the materials were prepared in English and trans
-
lated into Mandarin Chinese by a bilingual research assistant, then back-
translated into English by a second bilingual research assistant. Resolution
of translation discrepancies was made via group consensus with the trans-
lators and authors.
3
Because the pilot testing was conducted only in the United States, it is
possible that the stereotypical trait terms generated for each fictional group
may have been more salient and meaningful to the American than the
Chinese participants. However, this potential cultural bias in the generation
of stimuli for the study (stereotypical trait terms) would work against our
main hypothesis (that Chinese participants would more readily draw ste-
reotypic inferences, compared with Americans).
528
SPENCER-RODGERS, WILLIAMS, HAMILTON, PENG, AND WANG
trait, given that the individual was a member of the group for
which that trait was stereotypical (or nonstereotypical). Specifi-
cally, participants were asked to “imagine that you meet a member
of this society whom you’ve been told is a Snoet [Frint]. How
[creative] would you expect this individual to be in a social
interaction?” Ratings were made ona1(extremely unlikely)to7
(extremely likely) scale for all six traits.
Finally, participants made inferences about the nature of the two
social groups. First, they rated ona1(not at all difficult)to5
(extremely difficult) scale how difficult it would be for a Snoet to
become a Frint or a Frint to become a Snoet, if the individual
wanted to. Second, they rated their agreement ona1(strongly
disagree)to7(strongly agree) scale with five statements that
accounted for why individuals might be categorized as Snoets or
Frints: “because they are born with certain traits or qualities that
affect their outcomes in life,” “because of forces in society that
they do not have control over,” “because of the choices they make
as individuals,” “because of the choices that their families make or
have made in the past,” and “because of luck or chance.”
Results
Trait Inferences
Because our interest was not in the six traits individually, the
items involving inferences from traits to group membership were
combined into two indices: stereotypical (composed of items re-
garding creative, adventurous, and sophisticated with respect to
the Snoet group and intelligent, logical, and ambitious with respect
to the Frint group) and nonstereotypical (composed of items re-
garding creative, adventurous, and sophisticated with respect to
the Frint group and intelligent, logical, and ambitious with respect
to the Snoet group). The same was done for the items involving
inferences from group membership to traits, resulting in four
indices in total. However, reliability analyses on these scales
revealed that the trait sophisticated correlated poorly with the other
traits, for both stereotypical/nonstereotypical items and for both
cultural groups. Thus, this trait was removed from all indices.
Cronbach’s alphas for the resulting five-item indices are presented
in Tables 1 and 2. Several of the alpha coefficients were low, a
point to which we return later.
We next performed a 2 (Culture: American vs. Chinese, be-
tween-participants) ⫻ 2 (Type of Trait: stereotypical vs. nonste-
reotypical, within-participants) analysis of variance (ANOVA) on
the first dependent variable: inferences about traits from group
membership. The means and standard deviations are shown in
Table 1. As would be expected, there was a significant main effect
of type of trait, such that inferences about stereotypical traits were
stronger than inferences about nonstereotypical traits, F(1, 142) ⫽
125.39, p ⬍ .01. There was also a marginally significant main
effect of culture, F(1, 142) ⫽ 3.44, p ⫽ .07. Overall, Chinese
participants made slightly higher likelihood ratings than did the
Americans.
It is important to note, however, that these main effects were
qualified by a significant Culture ⫻ Type of Trait interaction, F(1,
142) ⫽ 3.77, p ⬍ .01. To explore the interaction, we examined the
simple effect of culture separately for the stereotypical and non-
stereotypical traits. These analyses revealed that there were cul-
tural differences in inferences about stereotypical traits but not in
inferences about nonstereotypical traits. Chinese participants made
significantly stronger inferences about stereotypical traits than did
Americans, F(1, 142) ⫽ 11.91, p ⬍ .01, indicating that the Chinese
participants stereotyped more than the Americans did. However,
the Chinese and American participants did not differ in their
inferences about nonstereotypical traits, F(1, 142) ⬍ 1, ns.
A second 2 ⫻ 2 ANOVA was conducted on the second depen-
dent variable—inferences about group membership from traits—
and a virtually identical pattern was obtained. Means and standard
deviations can be found in Table 2. There was a significant main
effect of type of trait, such that participants made stronger group
membership inferences on the basis of traits that were stereotypical
of the group than on traits that were not stereotypical, F(1, 142) ⫽
190.66, p ⬍ .01. In addition, there was a significant main effect of
culture, F(1, 142) ⫽ 15.26, p ⬍ .01. The Chinese participants
made stronger inferences than did American participants.
It is important to note, however, that these main effects were
qualified by a significant Culture ⫻ Type of Trait interaction, F(1,
142) ⫽ 4.88, p ⬍ .05. Analyses of simple effects revealed cultural
differences in inferences of group membership from the stereotyp-
ical traits but not from the nonstereotypical ones. Specifically, the
Chinese participants made significantly stronger inferences about
group membership from stereotypical traits, F(1, 142) ⫽ 19.01,
p ⬍ .01, compared with the American participants. However, no
cultural difference was seen in inferences about group membership
from nonstereotypical traits, F(1, 142) ⬍ 1, ns.
Finally, because the alphas for these indices were somewhat low
(see Tables 1 and 2), we also examined the directional patterns for
the five stereotypical traits individually. The Chinese participants
made significantly stronger group-membership-to-stereotypical-
traits inferences than the Americans did for four of five traits, ps ⬍
.05, and marginally stronger inferences for the fifth trait, p ⬍ .10.
Chinese participants made significantly stronger stereotypical-
traits-to-group-membership inferences than the Americans did for
Table 1
Inferences About Traits on the Basis of Group Membership, Study 1
Type of traits
American participants Chinese participants
Likelihood
rating SD
Index
reliability
Likelihood
rating SD
Index
reliability
Stereotypical 3.60 0.59 .70 3.96 0.66 .64
Nonstereotypical 3.03 0.60 .70 2.93 0.56 .44
Note. Likelihood ratings were made on a 1–7 scale. Reliability scores were calculated with Cronbach’s alpha.
529
CULTURE AND GROUP PERCEPTION
