Cultural construction of success and epistemic motives moderate American-Chinese differences in reward allocation biases

When the relative contribution of the self and the group to a group success is unclear, Americans tend to exhibit a self-serving bias (rewarding the self more than what the self deserves), whereas the Chinese tend to exhibit an other-serving bias (rewarding the group more than the group deserves). I...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Leung, Angela K.-Y., Kim, Young-Hoon, Tam, Kim-Pong, Chiu, Chi-yue, Zhang, Zhixue
Other Authors: Nanyang Business School
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/107247
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/18052
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary:When the relative contribution of the self and the group to a group success is unclear, Americans tend to exhibit a self-serving bias (rewarding the self more than what the self deserves), whereas the Chinese tend to exhibit an other-serving bias (rewarding the group more than the group deserves). In a study comparing the reward allocation biases of Americans and Chinese in different group outcome conditions, the authors showed that the abovementioned cultural difference is found (a) only for culturally congruent success experience (attaining approach goals for Americans and avoidance goals for Chinese) and (b) among individuals who are motivated by the need for cognitive closure to exhibit culturally typical responses. This finding has important implications for understanding the dynamic nature of cultural influences on social behaviors.