Cultural priming effect in dyadic negotiation.

• Main Author: Fu, Ho Ying.
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Research Report
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Psychology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/2153
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

By proposing that cultural values and norms can be deemed to provide members of a cultural group with scripts and schemas, we study the situational activation of American or Chinese cultural symbolic materials on Singaporean Chinesees choice of negotiation tactics and behaviors. It is proposed that Singaporean Chinese when primed into the American culture, will tend to exhibit an orientation towards American ideals and values like competing and individualism; likewise, Singaporean Chinese when primed into the Chinese culture, will tend to exhibit an orientation towards Chinese ideals and values like avoiding and collectivism. This study seeks to study the cultural priming effect on negotiation amongst bicultural individuals. A two-part experimental study is carried out. A priming task is first carried out to elicit cultural constructs through the use of cultural icons. This is followed by a negotiation simulation task. Results show that American primes successfully Q/& activated American values. However Chinese primes did not produce similar assimilation ,^0* effect. Results on joint gains realized failed to support the hypothesis that negotiation C/i^w involving different cultural mindsets would yield lower joint gains than that involving similar cultural mindsets.