A mixed quantitative and qualitative research design compared 23 U.S. college students to 25 students from Western Samoa and 25 from American Samoa, with regard to differences in cultural beliefs and attributions. Survey responses suggested that Samoan students endorsed significantly more vertical, collective and vertical, individualistic cultural attitudes than U.S. students. Qualitative analysis of narrative responses to four vignettes depicting family conflicts suggested cultural differences in patterns of attribution of blame and responsibility for resolving the conflicts. U.S. students emphasized stable, internal, global attributions to character flaws. Samoan students emphasized more easily changed, situation-specific attributions; nonlinear, multifaceted judgments of blame; deference to hierarchy in group relationships; and context-oriented resolutions that avoid individual confrontation and emphasize preservation of relationships.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Abramson, L. Y. , Seligman, M. E. P., & Teasdale, J. D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87, 49-74.
2.
Betancourt, H. , & Weiner, B. (1982). Attributions for achievement-related events, expectancy, and sentiments: A study of success and failure in Chile and United States. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 13, 362-374.
3.
Blos, P. (1979). The adolescent passage. New York: International Universities Press.
4.
Bond, M. (1988). The cross-cultural challenge to social psychology. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
5.
Brislin, R. (1970). Back-translation for cross-cultural research. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 1, 185-216.
6.
Chandler, T. , Shama, D., Wolf, F., & Planchard, S. (1981). Multi-attributional causality for achievement across five cross-national samples. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 11, 342-363.
7.
Chodorow, N. J. (1989). Feminism and psychoanalytic theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
8.
Crittenden, K. (1991). Asian self-effacement or feminine modesty?Gender and Society, 5, 98-117.
9.
Denzin, N. , & Lincoln, Y. (1994). Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
10.
Dweck, C. S. , Hong, Y., & Chui, Y. (1993). Implicit theories. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 644-656.
11.
Freeman, D. (1983). Margaret Mead and Samoa: The making and unmaking of an anthropological myth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
12.
Fry, P. S. , & Ghosh, R. (1980). Attributions of success and failure: Comparison of cultural differences between Asian and Caucasian children. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 11, 342-363.
13.
Geertz, C. (1975). On the nature of anthropological understanding. American Scientist, 63, 47-53.
14.
Hayamizu, T. (1992). Spontaneous causal attributions: A cross-cultural study using the sentence completion test. Psychological Reports, 71, 715-720.
15.
Hill, C. E. , Thompson, B. J., & Williams, E. N. (1997). A guide to conducting consensual qualitative research. The Counseling Psychologist, 25, 517-572.
16.
Hofstede, G. , & Bond, M. (1984). Hofstede’s cultural dimensions: An independent validation using Rokeach’s value survey. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 15, 417-433.
17.
Holmes, L. D. (1987). Quest for the real Samoa: The Mead/Freeman controversy & beyond. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey.
18.
Kashima, Y. , & Triandis, H. C. (1986). The self-serving bias in attributions as a coping strategy: A cross-cultural study. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 17, 83-97.
19.
Kitayama, S., Markus, H., Kurokawa, M., Tummala, P., & Kato, K. (1991). Self-other similarity judgments depend on culture (Tech. Rep. No. 91-17). Eugene: University of Oregon, Institute of Cognitive & Decision Sciences.
20.
Kruglanski, A. W. (1979). Causal explanation, teleological explanation: On radical particularism in attribution theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1447-1457.
21.
Little, A. (1987). Attributions in a cross-cultural context. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 113, 61-79.
22.
Mageo, J. (1989). Amio/aga and loto: Perspectives on the structure of the self in Samoan. Oceania, 59, 181-199.
23.
Mageo, J. (1991). Samoan moral discourse and the loto. American Anthropologist, 93, 405-418.
24.
Mageo, J. (1995). The reconfiguring of self. American Anthropologist, 97, 282-296.
25.
Markus, H. , & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224-253.
26.
Markus, H. , & Kitayama, S. (1994). A collective fear of the collective: Implications for selves and theories of selves. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 568-579.
27.
Mathison, S. (1988). Why triangulate?Educational Researcher, 17, 13-17.
28.
Mead, M. (1928). Coming of age in Samoa. New York: William Morrow.
29.
Mead, M. (1969). Social organization of Manua. Honolulu, HI: Bishop Museum.
30.
Miller, J. G. (1984). Culture and the development of everyday social explanation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 961-978.
31.
Moghaddam, F. , Taylor, D., & Wright, S. (1993). Social psychology in cross-cultural perspective. New York: Freeman.
32.
Mokuau, N. (1987). Counseling Pacific Islanders. In P. Pedersen (Ed.), Handbook of cross cultural counseling and therapy (pp. 77-92). Westport, CT: Greenwood.
33.
Morris, M. , & Peng, K. (1994). Culture and cause: American and Chinese attributions for social and physical events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 949-971.
34.
Ponterotto, J. G. , Casas, J. M., Suzuki, L. A., & Alexander, C. M. (Eds.) (1995). Handbook of multicultural counseling. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
35.
Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcoming: Distortions in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 5, pp. 75-98). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
36.
Rossman, G. , & Wilson, B. (1985). Numbers and words: Combining quantitative and qualitative methods in a single large-scale evaluation study. Evaluation Review, 9, 627-643.
37.
Rossman, G. , & Wilson, B. (1994). Numbers and words revisited: Being “shamelessly eclectic.”Quality & Quantity, 28, 315-327.
38.
Sanders, J. , & Hamilton, V. L. (1987). Is there a “common law” of responsibility?Law and Human Behavior, 11, 277-295.
39.
Shore, B. (1982). Sala’ilua: A Samoan mystery. New York: Columbia University Press.
40.
Singelis, T. M. (1994). The measurement of independent and interdependent self-construals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 580-591.
41.
Smith, S. , & Whitehead, G. (1984). Attributions for promotion and demotion in the United States and India. Journal of Social Psychology, 124, 27-34.
42.
Smith, S. , Whitehead, G., & Sussman, N. (1990). The positivity bias in attribution. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 21, 283-301.
43.
Ting-Toomey, S. (1993). Communicative resourcefulness: An identity negotiation perspective. In R. Wiseman & J. Koester (Eds.), Intercultural communication competence (pp. 243-289). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
44.
Trevino, J. G. (1996). Worldview and change in cross-cultural counseling. The Counseling Psychologist, 24, 198-215.
45.
Triandis, H. (1995). Individualism & collectivism. Boulder, CO: Westview.
46.
Weiner, B. (1986). An attributional theory of motivation and emotion. New York: Springer-Verlag.
47.
Wolcott, H. F. (1990). Writing up qualitative research: No. 20. Qualitative research methods series. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
48.
Wood, P. S. , & Mallinckrodt, B. (1990). Culturally sensitive assertiveness training for minority clients. Professional Psychology Research and Practice, 21, 5-11.
49.
Worthington, R. L. , & Atkinson, D. R. (1996). Effects of perceived etiology attribution similarity on client ratings of counselor credibility. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 43, 421-429.
50.
Yamauchi, H. (1988). Effects of actors and observer’s roles in causal attribution by Japanese subjects for success and failure in competitive situations. Psychological Reports, 63, 619-626.
51.
Zuckerman, M. (1979). Attribution of success and failure revisited, or: The motivational bias is alive and well in attribution theory. Journal of Personality, 47, 245-287.
