Second Thoughts About Culture and Cause: Why and How Do the Chinese and Americans Differ in Causal Attributions?

Abstract

Academic Abstract

Current theories on dispositional–situational attributions suggest that East Asians’ attributions are more external compared to Westerners. However, empirical studies yield mixed findings. I reflect on historical, philosophical, and sociological resources in China and the United States to address this inconsistency. This paper (a) proposes a new attributional dimension borrowed from Chinese philosophy—human- versus heaven-determined (人定–天定); (b) postulates that the Chinese are more likely to make internal human-determined attributions than Americans, whereas Americans are more inclined to make internal and external heaven-determined attributions than the Chinese; (c) reviews the existing literature to examine the extent to which this theory is evidenced and determine aspects remaining untested; and (d) discusses the generalizability to other cultures and directions for further research. Notably, “heaven-determined” is interpreted metaphorically (not religiously). Beyond dispositional–situational theory, this paper spotlights another meaningful pathway for constructing cross-cultural theory: The Chinese emphasize human determinism more than Americans.

Public Abstract

Why do I succeed or fail? Why do people help or harm others? Members of different cultures may provide different answers to such questions—known in psychology as “causal attributions.” A popular belief in psychology is that East Asians are more likely than Westerners to consider external factors—in other words, environmental/outside factors—as causes of behaviors and outcomes. In this paper, I challenge this prevailing theory and propose an alternative, drawing on cultural resources and social realities of China and the United States. When explaining why something happens, the Chinese may focus more on average than Americans do on internal causes determined by humans (e.g., effort, motivation, attitude, skill, and strategy), whereas Americans may focus more on average than the Chinese do on causes that are not determined by humans (e.g., aptitude, genes, gender, race/ethnicity, physiological characteristics, luck, and supernatural force). More research is needed to test this postulation.