Attributing causality and remembering events in individual- and group-acting situations: A Beijing, Hong Kong, and Wellington comparison

Previous research has shown that collectivists prefer external whereas individualists prefer internal attributions. To test the findings' generality across social situations, we compared the two attributions in situations where either an individual was acting on a group (Individual-acting) or the reverse (Group-acting). As predicted, collectivists' (Beijing and Hong Kong Chinese) greater preference for externality, and individualists' (Wellington Europeans) greater preference for internality, occurred in individual- but not group-acting situations. Collectivists' (mainly Hong Kong) memory of events was better in group- than in individual-acting situations according to prediction, but the predicted reversal was not found among individualists. The collectivist/individualist categorizations of the samples were supported by measures of self-construal. Indigenous Chinese concepts of 'unity' ( tong tian ren ) and 'combination' ( he nei wai ) were discussed to throw light on attribution processes that are not readily accessible through the concepts of collectivism and individualism.