Abstract

Two studies attempted to discriminate between a situational-economic and a cultural explanation for the recently reported finding that Chinese from the People's Republic of China (PRC) are more risk-seeking than Americans. Both studies compared American and Chinese proverbs related to risk and risk-taking. The first study added Germany as a control group for its socioeconomic similarity to the United States but its closer resemblance to the PRC in its social safety-net and cultural collectivism. Members of each culture rated American, Chinese, and German risk-related proverbs, respectively, on implied advice (to take or avoid risk) and applicability to financial or social risks. Results were consistent with the cultural explanation of national differences in risk taking: (a) Chinese and German proverbs were judged to provide more risk-seeking advice than American proverbs; (b) American proverbs were judged less applicable to risks in the social domain than Chinese and German proverbs; (c) regardless of national origin of proverbs, Chinese perceived proverbs to advocate greater risk-seeking than American raters, but only for financial and not for social risks.

*1 This research was supported by grant SBR-9422819 from the National Science Foundation. We thank Chip Heath, Helmut Jungermann, Paul Slovic, and one anonymous reviewer for useful comments.

*2 The PRC was not included in Hofstede's (1980) survey of IBM-employees in fourty countries. Two countries with Chinese culture, Hong Kong and Taiwan, however, both scored extremely low.

*3 There were some eye-of-the-beholder effects, as well. The only category for which nationality of rater didnothave an effect were judgments of applicability of American proverbs to the financial decision (95% and 96%, for American and Chinese raters, respectively; χ²(13) = 12.35,p> .10). For all other three categories (applicability of American proverbs to social risk; applicability of Chinese proverbs to financial and social risk), Chinese were significantly more likely than Americans to find proverbs applicable (χ²(21) = 34.41, 37.45, 33.21, respectively; allp< .05). Chinese (as a cultural difference) may find proverbs more applicable to life decisions in general, a main effect that might have been attenuated by a ceiling effect in the American-proverb/financial-decision applicability condition. If American parents are known for trying to influence their children's decisions by appeals to reason or rational self-interest in the form of rewards or punishment, Chinese parents often try to obtain the desired behavior more indirectly, by the telling of an allegorical story or the use of a proverb (Zhang, 1992).

*4 J. Berman

^f2 Address correspondence and reprint requests to Elke Weber, Department of Psychology, OSU, 1885 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210. Fax: (614) 292-5601. E-mail:weber.211@osu.edu.