Delineating a method to study cross-cultural differences with experimental control: The voice effect and countercultural contexts regarding power distance

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Abstract

This paper proposes a method to study cross-cultural differences with experimental control. We illustrate this method by examining how participants from India (a high power distance culture) and the Netherlands (a low power distance culture) react to being allowed or denied an opportunity to voice their opinions. We argue that one way to evaluate the influence of the assumed cultural differences in power distance is to assign participants to conditions that elicit “countercultural” psychological states, that is, conditions that prime low power distance in India and high power distance in the Netherlands. To the extent that the results in the countercultural (experimental) conditions meaningfully differ from those observed in the control conditions in which no values are emphasized explicitly, we gain insight into the psychological dimensions that account for cross-cultural differences in people's reactions. The findings presented indeed suggest that the random assignment of participants to countercultural conditions provides cross-cultural researchers with a powerful tool to examine the causal impact of meaningful psychological dimensions that are presumed to differ across cultures. The results further reveal that when high power distance was emphasized either because of national culture or situational cues, participants showed less strong reactions to the voice versus no-voice manipulation than when low power distance was emphasized as a result of either national culture or situational cues. Implications and limitations of this countercultural-experimental approach for the study of cross-cultural differences as well as the psychology of voice and power distance are discussed.

Highlights

► We propose a method to study cross-cultural differences with experimental control. ► This method uses countercultural conditions to study cross-cultural differences. ► We examine reactions from high and low power distance participants to voice opportunities. ► Experimental conditions remind about countercultural values regarding power distance. ► Cultural and situational high (vs. low) power distance yields weaker reactions to voice.

Introduction

People are cultural animals (Baumeister, 2005) and are influenced heavily by their cultural surroundings (e.g., Cohen and Leung, 2009, Fiske, 2006, Hofstede, 2001, Leung, 2005, Markus and Kitayama, 1991, Martin, 1999, Schaller and Crandall, 2004). It does not come as a surprise, therefore, that many social psychologists are interested in, indeed fascinated by cross-cultural differences. As a result, many important advances have been made in this field of inquiry (for recent reviews, see, e.g., Chiu and Hong, 2007, Heine, 2010). For example, cross-national research has enabled researchers to evaluate the cross-cultural generality of their findings. Many social phenomena have been demonstrated in Western countries which raises the important question whether these theories apply in non-Western contexts (Heine, 2010, Hofstede, 2001). Indeed, research has shown that some of the most important and robust phenomena in Western-based social psychology do not always emerge or do not emerge to the same degree in non-Western countries (e.g., Brockner, 2003, Leung, 2005, Markus and Kitayama, 1991).

Section snippets

Complementing cross-cultural research with experimental control

We argue here that an important concern when studying cross-cultural differences is the need to have experimental control. That is, often cross-cultural research examines people from two or more countries and assumes that the participants differ along certain psychological dimensions, which, in turn, elicit differences in dependent variables of cognition, affect, or behavior. If the research findings suggest that the participants in the different countries react differently, and that these

An experimental approach to cross-cultural differences

Of course, in cross-cultural research it is not possible to randomly assign participants to different cultures. However, it is possible to randomly assign people from different cultures to either a control condition in which nothing is done and in which people hence are likely to default to the values and beliefs that are predominant to their culture or to an experimental condition which primes values and beliefs that are directly contrary to the default ones in a given culture. If differences

Voice and power distance

In testing the experimental approach to cross-cultural differences we focus on how people in cultures or contexts that value either high or low distance to individuals or authorities who have power over them respond to the presence versus the absence of opportunities to voice their opinions about decisions to be made. In particular, we examine the well-established tendency for people to be more satisfied with a decision when they have received, as opposed to have been denied, voice. This

The current research

Whereas prior research has provided evidence consistent with the notion that people from higher power distance cultures will be less influenced by the presence or absence of voice (Brockner et al., 2001), an important shortcoming of the previous studies is that they merely measured people's power distance beliefs. The fact that the hypothesized intervening variable of the between-culture difference was measured rather than manipulated weakens the internal validity of the findings. Accordingly,

Participants and design

Two hundred and fifty students (157 women; Mage = 21.57, SEage = 0.19) participated in the study and were given course credit for their participation. One hundred and twenty-one Indian students from Karnatak University in India and 129 Dutch students at Utrecht University in the Netherlands participated and were randomly assigned to one of the conditions of a 2 (countercultural priming: absent vs. present) × 2 (procedure: voice vs. no voice) factorial design.3

Manipulation check

A 2 (country: India vs. Netherlands) × 2 (countercultural priming: absent vs. present) × 2 (procedure: voice vs. no voice) analysis of variance on the scale that checked the procedure manipulation yielded two significant effects. First, there was a very strong main effect of the procedure manipulation, F(1, 242) = 307.00, p < .001, ηp2 = .56. As intended, participants thought their views were taken more into consideration in the condition in which they were allowed an opportunity to voice their opinions (

Discussion

This study delineates important conditions under which the effect of being allowed versus denied voice on experienced treatment satisfaction will be more versus less likely to emerge. Our findings show that when distance to power holders is large, either because of national culture (which was likely to be the case in the control condition among the sample from India) or because of situational cues that remind people that power distance can be large (as was the case in the experimental condition

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    1

    Kees van den Bos and Joel Brockner contributed equally to this article. We thank Allan Lind for his comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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