Cultural Differences in the Representativeness Heuristic: Expecting a Correspondence in Magnitude Between Cause and Effect

Abstract

Based on previous research on cultural differences in analytic and holistic reasoning, it was hypothesized in these studies that when explaining events, North Americans would be more likely than East Asians to expect causes to correspond in magnitude with those events (i.e., big events stem from big causes and small events stem from small causes). In a series of studies, Canadian and Chinese participants judged the likelihood that high- or low-magnitude events were caused by high- or low-magnitude causes. Overall, Canadians expected events and their causes to correspond in magnitude to a greater degree than did Chinese. Also, Canadians primed to reason holistically expected less cause-effect magnitude correspondence than did those primed to reason analytically.