Culture and decision‐making: Investigating cultural variations in the East Asian and North American online decision‐making processes

Abstract

Research in cross‐cultural psychology suggests that East Asians hold holistic thinking styles whereas North Americans hold analytic thinking styles. The present study examines the influence of cultural thinking styles on the online decision‐making processes for Hong Kong Chinese and European Canadians, with and without time constraints. We investigated the online decision‐making processes in terms of (1) information search speed, (2) quantity of information used, and (3) type of information used. Results show that, without time constraints, Hong Kong Chinese, compared to European Canadians, spent less time on decisions and parsed through information more efficiently, and Hong Kong Chinese attended to both important and less important information, whereas European Canadians selectively focused on important information. No cultural differences were found in the quantity of information used. When under time constraints, all cultural variations disappeared. The dynamics of cultural differences and similarities in decision‐making are discussed.