The Effect of Americans' Adaptation to Malaysians on Perceived Trustworthiness

Abstract

This experiment investigates the effect of cultural adaptation by American business people on their trustworthiness, as perceived by Malaysians. The sample consists of 140 Malaysian professionals in Malaysia, who read one of the four stories that differ in degrees of Americans' cultural adaptation: none, moderate, high using the English language, and high using the native language (i.e., Malay language). The results show that the high adaptation using the native language condition results in higher disconfirmation of stereotypic behavior than does the high adaptation using English and the moderate adaptation conditions, both of which in turn result in higher disconfirmation than does the no adaptation condition. The high adaptation using the native language condition is perceived to be more situationally caused than is the moderate adaptation condition, which in turn is perceived to be more situationally caused than is the no adaptation condition. Despite the support for situational attribution made for the high adaptation conditions, the high adaptation using the native language condition is perceived to be more trustworthy than is the moderate adaptation condition, which, in turn, is perceived to be more trustworthy than is the no adaptation condition; these results contradict the findings of some earlier studies but replicate the results in the cases of Americans adapting to Thais and Japanese in Pornpitakpan (1998) and to People's Republic of China Chinese in Pornpitakpan (2002b). Explanations for the discrepancies in the findings and managerial implications are discussed.