The impact of cultural collectivism on reward allocation.

Abstract

Chinese University of Hong KongIt is argued that the collectivism of a culture leads to different styles of rewardallocation with in-group and out-group members. Two studies using Chinese andAmerican subjects examined this issue. In the first study an out-group situationwas used, in which subjects were led to believe that they worked with a partnerwhom they would not meet, to obtain a group reward. The collectivistic Chinesesubjects were found to follow the equity norm more closely in dividing the groupreward than the individualistic American subjects when pressure of social evaluationwas removed. In the second study Chinese and American subjects read a scenarioin which an allocator worked with either an in-group or out-group member. Theallocator had either a low or high input and used either the equity or equalitynorm to divide a group reward. Compared with American subjects, Chinesesubjects liked an allocator who divided the group reward equally with an in-groupmember more and regarded such an allocation as fairer. When subjects wereasked to assume that they were the allocator and to hypothetically divide thereward, Chinese subjects followed the equity norm more closely than didAmerican subjects when the recipient was an out-group member or when thesubjects' input was low. However, when the subjects' input was high and therecipient was an in-group member, Chinese subjects followed the equality normmore than did American subjects. These findings are discussed in terms of thedesire for maintaining group solidarity in a collectivist culture.One of the major constructs in theoreticaldiscussions in cross-cultural psychology, so-ciology, and anthropology is that of collectiv-ism-individualism (e.g., Berger, Berger, K Brittan, 1977). However, onlyrecently have we had an empirical basis toevaluate the significance of this construct. Ina large scale survey of beliefs and values in40 countries, Hofstede (1980) extracted fourdimensions of national culture—individual-ism was one of them. In his data the U.S.has the highest score on individualism,whereas countries of a Chinese background(Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan) are onthe collectivistic end of the scale. This resultis consistent with Hsu's (1970) wide-ranging