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Cultural Influences on Categorization Processes

Northwestern University

Christopher R. Sears

Penny M. Pexman

University of Calgary

Chiu (1972) reported that in a categorization task, Chinese children were more likely to categorize objects based on shared relationships, whereas American children were more likely to categorize objects based on similarity. This research examines whether such findings generalize to adults and whether cultural differences would also be observed in the activation of semantic concepts. In Experiment 1, Chinese adults were equally likely to categorize based on relationships and similarity, whereas Western adults were more likely to categorize based on similarity. Analogous differences in response latencies were observed in a timed task that reflected semantic processing in Experiment 2, and to some extent in a slightly different task in Experiment 3, although differences between the two experiments suggest that the nature of the categorization task determines the extent to which cultural differences are observed. Overall, results suggest that differences in categorization styles are associated with differences in semantic activation.

Key Words: categorization • culture • semantic concepts • semantic activation • similarity • relationships • Chinese • Western

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Vol. 36, No. 6, 662-688 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0022022105280509


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