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Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
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Personal and Collective Culpability Judgment

A Functional Analysis of East Asian—North American Differences

Melody Manchi Chao

University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, manchao{at}uiuc.edu

Zhi-Xue Zhang

Peking University

Chi-Yue Chiu

University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign

This research takes a functional perspective and examines the psychological processes underlying personal and collective culpability judgments in European Americans and Chinese in mainland China (Experiment 1), and in European Americans and Asian Americans (Experiment 2). Results indicate that when determining personal culpability for negative events, all three cultural groups consider behavioral causality. However, Chinese and Asian American participants tend to make more extreme collective culpability judgments than do European American participants. Furthermore, activating the goal of delegated deterrence strengthens Chinese and Asian American participants' collective culpability judgments only, whereas activating the goal of group harmony increases the strength of collective culpability in all three cultural groups. These findings suggest that collective culpability serves different functions in different cultural contexts.

Key Words: culpability judgment • culture • collective responsibility

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Vol. 39, No. 6, 730-744 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0022022108323788
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