culture and decision making in china , japan , russia , and the united states

Human beings are suspended in webs of significance they themselves have spun.1 To add specificity to the metaphor, we can think of the filaments of these webs as assumptions—assumptions about such things as human nature; causality; the possible, the desirable, and the appropriate; the nature of the physical environment; and the relationship of human beings to their fellows. Where these assumptions are shared, where they define a “life-world” for a collectivity of people, they constitute what is commonly referred to as a culture. In this study, I shall focus on shared assumptions about the relationship of human beings to their fellows. More specifically, I shall present evidence that suggests (1) that Chinese, Japanese, and Russians tend to have somewhat different conceptions of “self” and “others” than do Americans, and that the former tend to be more collectivist than the latter; and (2) that these different conceptions have implications for collective decision making under conditions of complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity. Observing differences in the processes by which persons in a disagreement try to influence one another, I offer a particular sort of explanation for these differences—a cultural explanation.