THESIS
2002
xii, 100 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm
Abstract
Employing the method of cultural priming, the present study examines how activation of different cultural knowledge systems among bicultural individuals (i .e. people who have been exposed extensively to two cultures) affects their behavior. The present study focused specifically on the Hong Kong college students as they have been exposed extensively to both Chinese and American culture. Study 1 showed that the cognitive representation of obligation and rights differs among the Hong Kong bicultural participants when different cultural knowledge systems were activated. When the American cultural knowledge system was activated, fulfilling social obligation was perceived as giving up individual rights. When the Chinese knowledge system was activated, fulfilling obligation was perceived as...[
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Employing the method of cultural priming, the present study examines how activation of different cultural knowledge systems among bicultural individuals (i .e. people who have been exposed extensively to two cultures) affects their behavior. The present study focused specifically on the Hong Kong college students as they have been exposed extensively to both Chinese and American culture. Study 1 showed that the cognitive representation of obligation and rights differs among the Hong Kong bicultural participants when different cultural knowledge systems were activated. When the American cultural knowledge system was activated, fulfilling social obligation was perceived as giving up individual rights. When the Chinese knowledge system was activated, fulfilling obligation was perceived as giving up individual rights only when requests were from outgroup people. When requests were from ingroup members, obligation and rights were not related. These findings were applied in a prisoner's dilemma task in Study 2. The payoff in the dilemma was such arranged that to defeat would always lead to a higher individual outcome regardless of the partner's strategy, but to cooperate would lead to a higher joint outcome when the partner also cooperated. Findings from this study showed that participants with the American cultural knowledge system activated were more motivated to maximize individual outcome by defeating others. 1n contrast, participants with the Chinese cultural knowledge system activated were more motivated to maximize joint outcome by cooperation. Also, when the Chinese cultural knowledge system was activated, more cooperation was expected from ingroup partners, and more cooperative behavior was actually performed towards them, whereas the cooperation motivation was not applied to outgroup partners. This was consistent with study 1's finding that an obligation to cooperate with ingroup members was not perceived as giving up individual rights in the Chinese knowledge system. This also demonstrated how accessibility of different cultural knowledge systems and their applicability to different social situations affect behavior, supporting the dynamic constructivist approach to biculturalism.
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