Culture and social prediction - The role of information in enhancing confidence in social predictions in the United States and China

Human behavior under uncertainty has been an important area of inquiry in s ocial, decision making, and cognitive psychology for the past few decades. The current research examined the role of different types of information in enhancing individuals' confidence in making social predictions in a variet y of uncertain situations across cultures. Chinese and American participant s were given either individuating information (e.g., accomplishments) or re lational information (e.g., social groups) about a target with whom they wo uld have to interact. They were then asked for judgments regarding the usef ulness of the information, as well as estimates of their confidence in maki ng predictions about their own and the other person's behavior in four hypo thetical situations. The results indicated that for U.S. subjects, individu ating information was deemed much more useful and enhanced confidence in ma king social predictions, as compared with relational information. The rever se was true for the Chinese participants. Implications for the individualis m-collectivism theory and cross-cultural research on social prediction are discussed.