Attributing causality and remembering events in individual- and group-acting situations: A Beijing, Hong Kong, and Wellington comparison

Previous research has shown that collectivists prefer external whereas indi vidualists prefer internal attributions. To test the findings' generality a cross social situations, we compared the two attributions in situations whe re either an individual was acting on a group (Individual-acting) or the re verse (Group-acting). As predicted, collectivists' (Beijing and Hong Kong C hinese) greater preference for externality, and individualists' (Wellington Europeans) greater preference for internality, occurred in individual- but not group-acting situations. Collectivists' (mainly Hong Kong) memory of e vents was better in group- than in individual-acting situations according t o prediction, but the predicted reversal was not found among individualists . The collectivist/individualist categorizations of the samples were suppor ted by measures of self-construal. Indigenous Chinese concepts of "unity" ( tong tian ren) and "combination" (he nei wai) were discussed to throw light on attribution processes that are not readily accessible through the conce pts of collectivism and individualism.