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In two studies of Japanese and Australian university students, we examined the resource allocation rules of equity and equality. In both cultures, subjects were universalistic rather than relativistic in their judgments of fairness and alterability of these rules in the work place. They judged the equity rule to be unalterable by legislation or consensus. However, in both studies, the Japanese perceived equity to be less fair and equality to be less unfair than their Australian counterparts. In addition, study 2 indicated that cross‐cultural differences in judgments of fairness were influenced by consideration of need. The age of the worker was a more important determinant of fairness judgments for Japanese than for Australians; the debt of a worker was a more important déterminant for Australians than for Japanese. The results are discussed with regard to the role of culture in conceptions of distributive justice.

The structure of conceptual representations of personality traits was investigated using the 75 trait terms in everyday language which were previously employed for the ratings for actual people (Isaka, 1990). Subjects were asked to estimate how possible it is for each of 75 traits to coexist with the other 74 traits. The three factors obtained corresponding to the common "Big Five" factors (e.g., Norman, 1963) were; 1) Extroversion with a negative connotation, 2) Kindness/Agreeableness, and 3) Dominance and Industriousness/Conscientiousness. The multi-dimensional analysis showed the circular representation of those traits, with seven clusters derived from cluster analysis dividing the circle. This circle was similar to those previously illustrated for the interpersonal traits (e.g., Leary, 1957). These findings suggest that people's conceptual representation of traits is more schematic and simpler than that of actual person perception.

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