Conformity and Anticonformity among Americans and Chinese

The role of consensus and culture in children’s imitation of inefficient actions

“…We found no difference in Caucasian American and Chinese American children's tool choice selection in the Single Model condition. Instead, this willingness of Chinese American children to learn from a consensus-even when their choices are non-optimal-confirms the second hypothesis and is consistent with research demonstrating that Asian American children and adults seem to be especially inclined to conform to the majority (Frager, 1970;Huang & Harris, 1973;Meade, 1973;Williams & Sogon, 1984). It is also consistent with the possibility that Chinese American children pay special attention to social cues (Corriveau & Harris, 2010).…”

“…In Study 2, we confirmed that the effects found in Study 1 were based on cultural differences-and not on social group membership-by testing a group of first-generation Caucasian American preschoolers. We focused on these groups because previous research with adults has indicated that individuals from collectivistic cultures (such as Asian cultures) engage in higher rates of imitation than those from individualistic cultures (such as the United States) (Chu, 1979;Frager, 1970;Huang & Harris, 1973;Meade, 1973;Williams & Sogon, 1984; for a review, see Bond & Smith, 1996). Moreover, recent developmental work with preschoolers echoes this finding; the rate of deference to an incorrect consensus among Asian American preschoolers is nearly double that among Caucasian American preschoolers (Corriveau & Harris, 2010;Corriveau et al, 2013).…”

Decision Making by Chinese and U.S. Students

“…Apparently, in only two cross-cultural empirical studies have U.S. participants been compared with Hong Kong Chinese participants in group tasks (Meade & Barnard, 1973;Whittaker & Meade, 1967). In these studies, researchers used the Asch (1956) paradigm or a variation thereof, in which participants were asked to publicly announce their personal judgments before an audience where a majority held an opposing opinion.…”

“…Before Nibler and Harris ( 1994) examined the decision-making capabilities of minimal groups, there were only two empirical studies (Meade & Barnard, 1973;Whittaker & Meade, 1967) testing the popular notion that Hong Kong Chinese people are more conforming than people in the United States. A common method of assessing the quality of group decision-making in studies of this nature is to make comparisons between individual and group performances on a given task (Hill, 1982).…”

Chinese Culture and Its Potential Influence on Entrepreneurship

“…According to Wilson (1974), a Chinese individual's actual position on an issue is subordinated to his or her desire to protect the group's integrity, thus he or she tends to circumvent overt disagreement. Another empirical study suggests that Chinese shift towards the majority position more frequently than Americans (Meade & Barnard, 1973). For this reason, managers have to resort to informal channels, such as private conversations, to collect colleagues' real ideas, which inevitably increases transaction costs in business.…”