Why best cannot last: Cultural differences in predicting regression toward the mean

Abstract

This research was supported by a grant from Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and a research initiation grant from Queen's University to Li-Jun Ji. We thank the Cultural Psychology Laboratory at Queen's University for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of the article. Correspondence should be addressed to Li-Jun Ji, Dept of Psychology, Queen's University, Canada, email: lijunji@queensu.ca. Chinese correspondence may be sent to Zhiyong Zhang, Dept of Psychology, Peking University, China, email: zzhang@pku.edu.cn, or Ye Li, Dept of Psychology, Huazhong Normal University, email: liye@mail.ccnu.edu.cn. Page 1 of 33Asian Journal of Social Psychology 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 Four studies were conducted to investigate cultural differences in predicting and understanding regression toward the mean. We demonstrated, with tasks in such domains as athletic competition, health, and weather, that Chinese were more likely than Canadians to make predictions consistent with regression toward the mean. In addition, Chinese were more likely than Canadians to choose a regression-consistent explanation to account for regression toward the mean. The findings are consistent with cultural differences in lay theories about how people, objects, and events develop over time. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 For many North American professors of statistics, the following anecdote will be familiar. An instructor tells a North American class of statistics students that Bob, a high school senior, achieved a SAT score of 760 out of a possible 800 points, when the average score was 480. Next the instructor poses a question: What score do you expect Bob to attain if he takes an alternative version of the test and there are no practice or learning effects? Most students assume that Bob would perform at least as well the second time. Few students possess an intuitive grasp of the concept of regression toward the mean even though there are several everyday expressions such as "law of averages", "things will even out" or "we are due for a good day after a string of bad ones". The concept was first used by Francis Galton (1886) in his paper "Regression towards Mediocrity in Hereditary Stature." Galton was interested in the relationship between the height of offspring relative to the height of their parents and found that tall parents tend to have tall children, but not usually as tall as they are. Short parents tend to have short children, but not usually as short as they are. Page 2 of 33 Asian Journal of Social PsychologyThis regression toward the mean can be explained by the fact that measurements and scores always involve so...

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