It is blatantly obvious that culture is a powerful predictor of variance in overt human behavior. The foods we eat and the manner in which they are prepared, the holidays that we celebrate, and the languages that we speak are all strongly influenced by our cultural background. Culturally influenced behaviors like these seem to arise from a combination of conscious choices and environmental exposure. As such, cross-cultural differences in human behavior may be fairly superficial, overlaid onto underlyingly similar cognitive and perceptual processes. Alternatively, it is possible that our cultural backgrounds impact our cognition and perception at a more fundamental level. In this chapter, we explore the possibility that culture impacts basic aspects of visual perception.

Memorializes Lee D. Ross (1942-2021). Ross made many contributions to social psychology. He had a knack for seeing the broad and deep psychological processes underlying individual episodes of rich, everyday behavior. Ross then crafted experiments that explored those processes in a way that was engaging and unusually memorable. After completing his PhD degree in 1969, Ross joined the faculty at Stanford University, where he taught for 52 years. Ross first achieved prominence in 1977 when he coined the term "the fundamental attribution error" to describe the tendency to attribute behavior primarily to a person's traits, attitudes, and other characteristics even when it should be clear that the person's behavior was largely the result of situational influences or constraints. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

SignificanceTo date, researchers and practitioners have focused on the academic challenges of underrepresented ethnic groups in the United States. In comparison, Asians have received limited attention, as they are commonly assumed to excel across all educational stages. Six large studies challenge this assumption by revealing that East Asians (but not South Asians) underperform in US law schools and business schools. This is not because East Asians are less academically motivated or less proficient in English but because their low verbal assertiveness is culturally incongruent with the assertiveness prized by US law and business schools. Online classes (via Zoom) mitigated East Asians’ underperformance in courses emphasizing assertiveness and class participation. Educators should reexamine pedagogical practices to create a culturally inclusive classroom.

Asians appear disproportionately under-represented in leadership positions in the U.S., a problem called the “Bamboo Ceiling.” It remains unclear why this problem exists and whether it applies to all Asians. To investigate its mechanisms and scope, we compared the leadership attainment of the two largest Asian subgroups: East Asians (e.g., Chinese) and South Asians (e.g., Indians). Across nine studies (N=11,030) using mixed methods (archival analyses of S&P CEOs, field surveys, MBA leader elections, experiments), East Asians were less likely than South Asians and Whites to attain leadership positions, whereas South Asians outperformed Whites. To understand why the Bamboo Ceiling exists for East Asians but not South Asians, we examined three categories of mechanisms—prejudice (inter-group), motivation (intra-personal), and assertiveness (inter-personal)—while controlling for demographics (e.g., birth country, English fluency, education). Analyses revealed that East Asians faced less prejudice than South Asians, and were equally motivated by leadership roles as South Asians. However, East Asians were lower in assertiveness, which consistently mediated the leadership attainment gap. Overall, East Asians hit the Bamboo Ceiling because their low assertiveness is incongruent with American norms concerning how leaders should communicate. The Bamboo Ceiling is not an Asian issue, but an issue of cultural fit.

Well-educated and prosperous, Asians are called the "model minority" in the United States. However, they appear disproportionately underrepresented in leadership positions, a problem known as the "bamboo ceiling." It remains unclear why this problem exists and whether it applies to all Asians or only particular Asian subgroups. To investigate the mechanisms and scope of the problem, we compared the leadership attainment of the two largest Asian subgroups in the United States: East Asians (e.g., Chinese) and South Asians (e.g., Indians). Across nine studies (n = 11,030) using mixed methods (archival analyses of chief executive officers, field surveys in large US companies, student leader nominations and elections, and experiments), East Asians were less likely than South Asians and whites to attain leadership positions, whereas South Asians were more likely than whites to do so. To understand why the bamboo ceiling exists for East Asians but not South Asians, we examined three categories of mechanisms-prejudice (intergroup), motivation (intrapersonal), and assertiveness (interpersonal)-while controlling for demographics (e.g., birth country, English fluency, education, socioeconomic status). Analyses revealed that East Asians faced less prejudice than South Asians and were equally motivated by work and leadership as South Asians. However, East Asians were lower in assertiveness, which consistently mediated the leadership attainment gap between East Asians and South Asians. These results suggest that East Asians hit the bamboo ceiling because their low assertiveness is incongruent with American norms concerning how leaders should communicate. The bamboo ceiling is not an Asian issue, but an issue of cultural fit.

Previous work assessing psychological tendencies across cultures suggests that East Asians are more holistic in cognition (e.g., extending attention to the context in object perception) and interdependent in social orientation (e.g., feeling happy when connected with others) than European Americans. However, little is known about the possible moderation of these findings by age and social class because of this literature’s near-exclusive focus on young and highly educated segments of the respective populations. The neglect of these demographic variables has persisted even though different theories predict divergent effects of such variables. Here, we addressed this gap by testing a comprehensive set of eleven holistic cognition measures and six interdependent social orientation measures in random samples of Japanese and Americans who varied in age, educational attainment, and gender (N = 666). The previously reported cultural variation proved highly stable across the subpopulations. Though other demographic factors played a significant role for both cognitive style and social orientation, their combined contribution was 14-18 times smaller than the effects of national culture. We discuss implications for the existing theories of culture.

We test the proposition that both social orientation and cognitive style are constructs consisting of loosely related attributes. Thus, measures of each construct should weakly correlate among themselves, forming intra-individually stable profiles across measures over time. Study 1 tested diverse samples of Americans (N = 233) and Japanese (N = 433) with a wide range of measures of social orientation and cognitive style to explore correlations among these measures in a cross-cultural context, using demographically heterogeneous samples. Study 2 recruited a new sample of 485 Americans and Canadians and examined their profiles on measures of social orientation and cognitive style twice, one month apart, to assess the stability of individual profiles using these variables. Despite finding typical cross-cultural differences, Study 1 demonstrated negligible correlations both among measures of social orientation and among measures of cognitive style. Study 2 demonstrated stable intra-individual behavioral profiles across measures capturing idiosyncratic patters of social orientation and cognitive style, despite negligible correlations among the same measures. The results provide support for the behavioral profile approach to conceptualizing social orientation and cognitive style, highlighting the need to assess intra-individual stability of psychological constructs in cross-cultural research.

Different cultures specialize in different intelligences. People in modern cultures have higher IQs and are in fact considerably more intelligent than people in earlier times. Middle-class socialization prepares children for professional careers; lower-class socialization prepares children for nonprofessional careers. Blacks and whites differ in IQ, but the difference is decreasing. There is no evidence that Asians or Asian Americans, at least prior to high school, have IQs that differ much from those of European Americans. Asian Americans' career success, which greatly exceeds that of European Americans, is primarily due to hard work and motivation. Non-IQ aspects of intelligence, including creativity and possibly practical intelligence, differ across cultures. Analytic, logic-related skills are more common in Westerners than in Easterners. Holistic perception and reasoning are more common in Easterners than in Westerners, and their virtues and vices are essentially mirror images of those for analytic skills. IQ will continue to increase in the future-at a more rapid rate the less economically developed the country. Our conceptions of IQ are going to change: They will continue to emphasize the categorization, abstraction, and hypothesis-testing brought to the fore by the literacy and numeracy training required for success in the Industrial Age; but IQ tests will also begin to include heuristics necessary for the Information Age, derived from statistics, scientific methodology, and economic and psychological concepts.

Averaging independent numerical judgments can be more accurate than the average individual judgment. This "wisdom of crowds" effect has been shown with large, diverse samples, but the layperson wishing to take advantage of this may only have access to the opinions of a small, more demographically homogeneous "convenience sample." How wise are homogeneous crowds relative to diverse crowds? In simulations and survey studies, we demonstrate three necessary conditions under which small socially diverse crowds can outperform socially homogeneous crowds: Social identity must predict judgment, the effect of social identity on judgment must be at least moderate in size, and the average estimates of the social groups in question must "bracket" the truth being judged. Seven survey studies suggest that these conditions are rarely met in real judgment tasks. Comparisons between the performances of diverse and homogeneous crowds further confirm that social diversity can make crowds wiser but typically by a very small margin.

Research on culture and cognition suggests that East Asians are relatively holistic and North Americans are relatively analytic. Social orientation and philosophical traditions have been linked to those differences; collectivism and Confucian tradition are associated with holistic thinking whereas individualism and Western philosophy are associated with analytic thinking. We tested whether Brazilians, who are Western such as North Americans and collectivistic such as East Asians, would more closely resemble U.S. Americans or Chinese participants in various measures of cognitive style. Across five studies, Brazilians were always more holistic than Americans and sometimes more holistic than Chinese participants. Brazilians differed from Chinese participants in that they were particularly optimistic in their judgments about the future (Study 3) and reported varying their emotion expressivity more by context (Study 5). Results build on previous East/West comparisons by identifying a non-Confucian, Western group that may be as holistic as East Asians.