Cultural Differences in Perception and Representation of Past Information

Looking Into the Past:Cultural Differences in Perception andRepresentation of Past InformationLi-Jun Ji and Tieyuan GuoQueen’s UniversityZhiyong ZhangPeking UniversityDeanna MesserveyQueen’s UniversityThe authors investigated cultural differences in the way people perceive and represent temporal infor-mation.It was hypothesized that Chinese would attend to the past information more than would Canadians.In Studies 1and 2,Canadian and Chinese participants read a description of a theft along with a list of behaviors that occurred in the past or present.Chinese participants rated behaviors that had taken place in the remote and recent past as more relevant to solving the case than did Canadians.Study 3showed that Chinese participants recalled greater detail about past events than did Canadians.Studies 4A and 4B showed that Chinese perceived past events as being closer to the present than did Canadians,suggesting that Chinese had a greater awareness of the past.Overall,Chinese attended to a greater range of past information than did Canadians,which has significant theoretical and practical implications.Keywords:culture,temporal informationOn April 1,2001,an American spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet sent to intercept it over the South China Sea.The Chinese pilot died in the crash,whereas the American crew landed safely.After the incident,the Chinese government de-manded an apology from the ernment.By focusing on what happened right before the collision,the ernment insisted that the Chinese pilot was responsible and refused to apologize.In contrast,the Chinese government and people con-sidered other events that had happened a long time ago between China and the United States (such as the 1999U.S.-led NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade)and concluded that this event was just another act of American bullying and an apology was due (Aberman,2001;see also Gries &Peng,2002).This political incident highlights cultural differences in the way people perceive and reason about temporal information,which is the focus of the present article.Culture shapes the way people think and reason.Nisbett and colleagues (Nisbett,2003;Nisbett,Peng,Choi,&Norenzayan,2001)have shown evidence that European North Americans (in-cluding Americans and Canadians)are analytic in their thinking.They attend to the object independent of the field,focus on the categories to which the object belongs,and rely on rules and formal logic in understanding the world.In contrast,East Asians (including Chinese,Japanese,and Koreans)are holistic in their thinking.They attend to the field and to relationships between objects in the field,make relatively little use of categories and formal logic,and rely more on intuition and experience than European North Americans.Evidence supporting these claims came from comparisons of European North Americans with each of the three East Asian groups.For example,Ji,Peng,and Nisbett (2000)tested cross-cultural differences in perception by using the rod-and-frame test (Witkin et al.,1954).European Americans were better than East Asians at disassociating the object from the background and hence were more field independent.Conversely,East Asians tended to make perceptual judgments on the basis of the relationship between the object and the background and thus were more field dependent.In a similar vein,Masuda and Nisbett (2001)found that Japanese participants paid attention to the back-ground objects more than did European Americans (although Japanese did not necessarily pay less attention to the central object).As a result,Japanese were able to recall more details about the background than were European Americans.These differences also extend to reasoning about social behavior.Choi,Dalal,Kim-Prieto,and Park (2003)presented participants with a short descrip-tion of a target’s prosocial and antisocial behaviors,along with a list of items that may or may not have helped explain the target’s behavior.The participant’s task was to select either relevant items or exclude irrelevant items.They found that Koreans took more items into consideration than did Americans before making a final attribution.The above studies have consistently shown that East Asians attend to a greater range of information (especially contextualLi-Jun Ji,Tieyuan Guo,and Deanna Messervey,Department of Psy-chology,Queen’s University,Kingston,Ontario,Canada;Zhiyong Zhang,Department of Psychology,Peking University,Beijing,China.This research was supported by a Social Science and Humanities Re-search Council of Canada standard research Grant 410-2003-1043.We thank Connie Fan,Michaelin Scott,Lisa Clarke,Yanjun Guan,Ye Li,Christopher Humphries,Joyce Mak,Angelita Wong,and Haiyan Gao for their help with data collection.We also thank Sylvia Hains,Jill Jacobons,Roy Spina,Ara Norenzayan,Norbert Schwarz,and Taka Masuda for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Li-Jun Ji,Department of Psychology,Queen’s University,Kingston,Ontario,Can-ada,K7L 3N6.E-mail:lijunji@queensu.caJournal of Personality and Social Psychology ©2009American Psychological Association 2009,Vol.96,No.4,761–7690022-3514/09/$12.00DOI:10.1037/a0014498761information)in attention,attribution,and memory.However,in all of these studies,time was not involved.Past cross-cultural re-search has shown that East Asians(including Chinese)attend more to the contextual information than North Americans.Thus,we may expect a similar pattern along the temporal dimension—that is, East Asians may be more likely than North Americans to attend to information pertaining to the past and the future,which is less immediate or accessible and more likely to be in the background of attention,compared with information pertaining to the present. How people value the past,present,or future has been the topic of some research.There is evidence that for Europeans and North Americans,events may be represented differently depending on whether they occur in the near or distant past or in the near or distant future.In Semin and Smith(1999),participants described events that had taken place in either the recent or remote past,and they found that people described remote past events more ab-stractly than recent past events.Likewise,Liberman and Trope (1998)presented evidence that temporal distance affects the way people mentally represent the future,such that distant future events are represented in a more abstract way than are near future events. Other researchers have found that journalists from England,Spain, and France focused more on the recent past than distant past when citing information(Pollman,1998).Thus,it appears that events that are closer to the present are considered more relevant and are construed more concretely than events that are farther away in time.Several researchers(e.g.,Brislin&Kim,2003;Doob,1971; Kluckhohn&Strodtbeck,1961)have shown that Chinese tend to think about the past,respect traditions and time-honored ap-proaches,and have a long-term orientation.Time is cyclical to Chinese.Time and events are inseparable,and they repeat them-selves,which leads to great similarities between past,present,and future.Thus,the problems in the present or in the future can be resolved by focusing on the past and following the traditions.If the practices from the past have worked for countless generations,then it is wise to follow the past(Brislin&Kim,2003;Burkhardt,1955; Yau,1988).As a result of such a cyclical view of time,the past is cherished,and traditions and established practices are respected (Zuo,2001).At the same time,Americans are believed to be more present oriented than Chinese by living in the here-and-now and having a short-term perspective(Brislin&Kim,2003;Cho,Kwon, Gentry,Jun,&Kropp,1999).Time is viewed by North Americans in a linear way,such that time is unidirectional,which goes ceaselessly forward and never returns to a previous state(Zuo, 2001).The tendency to focus on the present is also found in Western science(Gergen,1997;Howard&Tuffin,2002).Scien-tists strive to achieve an accurate understanding of reality.One of the key assumptions in science is that knowledge accumulates and advances over time,as newer theories continually replace older, faulty theories.Past theories are seen as irrelevant as scientists tend to focus on the latest developments in their field(Gergen,1997). It is very likely that the general public in North America has also adopted this linear approach in their everyday thinking.In summary,previous research suggests that Chinese should be more likely to attend to past information than European North Americans when making judgments.The present research com-pared Chinese and European Canadians.We made the following predictions:(a)Chinese would consider past information more relevant than would Canadians;(b)accordingly,they would rep-resent past information in greater detail than would Canadians;(c) past events would be perceived as closer to the present for Chinese than for Canadians.We included present(in Studies1and2)or immediately past(in Study3)information in some of the studies to provide a reference point.Throughout the present article,present events were defined as events that were ongoing or concurrent with a focal event(e.g.,occurring on the same day),whereas past events were defined as events that happened in the past and were not ongoing.Study1:Perceived Relevance of Past Events(Within-Participant Design)In Study1,we presented participants with a theft scenario along with a list of clues about potential suspects’past and present behaviors.Participants evaluated how relevant and helpful each of the clues was in solving the case.We predicted that Canadians and Chinese would use the clue information differently.Specifically, Chinese would consider past information to be more relevant to the case than would Canadians.MethodParticipants.One hundred sixty European Canadian students (22men and138women)in Canada and183Chinese students(99 men and84women)in China participated in the study.1All participants were recruited from psychology classes and received course credit or small gifts for their participation. Procedure.Participants read the following text:This morning,student A in an all-female residence left for class in a rush and forgot to lock the door of her room.When she returned this evening,she found that the$200cash that she had kept in her desk drawer was missing.Since non-residents are not allowed in the building,it is only possible that other residents in this all-female dormitory would be responsible for the disappearance of the money. Subsequently,participants were asked toimagine that you are a detective and you came in this evening to solve the case.After talking with the people living in the dorm,you found the following pieces of information.Some may be irrelevant,and some may be relevant.If an item of information can help to infer thata student is guilty or innocent,then it is relevant;if the information isnot helpful for the case,then it is irrelevant.They then read66behavioral information items and judged the relevance of each of the items on a scale ranging from0(not relevant at all)to8(extremely relevant),where1was labeled as slightly relevant.1There was no significant gender main effect or interaction effect involving gender in Study1.Due to the unbalanced gender ratio in the Canadian participant pool,we had many more women than men in the Canadian sample.When we compared women only across cultures,the findings remained the same.Study2had too few men in the Canadian sample to allow a meaningful comparison involving gender.When only women were included in the analysis,the results remained the same.There were no gender effects in Studies3,4A,and4B,and therefore gender is not mentioned further.762JI,GUO,ZHANG,AND MESSERVEYIn total,there were22sets of three items.The items may or may not have had to do with money.Within each set,three behavioral items comparable or similar in their implications were created, which were randomly associated with one of three time frames: remote past(a long time ago),recent past(relatively recent in comparison to the remote past),and present/immediate(on the day of the theft or current).2Different time words were used to indicate remote past,recent past,and present;otherwise,if“last year,last week,and today”were used22times,then it would have been too obvious to participants that time perception was the focus of the study.This design allowed for the presentation of each item only once to each participant while keeping time as a within-participant factor.Thus,responses to different time frames within participants could be compared.Next,two different versions of the questionnaire were created in which the same behavioral items were associated with different time frames3,and the order of the items was randomized.In most of the sets(17out of22),the items associated with the present timeframe in one version were associated with one of the past time frames in the other version.The following are examples of items:Set1:A.(When she was13,)one student was ranked No.1in herclass.B.(Last year,)one student won a prize at a provincial mathcompetition.C.(Currently,)one student is among the top of her class.Set2:A.(Three years ago,)one student spent all her money onlottery tickets.B.(Two weeks ago),one student lost a bet of$100to herroommate.C:(This afternoon),one student was out playing poker for money.Set3:A.(Last term,)one student had a quarrel with student A.B.(Last week,)one student got mad at student A.C.(Currently,)one student is on bad terms with student A. Participants received one of the two versions of the question-naire in their native language(there was no difference in responses between the two versions).The testing materials were first devel-oped in English by a team consisting of both Chinese and Cana-dian researchers,who took into consideration the item relevance and equivalence in both cultures and the ease of translation.The materials were then translated into Chinese and back-translated (Brislin,1970).Studies2–4followed the same procedure for translation.Results and DiscussionWe predicted that Chinese would consider past information to be more relevant than would Canadians.Figure1shows the results for both Chinese and Canadians participants.A2(culture)ϫ3 (time of information)mixed-design analysis of variance (ANOVA)conducted on relevance ratings revealed no significant cultural difference overall,F(1,341)ϭ1.14,pϾ.28.The main effect of time,however,was significant,F(2,340)ϭ323.00,pϽ.001,partial␩2ϭ.66,such that participants considered present information as more relevant than past information.More impor-tant,the interaction between culture and time was significant,F(2, 340)ϭ30.15,pϽ.001,partial␩2ϭ.15.We conducted simple effects analyses separately for each time category.Chinese participants gave higher relevance ratings than did Canadians for remote past information(Mϭ1.78,SDϭ1.13 for Chinese and Mϭ1.52,SDϭ1.02for Canadians),F(1,341)ϭ5.26,pϽ.03,and for recent past information(Mϭ2.18,SDϭ1.16for Chinese and Mϭ1.91,SDϭ1.07for Canadians),F(1, 341)ϭ5.22,pϽ.03.The two cultural groups did not differ significantly in their ratings for present information(Mϭ2.56, SDϭ1.20for Chinese and Mϭ2.73,SDϭ1.12for Canadians), F(1,341)ϭ1.91,pϭ.17.Within-culture comparisons revealed that Chinese perceived present information to be more relevant than recent past information,and recent past information to be more relevant than remote past information,t s(182)Ͼ9.50,p sϽ.001.Canadians showed a similar pattern:They perceived present information to be most relevant,and remote past information least relevant,and recent past information in between,t s(159)Ͼ10.00, p sϽ.001.Overall,consistent with our predictions,Chinese participants considered past information items,both remote and recent,as more relevant to helping them solve the theft case than did Canadian participants.There was no significant difference between Chinese and Canadians for rating the present information.Study2:Perceived Relevance of Past Events(Between-Participant Design)Study1provided support for our prediction that Chinese pay more attention to the past than Canadians.One potential problem2We did not define remote past and recent past in a quantitative way,but instead,they were defined relative to each other.The reason was that we did not have a strong theoretical reason for an arbitrary separation of the recent past from the remote past.3Within each set,there were six different ways to associate each of the three items with each of the three time frames.Considering there were22 sets,potentially there could be622ways of arranging the items and the associated time frames.1234Remote past PresentRecent PastFigure1.Mean ratings of relevance given by Chinese and Canadian participants(ϮSE)in Study1.763CULTURE AND TEMPORAL INFORMATIONwith Study1is that we used a within-participant design,in which different behavioral items within a set associated with different time frames might have introduced a confounding factor,although we did our best in equating items within each set.We used similar materials in Study2as those in Study1,but applied a between-participant design to eliminate this potential confound. MethodParticipants.Eighty-three European Canadian students(10 men and73women)in Canada and57Chinese students(27men and29women,1did not report gender)in China participated in the study.All participants were recruited from psychology classes and received course credit or small gifts for their participation. ing the same story line as in Study1,partici-pants read a campus theft case and judged whether each of the20 behavioral items was relevant to solving the case.These behavioral items were a subset of those used in Study1.Participants wererandomly assigned to either the present or the past condition(giventhat remote and recent past in Study1produced very similarpatterns across culture,a decision was made to use only one pastcondition in Study2).In the present condition,the20behaviorswere supposed to take place on the same day(or concurrently)when the theft occurred.In the past condition,the20behaviorswere supposed to have taken place in the past(ranging from inhigh school to last term).The same behavioral items were usedacross conditions,and the only difference was whether they wereassociated with the present or the past time frames.Results and DiscussionWe predicted that Chinese would consider past informationitems to be more relevant than would Canadians.To test thishypothesis,we conducted a2(culture:Chinese vs.Canadian)ϫ2(time of information:past vs.present)ANOVA on relevanceratings.Overall,the main effect of time was not significant,F(1,136)Ͻ1,ns.Chinese participants(Mϭ2.90,SDϭ1.17)gaveoverall higher ratings than did Canadians(Mϭ2.05,SDϭ0.97),F(1,136)ϭ23.78,pϽ.001,partial␩2ϭ.15.This effect,however,was qualified by an interaction effect of culture and time,F(1,136)ϭ5.94,pϽ.02,partial␩2ϭ.04.A closer examination of the results showed,as seen in Figure2,that Chinese(Mϭ3.16,SDϭ1.17)considered past behavioral items to be more relevantthan did Canadians(Mϭ1.85,SDϭ0.96),F(1,65)ϭ25.41,pϽ.001,partial␩2ϭ.28,whereas cultural differences for present behavioral items did not reach statistical significance(Mϭ2.66, SDϭ1.14for Chinese and Mϭ2.22,SDϭ0.96for Canadians), F(1,71)ϭ3.13,pϭ.081.Thus,with a different design,Study2 successfully replicated the cultural differences found in Study1. In Study1,both Chinese and Canadians rated present items to be more relevant than past items;however,this was not replicated in Study2,in which Canadians showed a nonsignificant trend to rate present information more relevant than past information,F(1, 81)ϭ3.09,pϭ.08,whereas Chinese showed no significant difference in their ratings for past and present information,F(1, 55)ϭ2.71,pϭ.105.We conjecture that such results may be due to the difference in design:a within-participant design in Study1 and a between-participant design in Study 2.In a within-participant design,the contrast between past and present was more salient,and participants might have rated items comparatively, whereas in a between-participant design,participants would not be able to contrast past versus present and therefore would not use their ratings for one type of information as a reference for their ratings for another type of information.Study3:Mental Representation of Past Events Studies1and2showed that Chinese considered past behavioral items as more relevant than did Canadians,whereas the two cultural groups considered present behavioral items to be equally relevant.In Study3,we assessed memory for behavioral items that varied across time.If the past is more important to Chinese than to Canadians,then past information could be represented in greater detail by Chinese than by Canadians.Applying a within-participant design,we asked Canadian and Chinese participants to recall information about their first day of class,both immediately after the first day of class(Time1)and2weeks later(Time2).The measurement at Time1served as a baseline to control for possible cultural differences in the complexity of the events(such that Chinese students may run into more people on campus on the first day of class,or Canadians may go to a greater number of buildings for classes,and so on).We hypothesized that,relative to Time1, Chinese would have a more detailed representation of the first day of class than would Canadians when tested at Time2.Note that the first day of class was considered as the immediate past,instead of present for Time1.Ideally,we would like to get data for the present by getting the information items on the first day of class, but it would be difficult to do so without intruding in participants’life and making it more memorable.Therefore,we decided to use the information from the immediate past as an approximation. MethodParticipants.Thirty-four European Canadian students in Can-ada(12men and22women)and41Chinese students in China(20 men and21women)took part in the study.All were first-year university students.The two groups did not differ in age(mean ageϭ17.91years,SDϭ1.36for Canadians;mean ageϭ18.15 years,SDϭ0.53for Chinese).Participants received either course credit or monetary compensation.1234Past PresentFigure2.Mean ratings of relevance given by Chinese and Canadians (ϮSE)in Study2.764JI,GUO,ZHANG,AND MESSERVEYProcedure.The study was conducted at the beginning of the 2007fall term.It happened that the participating Canadian and Chinese universities started their fall term classes on the same Monday.Participants were first contacted within 2days of the first day of class (Time 1:on Tuesday or Wednesday).They were given a questionnaire that they had to finish in 10min.In the question-naire,they were asked to think about the first day of class for the current term and then recall as much information as they could about the first day of class by listing and numbering (a)the names of people they talked to on that day,(b)the places they went to,(c)the things they did,and (d)the contents of the conversations they had with people listed in (a)above.About 2weeks later (Time 2),participants were contacted again and completed the same ques-tionnaire.The number,rather than the content,of the items par-ticipants wrote down in response to each question was of most interest.Results and DiscussionThe numbers of listings in responses to the four questions within each time period were highly correlated (Cronbach’s ␣s ϭ.64for Time 1and .74for Time 2).We computed the mean number of listings for the four questions at Time 1and Time 2separately 4(shown in Figure 3)and submitted them to a 2(culture)ϫ2(time)mixed-design ANOVA.There was no culture main effect,F (1,73)ϭ0.06,ns .Overall,participants recalled more details at Time 1(M ϭ6.87,SD ϭ2.83)than at Time 2(M ϭ4.59,SD ϭ2.10),F (1,73)ϭ77.77,p Ͻ.001,partial ␩2ϭ.52.However,there was a significant Culture ϫTime interaction effect,F (1,73)ϭ18.68,p Ͻ.001,partial ␩2ϭ.20.The two culture groups reported a similar number of details at Time 1(M ϭ6.36,SD ϭ2.25for Chinese and M ϭ7.48,SD ϭ3.33for Canadians),F (1,73)ϭ3.04,p ϭ.09,but at Time 2,Chinese (M ϭ5.14,SD ϭ1.86)reported significantly more details than did Canadians (M ϭ3.93,SD ϭ2.20),F (1,73)ϭ6.66,p ϭ.01,partial ␩2ϭ.08.Thus,supporting our prediction,Chinese showed a more detailed repre-sentation of past events than did Canadians.5How did the recalls at Time 1and at Time 2match each other?Two bilingual coders unaware of the research hypothesis indepen-dently coded the contents of recalls by Chinese and Canadian participants to determine whether items recalled at Time 1were also recalled at Time 2.The preconsensus percentage of agreement between the two coders was 98.7%,and the discrepancies were discussed until consensus was reached.A greater percentage of items recalled at Time 1were recalled at Time 2for Chinese (M ϭ58%,SD ϭ0.14)than for Canadians (M ϭ41%,SD ϭ0.16),F (1,73)ϭ24.23,p Ͻ.001,partial ␩2ϭ.25.Because the recalls at Time 1reflected what actually happened on the first day of school,the results indicated that what happened in the past was more likely to be remembered by Chinese than by Canadians.Study 4:Perceived Distance of Past EventsStudies 1–3demonstrated that Chinese considered past infor-mation more relevant than did Canadians and that Chinese had a more detailed representation of past events than did Canadians.If Chinese attend more to past events,then subjectively past events should be more accessible and salient and,therefore,feel closer to the present for Chinese than for Canadians.Thus,we expected that Chinese would perceive the past to be closer to the present than would Canadians.We adapted Ross and Wilson’s (2002)approach to measure subjective temporal distance.We obtained similar results from two studies,Studies 4A and 4B,in which Chinese and Canadian university students were asked to think about a time in the past and then indicate how far away it felt to them.Study 4AMethodParticipants.Fifty-nine Canadian students (41women and 17men;1did not report gender)in Canada and 67Chinese students (32women and 34men;1did not report gender)in China partic-ipated in the study.Canadian (M ϭ19.46years,SD ϭ1.43)and Chinese (M ϭ19.26years,SD ϭ3.70)students did not differ in age.Participants received small gifts for compensation.Procedure.Participants received a short questionnaire with the following instruction:“The past may feel quite close or far away,regardless of the amount of time that has actually passed.Think about the present month,one year ago.How far away does this month last year feel to you?”Participants indicated their answers on a scale ranging from 1(feels like yesterday )to 7(feels very far away ).The study was conducted at roughly the same time in Canada and in China.4The correlation across time was .79(p Ͻ.001)for Chinese and .42(p ϭ.01)for Canadians,indicating that participants who recalled more information at Time 1also recalled more information at Time 2.5One alternative explanation for the finding is that reporting their first day experience to the experimenter may make the information more memorable for the interdependent Chinese than for the independent Cana-dians.The experimenters,however,were strangers to the participants and had no authority power over them;this was true in both cultures.Literature has suggested that Chinese interdependence manifests itself mainly with ingroup members (e.g.,Heine,2007),and the experimenters in the present study were never participants’ingroup members.Thus,the influence of interdependence or independence should be minimal.246810Time 1Time 2Figure 3.Frequency of information items recalled by Chinese and Ca-nadians at Time 1(within 2days)and Time 2(2weeks later)(ϮSE)in Study 3.765CULTURE AND TEMPORAL INFORMATION。