What motivates behaviors? Cultural differences in naive beliefs about action and their implications

There are at least two critical tasks in our social life. First, since we only have a limited amount of resources, we need to make a choice and invest our resources to the chosen activities at the expense of other alternatives. Second, it is really important to properly understand others' behaviors because our interaction with other individuals constitutes a significant portion of our life. Although seemingly different, I propose that both tasks are related to our general beliefs about action, more specifically beliefs about what motivates behaviors. Furthermore, these beliefs systematically vary across cultures. In independent cultures (e.g., the U.S.), the self is primarily defined by internal attributes such as personality traits and it is these internal attributes that are believed to motivate behaviors. In contrast, in interdependent cultures (e.g., Japan & Korea), the self is primarily defined by social relations with important others and one's behaviors are believed to be constrained by these social relations. Therefore, I predict that there would be corresponding cultural differences in the way we make a choice and the way we interpret others' behaviors. To test the prediction, four studies were conducted. Studies 1 & 2 examined whether psychological consequences of choice depend on the way the choice is made. I predict that a choice would be psychologically significant when it is made in a way that is compatible with cultural models of action either as internally motivated in independent cultures or as socially constrained in interdependent cultures. Studies 3 & 4 investigated cultural variations in the degree to which individuals make reference to internal attributes in explaining others' behaviors. I predicted and found that trait inference is in line with the independent model of action that one's behavior is internally motivated and, thus, it would become automatic and spontaneous in independent cultures but not in interdependent cultures.