Cross-cultural Comparison Of Thinking Style

Existing literature adopted personal thinking style to explain cultural differences in attitude to contradiction.Nevertheless,recent scholars stressed the necessity of considering group thinking when examining cultural differences.Accordingly,the current research aimed to investigate cultural differences in the acceptance of contradiction regarding general others or events and to test the mediating role of social meta-cognition.In Study 1,we conducted analyses using data from 5 countries via the World Values Survey.The results indicated that compared to participants from Western countries(i.e.,Netherlands and Germany),participants from Eastern countries(i.e.,China,Thailand,and Singapore)showed greater tolerance of contradiction when assessing their extroversion and neuroticism.In Study 2,we developed indexes to measure participants’ acceptance of contradiction about general others or events.Results found that participants from the eastern country(i.e.,China)reported greater acceptance of contradiction compared to their counterparts from the western country(i.e.,America).In Study 3,we measured participants’ social meta-cognition processes through two indexes(perceived group disagreement and perceived group consensus)and tested the relationship between cultures,social meta-cognition,and acceptance of contradiction.Our results showed that perceived higher levels of group disagreement predicted Chinese greater acceptance of contradiction,while this correlation absent regarding the sample from America.Differently,perceived higher level of group consensus predicted greater acceptance of contradiction in both Chinese and American samples,whereas this relationship was stronger in the American sample than it was in the Chinese sample.In Study 4,to verify the mediating role of perceived group disagreement,we adopted the Moderation–of–Process Design.Results indicated that the Chinese greater acceptance of contradiction could be attributed to their higher level of perceived group disagreement.Finally,in Study 5,we eliminated the determinant effects of perceived group consensus on acceptance of contradiction through an experiment.In sum,through diverse methods,the present work found the cultural differences in attitude to the contradiction of general others or events across eastern and western countries and verified the mediating role of social meta-cognition.This research stressed the importance of social meta-cognition when examining cultural differences in thinking style.The current findings showed significant theatrical contributions and practical implications.