Culture and egocentric perceptions of fairness in conflict and negotiation.
研究提出，谈判中自我服务的公平偏差在个人主义文化（如美国）中更普遍，而在集体主义文化（如日本）中较弱，并通过四项研究验证了这一文化差异。
In this article, the authors advanced a cultural view of judgment biases in conflict and negotiation.The authors predicted that disputants' self-serving biases of fairness would be more prevalent in individualistic cultures, such as the United States, in which the self is served by focusing on one's positive attributes to "stand out" and be better than others, yet would be attenuated in collectivistic cultures, such as Japan, where the self is served by focusing on one's negative characteristics to "blend in" (S.J. Heine, D. R. Lehman, H. R. Markus, & S. Kitayama, 1999).Four studies that used different methodologies (free recall, scenarios, and a laboratory experiment) supported this notion.Implications for the science and practice of negotiation are discussed.Culture and Egocentric Perceptions of Fairness in Conflict and Negotiation 3 One of the most important advances in conflict and negotiation research in the past 2 decades has been the identification of judgment biases that can ultimately inhibit negotiation agreements (Bazerman & Carroll, 1987;Thompson, 1990).Much research, for example, has illustrated that negotiators tend to have fixed-pie perceptions of negotiations (Thompson & Hastie, 1990), fail to recognize compatible interests (Thompson & Hrebec, 1996), devalue concessions made by their counterparts (Stillenger, Epelbaum, Keltner, & Ross, 1991), experience less satisfaction when their counterparts are happy than when disappointed (Thompson, Valley, & Kramer, 1995), and become stuck in impasse because of self-serving biases and overconfidence (Babcock & Loewenstein, 1997;Thompson & Loewenstein, 1992).Many of these competitive biases are pervasive, and thus their identification has not only theoretical importance for understanding the psychology of negotiation but also practical importance for training negotiators to be more effective.Nevertheless, to date, virtually all of the theories and research on judgment biases in negotiation have been derived from Western contexts.As such, the question of whether such biases generalize to other cultures remains largely unanswered.One view of judgment biases-a view which is often espoused in the literature-is that they are reflective of cognitive shortcuts that all humans use to manage information-processing demands to cope with their overtaxed cognitive systems.Viewed within this perspective, judgment biases should be universal.In this article, we present an alternative view, namely that judgment biases in negotiation may be reflections of different cultural imperatives that negotiators have internalized as part of their self systems.We argue that rather than being due to universal "shortcuts," biases in negotiation may be culturally constructed and perpetuated.More specifically, we focus on the universality of one judgment bias in negotiation-self-serving biases of fairness-which have been found to be pervasive in Western contexts.As reviewed below, Culture and Egocentric Perceptions of Fairness in Conflict and Negotiation 4 negotiators in the United States consistently view their own behaviors as more fair than those of their counterparts, and such biases seriously impede the resolution of disputes.We question the universality of this judgment bias and argue instead that when studying self-serving biases in negotiation, we must consider the nature of the self being served in a particular cultural context.We argue that self-serving biases in negotiation are consistent with cultural ideals within individualistic cultures, in which the self is served by enhancing one's positive attributes to "stand out" and be better than others (Heine & Lehman, 1995;Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999).However, we expected that self-serving biases in negotiation would be attenuated in collectivistic cultures, in which the self is served by focusing on one's negative characteristics to "blend in" and maintain interdependence with others.Thus, we posited that self-serving biases in negotiation are not universal but rather are dependent on views of the self that are cultivated within individualistic contexts.Below, we provide an overview of research on self-serving biases, describe the literature on culture and the self, and then describe four studies that examined the universality of self-serving biases in conflict and negotiation. Self-Serving Biases in PerceptionDating back to Miller and Ross's (1975) discussion of self-serving biases in the attribution of causality, researchers have found that people have a pervasive tendency to see themselves as better than others.This bias has been found across numerous domains; research has illustrated that people perceive themselves as more fair (Messick, Bloom, Boldizar, & Samuelson, 1985), more competent (Yan & Gaier, 1994), more successful (Urban & Witt, 1990), more socially responsible (White & Plous, 1995), and more responsible for success and less responsible for failure than others (Mark, Mutrie, Brooks, & Harris, 1985).In fact, even after people are trained to understand the existence of self-serving biases, they still report being less likely to engage in the self-serving bias than others (Friedrich, 1996)!These Culture and Egocentric Perceptions of Fairness in Conflict and Negotiation 5 judgments are not only probabilistically impossible (i.e., it is impossible for most people to be better than others) but are also much inflated as compared with neutral raters' observations (Lewinsohn, Mischel, Chaplin, & Barton, 1980).In recent years, negotiation scholars have expanded on this literature by documenting the pervasiveness of self-serving biases in the context of dynamic interactions.For example, Kramer, Newton, and Pommerenke (1993) found that negotiators in the United States had overly positive evaluations of themselves as compared with their counterparts (e.g., they believed they were more fair, trustworthy, and cooperative) and that the magnitude of such biases was related to the strength of the conflict.Similarly, Thompson and Loewenstein (1992) found that negotiators had self-serving conceptions of fairness and that such biases were related to the length of strikes during simulated negotiations.Indeed, studies have demonstrated that self-serving biases are evident among professional negotiators and that such biases are related to impasses (Loewenstein, Issacharoff, Camerer, & Babcock, 1993), length of strikes (Babcock, Wang, & Loewenstein, 1996), and reduced problem-solving and feelings of frustration (de Dreu, Nauta, & Van de Vliert, 1995).In summarizing this literature, Babcock and Loewenstein (1997) concluded that negotiators' tendencies to equate what is fair with what benefits themselves impedes negotiations by reducing the potential zone of agreement, by creating cynical perceptions of the other party, and by inflating perceptions of the minimum settlement point that is seen as fair.In sum, there is substantial evidence that people in general, and negotiators in particular, have overly inflated views of themselves, and such biases have deleterious consequences on the settlement of disputes.Within the cognitive tradition in negotiation, such pervasive tendencies are generally assumed to be manifestations of cognitive shortcuts that negotiators use because of their limited information processing capabilities.Although not disputing the value of this approach, below we Culture and Egocentric Perceptions of Fairness in Conflict and Negotiation 6 introduce an alternative perspective-a cultural perspective-on self-serving biases in negotiation.We argue below that although often presumed to be a universal phenomenon, the robustness of selfserving biases in negotiation is reflective of a view of the self that is dominant within individualistic cultures. Culture, Self, and NegotiationOne fundamental issue that societies must confront is the nature of the relationship between the individual and the group, which has been referred to as individualism-collectivism (Hofstede, 1980;Triandis, 1995).In recent years, much research has illustrated that the nature of the self varies across individualistic and collectivistic cultures, which is most relevant to our theory on culture and self-serving biases in negotiation.In individualistic cultures, such as that of the United States, the self is generally construed as separate, detached, and independent from the social context, and individuals focus on their own internal attributes-their preferences, abilities, and traits-as key aspects of the self (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).The cultural ideal is to be separate from others, to develop and affirm one's attributes, and most important, to feel positive about oneself (Markus, Kitayama, & Heiman, 1996).These cultural ideals of uniqueness and self-enhancement are instilled in children from as early as 4 years of age (Harter, 1990;Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto, & Norasakkunkit, 1997;Snow, 1996) and are reinforced in American schools, where children are taught to identify their positive attributes, to feel special, and to think of themselves as "stars" (Markus, Mullally, & Kitayama, 1997).In the larger cultural context, popular proverbs (e.g., "Winning isn't everything-it's the only thing"), advertisements (e.g., "Be all you can be"), and heroes (e.g., Michael Jordan) all reinforce that it is important to be different from, and better than, others.Not surprisingly, individuals socialized in such cultural systems are motivated to focus on their positive attributes in ways that make them stand out.Indeed, as reviewed Culture and Egocentric Perceptions of Fairness in Conflict and Negotiation 7 above, research has consistently found that Americans view themselves as better than others (see Heine, et al., 1999, for a review).Although such tendencies are natural in cultural systems in which the self is construed as independent, they are antithetical to cultural systems that cultivate and sustain views of the self as interdependent.In collectivistic cultures such as that of Japan, the self is generally construed as fundamentally connected to others, and one is largely defined in terms of one's roles, statuses, and obligations (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).The cultural ideal is to maintain relatedness and to adjust one's behavior to better fit in and be accepted by others (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).As noted by Markus et al. (1996), in such cultural systems, the validation of positive attributes that are distinct from and better than others is seen as disruptive to cultural ideals of harmony and relatedness.Indeed, in contrast to the emphasis on self-enhancement among American parents, Japanese parents teach their children that focusing on their uniqueness and positive attributes will weaken the solidarity of the group and will lead to alienation from others (Markus et al., 1996).Rather than helping children to identify their positive characteristics through praise and compliments, Japanese teachers encourage students to focus on their shortcomings and weaknesses through hansei, or critical self-reflection, to adapt and fit in with others (Heine et al., 1999).This continuous process of being self-critical and improving oneself serves as an affirmation of one's interdependence with others and of being a "good" cultural self (Heine et al., 1999;Markus et al., 1996).These practices continue in organizations, where the achievement of wa (i.e., harmony) and being integrated into workgroups is emphasized over being distinctive and standing out (Kashima & Callan, 1994).In sum, the nature of the self, and thus the ways in which the self is served, varies in individualistic and collectivistic cultures (Heine et al., 1999; Markus & Kityama, 1991).The self is served in individualistic cultures by being distinct from and better than others, in order to accomplish the Culture and Egocentric Perceptions of Fairness in Conflict and Negotiation 8 culturally mandated task of being independent and standing out.By contrast, the self is served in collectivistic cultures by being accepted by others and by focusing on negative characteristics, in order to accomplish the culturally mandated task of being interdependent and blending in.1 Most pertinent to this research, this analysis suggests that self-serving biases within negotiation are not necessarily universal, but rather may be more prevalent in particular sociocultural contexts.We expected that the tendency to view one's behavior as superior to that of other negotiators would be more prevalent in individualistic cultures (e.g., the United States), which emphasize the importance of uniqueness and being better than others, as compared with collectivistic cultures (e.g., Japan), which emphasize selfcriticism and maintaining relatedness with others.Four studies investigated this proposition.2 Study 1In Study 1 we examined the degree to which individuals in the United States and Japan engaged in self-serving biases with regard to fairness.On the basis of the theory and research detailed above, we expected that individuals in the United States, who are socialized to maintain a positive view of the self that is distinct from and better than others, would perceive themselves as engaging in more fair behaviors and others as engaging in more unfair behaviors, as compared with Japanese (Hypothesis 1).To test this hypothesis, we used Messick et al.'s (1985) free-recall methodology.Specifically, students were asked to generate both fair and unfair behaviors and to indicate whether they engaged in such behaviors more than others ("I-fair" and "I-unfair") or whether others engaged in such behaviors more than them ("they-fair" and "they-unfair").Because perceptions that the self is superior to others are important for individuals to feel good about themselves within individualistic cultures, we expected that Americans would have many more examples readily accessible in memory of themselves being fair ("Ifair") and others being unfair ("they-unfair"), as compared with Japanese.