REWARD ALLOCATION REWARD ALLOCATION ACROSS CULTURESACROSS CULTURES

PSYC338 Research Project

LECTURE OUTLINE

I Background: Doing Social Psychology across Cultures (Bond)

• Being a cross-cultural psychologist• Observation and hypothesizing• Designing research• A cross-cultural study of reward allocation

LECTURE OUTLINE

II Distributive justice and reward allocation• Equity, equality and need• Task and maintenance inputs• Bond, Leung & Wan (1982)• Kim, Park & Suzuki (1990)

III Reward allocation across cultures: A Meta-analysis

IV Conclusions

DOING SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY ACROSS CULTURES

Advice to a Young Scientist

A great incentive to learning a new skill or supporting discipline is an urgent need to use it. For this reason very many scientistsdo not learn new skills or master disciplines untl the pressure is upon them to do so.

Reward Allocation

• Equity and equality • Individualism and collectivism• In-groups and out-groups• Hypotheses

A Study of Reward AllocationBond & Leung

• Aim: To examine reward allocation to a stranger in individualist and collectivist cultures.

• Task: To copy words from a known and unknown language

• Manipulation: Own performance either twice as much or half as much as partner

• Equivalence issues• Results• What if-fing?

Cross-cultural Studies of Reward Allocation

• American studies and equity preferences• Chinese prefer equality with in-group

members and equity with out-group (Leung & Bond, 1984)

• Indians more likely than Americans to allocate resources on a need basis (Murphy-Berman et al., 1984)

• Group goals affect resource allocation

Reward Allocation(Bond, Leung & Wan, 1982)

• Collectivism and reward allocation• Research Design

– 2 x 2 x 2 design

– Task and maintenance inputs

– Dependent variables: superordination and intimacy rewards

Rewards Domains

Factor 1 Factor 2

Letter grade .91 .05

% grade .84 .16

Future task-group member .85 .27

Study group partner .82 .09

Friend .46 .65

Discussion of grade assigned

.15 -.81

Reward Allocation(Bond, Leung & Wan, 1982)

• Hypotheses: – Chinese would be more egalitarian in assigning rewards

based on task inputs than Americans– Chinese would be more equitable in assigning rewards

based on maintenance inputs

• Results – Chinese were more egalitarian in assigning rewards

based on both task and maintenance inputs than Americans

Reward Allocation(Kim, Park & Suzuki, 1990)

• Replication and extension with Koreans, Japanese and Americans

• Design: 3 x 3 x 3 • Results: American and Japanese reward patterns

more closely approximate equity than Koreans

Reward Allocation: A Meta-analysis• Fischer & Smith (2003)• Studies where

– Allocator not a recipient– Participants were adults– Equity and equality

• 20 studies, 25 comparisons, 4900+ participants, and 14 countries or cultural groups

Findings• There are cross-cultural differences in preferred reward

allocation norms• Findings on the differences are mixed, but overall support

for the often cited result that collectivists prefer equality over equity and individualists are mote equitable

• Participants from more masculine cultures allocate rewards more equitably

• Participants from countries with greater power distance allocate rewards more equitably

• Hierarchy is associated with equity

Interrelationships amongst Dimensions

2 3 4

1. Individualism -.68* -.43 -.17

2. Masculinity - -.94** -.19

3. Power Distance - -.12

4. Uncertainty Avoidance

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QUESTIONS

• How would you design a cross-cultural study of reward allocation?

• How would you select the countries of comparison?

YOUR STUDY

• Effects of task and maintenance inputs on reward allocation across cultures

• 2 (country) x 2 (task input) x 2 (maintenance input)

• Attention to dimension of cultural variability

• New Zealand, India, Taiwan and Turkey