Effect of social context on middle-way judgments among the Japanese

Abstract

In an experiment with 141 Japanese participants, we tested an alternative interpretation of Peng & Nisbett's (1999) study that examined Chinese participants' responses to contradictory statements. They found that differences in the plausibility judgments about two contradictory statements were smaller when the statements were presented simultaneously than when they were presented independently (i.e., middle-way judgment). This pattern was not found among Americans. In a partial replication of their experiment, we tested our hypothesis that the middle-way judgment responses among Asians are specific to the social domain. We compared participants' responses to contradictory statements in two conditions. In the social context condition, each statement was expressed as an opinion of a particular person. In the non-social context condition, the same statement was expressed as a general opinion without mentioning who made the statement. The results indicate that social context is required for the middle-way seeking responses to occur.