Assignment:
Individualism, Collectivism and Attributions of Failure
Focus on the information about culture and attribution.
Imagine that a group of business people from two different cultures (one from a collectivistic culture and another from an individualistic culture) work together on a business project and at the end, the project fails.
Consider how people from individualistic and collectivistic cultures would respond to failure and to which factors they would most likely attribute their failures.
Then please answer these question in 300 words or more:
Assess or evaluate how people from two cultures would most likely respond to the failure.
Provide specific examples.
Describe an example of a group situation of which you were a part, in which a project failed, a goal was not reached, etc.
To what did the group attribute the failure?
Was the attribution characteristic of individualistic or collectivistic cultures?
Explain how someone from the other type of culture individualistic and collectivistic might explain the same situation.
Please provide references!
Some resources you can refer to:
Gardiner, Harry W., & Kosmitzki, C. (2011). Lives across cultures: Cross-cultural human development (5th Ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education; Chapter 7, "Culture and Social Behavior ," pp. 187-194; Chapter 8, "Culture and Issues of Gender and Sexuality," pp. 210-212.
Matsumoto, D., & Juang, L. (2008). Culture and psychology (4th Ed.). Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth;.Chapter 13, "Culture and Social Behavior, I, Self and Identity," pp. 350-355; Chapter 14, "Culture and Social Behavior, II, Interpersonal and Intergroup Relations," pp. 389-391.
Article: Friedman, R., Liu, W., Chen, C. C., & Chi, S. S. (2007). Causal attribution for interfirm contract violation: A comparative study of Chinese and American commercial arbitrators. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(3), 856-864. Retrieved August 29, 2007, from the PsycARTICLES database.
Article: Higgins, N. C., & Bhatt, G. (2001). Culture moderates the self-serving bias: Etic and emic features of casual attributions in India and Canada. Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal, 29(1), 49-61. Retrieved August 29, 2007, from the Academic Search Premier database.
Article: Nasser, R., & Abouchedid, K. (2006). Locus of control and the attribution for poverty: Comparing Lebanese and South African university students. Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal; 34(7), 777-795. Retrieved August 29, 2007, from the Academic Search Premier database.
Article: Thanzami, V. L., & Archer, J. (2005). Beliefs about aggression in British students from individualist and collectivist cultures. Aggressive Behavior, 31(4), 350-358. Retrieved August 29, 2007, from the Academic Search Premier database.