How to choose drinks for guests: Biased interpretation of culture by native researchers

Abstract

It has long been believed that the Japanese are collectivists, whereas Westerners are individualists. Although this common view was found to be inconsistent with empirical evidence in many questionnaire and behavioral studies, it still derives credibility from Japanese researchers' intuitive interpretations of daily observations about Japanese culture. We investigated the validity of these interpretations in two questionnaire studies. As evidence of the common view, its advocates point out that Americans ask guests their respective preferences between drinks, whereas Japanese do not. In the first questionnaire study, Japanese and American undergraduates were asked how to choose drinks for guests. Contrary to the common belief, a majority of the Japanese respondents answered that they would ask guests' preferences. However, the proportion of asking was smaller for the Japanese respondents. In the second questionnaire study, Japanese and American undergraduates were asked what drink(s) to serve to guests. The answers from the Japanese respondents converged on Japanese tea, whereas those from the American respondents were scattered over a variety of drinks. This suggests that the proportion of asking was smaller for the Japanese respondents because they had the default drink for guests (i.e., Japanese tea), which had been established in Japanese history. In the first questionnaire study, the Japanese respondents did not endorse the intuitive interpretations of two Japanese words (i.e., hello and self) that Japanese researchers proposed as evidence of the common view. These results call attention to probable theoretical bias in researchers' intuitive interpretations of daily observations about their own culture.