How Does Cultural Collectivism Operate?

Abstract

How is the collectivism of a culture related to the allocation of reward for task and maintenance inputs toward a group goal? To examine this question, students from the United States and Hong Kong were asked to read a scenario describing a group member who made high, medium or low task and maintenance contributions towards a group project for a university course. Subjects then rated their perceptions of, and behavioral intentions towards, this target person (TP). Task and maintenance contributions were linearly related to both types of dependent variable in each cultural group. However, the slope of this regression was more moderate for the Hong Kong Chinese than for the Americans where intentions to reward were concerned. This more egalitarian distribution of resources probably functions to promote the group cohesiveness valued by more collective cultures.