Robert A Culpepper, Joseph K Ballenger
We reviewed nine studies relevant to a neglected but crucial methodological concern in all cross-national research employing survey methodology, culture-related response bias. Specifically, we focused on response biases thought to be in play when comparing survey results of North American respondents and those from Confucian Asia, including China, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea. Our primary purpose was to examine empirical studies that potentially lend support to either of two conflicting theoretical positions in the literature. One view, based on a cultural trait called Asian overconfidence, holds that subjects from countries with a historical legacy of Confucianism tend to exhibit extreme response bias on Likert-type, variable-response items. For example, given a seven-point scale, respondents would tend to choose “1” s and “7” s. An opposing theoretical position predicts that traditional Confucian modesty norms prevalent in these same countries will lead to a cautious, or midpoint, bias for survey respondents. These two diametrically opposite positions have coexisted in the literature for some time, each taking little to no cognizance of the opposing view. We suggest that these seemingly incompatible positions in fact may both be empirically tenable, although contingent on the type of rating task employed in survey items. Theory suggests that respondents from countries in Confucian Asia revert to a sense of accepted folk wisdom for value judgments and rather than weighing pros and cons/counterevidence, more common in Western countries. We suggest that this rationale should only apply to survey items requiring agreement or disagreement with propositions that are nomothetic in nature, i.e., having general, if not universal, application. Consistent with this rationale, those studies reviewed in this investigation employing nomothetic-type items displayed extreme response tendency for Asian samples when compared to North American samples. Other studies reviewed employed idiographic items requiring agreement/disagreement with assertions relating to a specific incident or case, such as one’s self, one’s boss, one’s company and so on, with no general with any general application beyond the specific case in question. For these items, respondents from historically Confucian countries gave more cautious or modest responses than did Americans. We explain how these findings can help resolve contradictory theory and empirical inferences drawn in the literature. The reviewed studies illustrate how taking differences in item type into account can help resolve the counterintuitive divergence in previous findings related to response bias.