Cultural conditioning: understanding interpersonal accommodation in India and the United States in terms of the modal characteristics of interpersonal influence situations.

We argue that differences between the landscapes of influence situations in Indian and American societies induce Indians to accommodate to others more often than Americans. To investigate cultural differences in situation-scapes, we sampled interpersonal influence situations occurring in India and the United States from both the influencee's (Study 1) and the influencer's (Study 2) perspectives. We found that Indian influence situations were dramatically more likely than U.S. situations to feature other-serving motives and to result in positive consequences for the relationship. Yet Study 3 found that targets of influence felt no less free to decide whether to accommodate in India than the United States, but felt more concerned about the influencer. To investigate the effects of situation-scapes on people's expectations and decisions, we exposed Indian and American participants to descriptions of situations from both societies (with their origins obscured). Study 4 found that both groups of participants expected more positive consequences from accommodation in Indian situations than in American situations. Finally, Study 5 found that both groups decided to accommodate more often in Indian situations than in American situations. At the same time, Indian participants were more likely than Americans to accommodate across all situations, but both groups converged over 100 trials as they were exposed to more and more situations drawn from each other's cultures. We interpret these effects in terms of the default decisions or biases conditioned by people's recently encountered situations.

What counts as a choice? U.S. Americans are more likely than Indians to construe actions as choices.

People everywhere select among multiple alternatives, but are they always making choices? In five studies, we found that people in U.S. American contexts, where the disjoint model of agency is prevalent, are more likely than those in Indian contexts to construe their own and other individuals' behaviors as choices, to construe ongoing behaviors and behaviors recalled from memory as choices, to construe naturally occurring and experimentally controlled behaviors as choices, to construe mundane and important actions as choices, and to construe personal and interpersonal actions as choices. Indians showed a greater tendency to construe actions as choices when these actions involved responding to other people than when they did not. These findings show that whether people construe actions as choices is significantly shaped by sociocultural systems of meanings and practices. Together, they suggest that the positive consequences associated with maximizing the availability of personal choice may not be universal and instead may be limited to North American contexts.