Culture and Individual Judgment and Decision Making

Abstract

In the last two decades, much has been published on the topic of culture and cross-cultural psychology and much on the topic of judgment and decision making (J/DM). However, only a few researchers have examined the intersection of the two areas. In this article, we review this body of research. Our focus is on the four particular J/DM topics that have been studied cross-culturally: Probability judgment, risk perception, risk preference, and modes of decision making. Our review reveals an encouraging trend in cross-cultural J/DM research - a shift from merely describing national differences in overt behavior to cultural perceptions or values. To reinforce this trend, we recommend that future cross-culture J/DM research be more model-based (i.e. testing for the causal effect of independent variables shown to differ between cultures rather than simply describing group differences) and adopt a mosaic-building approach in its data collection (i.e. using multiple methodologies and seeking converging evidence to support or reject any model).

Keywords: risk perception, risk attitude, culture, chinese

JEL Classification: D81, D11, D12, D91