Culture and Social Projection: A comparison of the United States and Japan

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the effect of society-level culture on social projection. Many previous studies of social projection have been based on the US or European context. However, considering differences in specific cultural contexts, we need to understand the differences in social projection mechanisms between the West and East, understood here as independent vs. interdependent cultures. We conducted two studies (N = 358 and 475) focusing on the US and Japan, in which vignette was used to measure social projection, where all participants were collected from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Study 1 examined whether perceived similarity mediated in-group categorization and social projection. Study 2 examined a modified model of Study 1, to incorporate individual-level culture and reciprocal expectations. The results show that the US and Japan have distinct projection mechanisms. US participants projected to targets with perceived similarity, while Japanese participants projected to targets categorized as belonging to the in-group. Furthermore, individual-level culture, which coincides with society-level culture, influenced social projection.

Keywords: social projection, society-level culture, individual-level culture, reciprocal expectation, interdependent culture, independent culture