Cultural Influences on Social Information Processing: Hostile Attributions in the United States, Poland, and Japan

Social information processing (SIP) theory suggests that attributions play a central role in influencing behavior in the course of social-relational exchanges. Within the SIP framework, social context has been shown to impact how social events are perceived. As a key feature of social context, culture likely plays a central role in shaping attributional processing. This study examined differences in hostile attributional patterns in three cultures with varying levels of collectivism, individualism, and power distance: Poland, United States, and Japan (N = 707). We used the Ambiguous Intentions and Hostility Questionnaire (AIHQ) to compare attributional patterns across cultures. This measure uses five distinct vignettes to assess attributional responding within a range of interpersonal contexts. We examined whether the five-factor structure of the AIHQ maintained across these three cultures. Additionally, we investigated whether variations in attributional patterns occurred cross culturally in response to these ambivalent situations involving varying types of social relationships. Results confirmed acceptable patterns of measurement invariance across American, Japanese, and Polish samples and indicated that specific social-relational features in the vignettes significantly influenced attributional responding.