Fig. 2: The Psychological Measures of Thought Style, Loyalty/Nepotism, and Implicit Individualism.
a The triad categorization task (top left) measures holistic thought, which is more common in collectivistic cultures1,23. Participants choose one of two items (carrot or cat) to pair with an object (rabbit). Rabbit and carrot are a relational (holistic) pairing, whereas rabbit and cat are a categorical (analytic) pairing. b In the loyalty/nepotism task (top right), participants read scenarios about doing a business deal with a friend or a stranger1,18. Then they find out the friend/stranger was honest or dishonest. They can reward the friend or stranger for their honesty, and they can punish them for their dishonesty. We measured loyalty/nepotism as whether they treated the friend better than the stranger, even though their behavior was the same. c The sociogram task (bottom) measures implicit individualism. Participants draw circles to represent themselves and their family (left) or friends (right). We measured whether people draw the self larger than they draw others. Previous studies found that people in individualistic cultures like the US self-inflate more than people in collectivistic cultures like Japan1,7,17. Thought style drawings are from doublebubble_rus (rabbit) and Artem (cat and carrot) at Adobe Stock – stock.adobe.com. The human figure outlines are from rejon at Wikimedia Commons – commons.wikimedia.org. All uses must include the credit line shown on the site and contained in the IPTC credit line field of the file, for example “Agency Name/Contributor Name – stock.adobe.com”.
