What Do Words Say about Us: Cultural Differences in Person Descriptions and Inferences

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Abstract

The present research examines cultural variations in how individuals perceive and infer others in relationships. In three studies, we compared Chinese and Euro-Canadian participants’ descriptions and judgements of close friends and acquaintances. In Study 1, when describing others, Chinese participants used more semantically dissimilar descriptions for close friends than for acquaintances, whereas Euro-Canadians showed no difference across the targets. In Studies 2 and 3, participants were presented with person descriptions and asked to judge whether a close friend or an acquaintance wrote the description. Chinese participants were more likely to infer relational closeness from dissimilar descriptions, whereas Euro-Canadians were more likely to infer closeness from similar descriptions. These findings suggest that culture plays a significant role in how people perceive and describe relationships, highlighting the importance of considering cultural context in understanding relationships and social perception.

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