Culture and Decision Making in China, Japan, Russia, and the United States

Abstract

Implicit in most recent social science explanations of human behavior is a conception of man as universalhomo economicus. Although such a conception is capable of giving a powerful account of a great deal of human action, its account of the nature and variety of human values is inadequate. Cultural assumptions about the meaning of “self” and “others,” and about relations between human beings, are likely to vary from one society to another. These assumptions affect the collective decision processes of political elites under conditions of complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity. The author first addresses the question of how to construct a compelling cultural explanation, and then offers evidence which suggests that, because Chinese, Japanese, and Russians tend to hold somewhat different conceptions of “self” and “others” than do Americans (the former tending to be more collectivist than the latter), these different conceptions have implications for collective decision making.