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Cultural Differences in the Relationship Between Aging and the Correspondence Bias

¹ School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Psychology, Atlanta, Georgia.
² Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, Ohio.
³ Department of Psychology, Portland State University, Oregon.

Address correspondence to Fredda Blanchard-Fields, School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Psychology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0170. E-mail: fb12{at}prism.gatech.edu

Previous work suggests that older adults show a stronger correspondence bias than do young adults. In the present study we examine whether age differences in the correspondence bias are universal or if they differ across cultures. A sample of young and older adults from China completed an attitude-attribution paradigm. We compared these data with an existing American data set. We found cultural differences in the extremity of the ratings. Chinese participants reported less extreme attitude ratings than did the participants in our American sample. Furthermore, we found cultural differences in the correspondence bias only in the older adult samples, with older Americans displaying a greater bias than older Chinese. We discuss our findings from a life-span developmental perspective as well as from an acculturation perspective.