Cultural differences in the correction of social inferences: Does the dispositional rebound occur in an interdependent culture?

Although social observers have been found to rely heavily on dispositions in their causal analysis, it has been proposed that culture strongly affects this tendency. Recent research has shown that suppressing dispositional inferences during social judgment can lead to a dispositional rebound, that is relying more on dispositional information in subsequent judgments. In the present research, we investigated whether culture also affects this rebound tendency. First, Thai and Belgian participants took part in a typical attitude attribution paradigm. Next, dispositional rebound was assessed by having participants describe a series of pictures. The dispositional rebound occurred for both Belgian and Thai participants when confronted with a forced target, but disappeared for Thai participants when the situational constraints of the target were made salient. The findings are discussed in light of the current cultural models of attribution theory.