Hello, Neihou: Anchoring and adjustment in personality assessment

Abstract

Despite the common belief that Chinese individuals are industrious and determined high achievers, in cross-cultural studies they consistently rate themselves lower on conscientiousness than their Western counterparts. In bilingual studies, Chinese–English individuals rate their conscientiousness lower than that of U.S. individuals, regardless of whether they respond to a questionnaire in Chinese or in English, but their self-rating is higher when they respond in Chinese than when they respond in English. I posit that the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic might offer a mechanism to explain personality assessment in this context: individuals initially estimate their conscientiousness level based on a cultural ideal, then adjust this estimate according to the context suggested by the test language. Contrary to the cultural ideal of high-conscientiousness (high-C anchor), Chinese subjects rate themselves low on conscientiousness in both Chinese and English, a contrasting effect (rating adjusted away from an anchor). However, the version of the questionnaire in Chinese, which is associated with a high-C anchor in Chinese communities, might lead individuals to rate themselves higher on conscientiousness, an assimilation effect (rating adjusted toward an anchor), than the version in English, which is associated with a lower level of conscientiousness (low-C anchor). Future research is needed to test this innovative idea and enable new insights into cross-cultural comparisons of personality.