A Cross-Cultural Study on the Cognitive Traits That Affect Hindsight Bias —Focusing on Holistic-Analytic Thinking and Conservatism

This study is an attempt to replicate a certain theory about the East-West cultural differences in cognitive tendencies. Nisbett (2003) theorized that there are cultural differences in cognitive styles between Eastern and Western societies, with Eastern societies tending towards holistic thinking and connecting objects through relationships and Western societies tending towards analytic thinking and sorting objects through categorization. Whereas Westerners tend to see the essence of nature itself, Easterners tend to focus on the harmony and interaction between humans and objects. As an extension of this claim, Choi and Nisbett (2000) indicate that Koreans have stronger hindsight bias than Westerners. However, this study successfully invalidated their studies, demonstrating that there was little East-West difference in the way of thinking and Koreans' strong hindsight bias resulted from their higher conservatism compared to Westerners. The results found no significant difference in hindsight bias between Koreans and Westerners. In addition, there was no East-West difference in categorization-relationship and essence-interaction preferences, although conservatism was found to be higher in Koreans than Westerners. The multiple regression model showed that the differences in such preferences did not affect hindsight bias and conservatism was the only factor that increased hindsight bias.