Inferred Social Expectations are Linked to Prosocial Effort in Teamwork in Japan but not in the United States1

Abstract

Unlike in Western cultures, where meeting others' expectations is considered incompatible with individual agency, social expectations tend to be internalized and congruent with the self in Eastern cultures, where meeting others' expectations has been shown to promote effort and satisfaction. However, considering cross-cultural differences in mind-reading, research has yet to clarify whether directly expressing social expectation has the same effects as inferring social expectation from others' messages. With the aim of disentangling the effects of expressed and inferred social expectation on prosocial behavior, two online studies employing teamwork scenarios, in which participants (donors) had the opportunity to help other people (targets) by putting effort into a common task (prosocial effort), were conducted in Japan and the United States. The strength of expressed social expectation was manipulated within subjects in Study 1 (N = 439) and between subjects in Study 2 (N = 560). The effect of expressed social expectation did not differ by culture, but inferred social expectation positively predicted prosocial effort only in Japan. The findings hint at the importance of mind-reading and subjective perceptions of others' needs in Japan.