Journal of Personality and Social Psychology © 2009 American Psychological Association

2009, Vol. 96, No. 4, 761–769 0022-3514/09/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0014498

Looking Into the Past: Cultural Differences in Perception and

Representation of Past Information

Li-Jun Ji and Tieyuan Guo Zhiyong Zhang

Queen’s University Peking University

Deanna Messervey
Queen’s University

The authors investigated cultural differences in the way people perceive and represent temporal infor-
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mation. It was hypothesized that Chinese would attend to the past information more than would
Canadians. In Studies 1 and 2, Canadian and Chinese participants read a description of a theft along with
a list of behaviors that occurred in the past or present. Chinese participants rated behaviors that had taken
place in the remote and recent past as more relevant to solving the case than did Canadians. Study 3
showed that Chinese participants recalled greater detail about past events than did Canadians. Studies 4A
and 4B showed that Chinese perceived past events as being closer to the present than did Canadians,
suggesting that Chinese had a greater awareness of the past. Overall, Chinese attended to a greater range
of past information than did Canadians, which has significant theoretical and practical implications.

Keywords: culture, temporal information

On April 1, 2001, an American spy plane collided with a
Chinese fighter jet sent to intercept it over the South China Sea.
The Chinese pilot died in the crash, whereas the American crew
landed safely. After the incident, the Chinese government de-
manded an apology from the U.S. government. By focusing on
what happened right before the collision, the U.S. government
insisted that the Chinese pilot was responsible and refused to
apologize. In contrast, the Chinese government and people con-
sidered other events that had happened a long time ago between
China and the United States (such as the 1999 U.S.-led NATO
bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade) and concluded that
this event was just another act of American bullying and an
apology was due (Aberman, 2001; see also Gries & Peng, 2002).
This political incident highlights cultural differences in the way
people perceive and reason about temporal information, which is
the focus of the present article.
Culture shapes the way people think and reason. Nisbett and
colleagues (Nisbett, 2003; Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan,
2001) have shown evidence that European North Americans (in-
Li-Jun Ji, Tieyuan Guo, and Deanna Messervey, Department of Psy-
chology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada; Zhiyong Zhang,
Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, China.
This research was supported by a Social Science and Humanities Re-
search Council of Canada standard research Grant 410-2003-1043. We
thank Connie Fan, Michaelin Scott, Lisa Clarke, Yanjun Guan, Ye Li,
Christopher Humphries, Joyce Mak, Angelita Wong, and Haiyan Gao for
their help with data collection. We also thank Sylvia Hains, Jill Jacobons,
Roy Spina, Ara Norenzayan, Norbert Schwarz, and Taka Masuda for their
helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Li-Jun Ji,
Department of Psychology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Can-
ada, K7L 3N6. E-mail: lijunji@queensu.ca
cluding Americans and Canadians) are analytic in their thinking.
They attend to the object independent of the field, focus on the
categories to which the object belongs, and rely on rules and
formal logic in understanding the world. In contrast, East Asians
(including Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans) are holistic in their
thinking. They attend to the field and to relationships between
objects in the field, make relatively little use of categories and
formal logic, and rely more on intuition and experience than
European North Americans. Evidence supporting these claims
came from comparisons of European North Americans with each
of the three East Asian groups. For example, Ji, Peng, and Nisbett
(2000) tested cross-cultural differences in perception by using the
rod-and-frame test (Witkin et al., 1954). European Americans were
better than East Asians at disassociating the object from the
background and hence were more field independent. Conversely,
East Asians tended to make perceptual judgments on the basis of
the relationship between the object and the background and thus
were more field dependent. In a similar vein, Masuda and Nisbett
(2001) found that Japanese participants paid attention to the back-
ground objects more than did European Americans (although
Japanese did not necessarily pay less attention to the central
object). As a result, Japanese were able to recall more details about
the background than were European Americans. These differences
also extend to reasoning about social behavior. Choi, Dalal, Kim-
Prieto, and Park (2003) presented participants with a short descrip-
tion of a target’s prosocial and antisocial behaviors, along with a
list of items that may or may not have helped explain the target’s
behavior. The participant’s task was to select either relevant items
or exclude irrelevant items. They found that Koreans took more
items into consideration than did Americans before making a final
attribution.
The above studies have consistently shown that East Asians
attend to a greater range of information (especially contextual

761
 762 JI, GUO, ZHANG, AND MESSERVEY
information) in attention, attribution, and memory. However, in all
of these studies, time was not involved. Past cross-cultural re-
search has shown that East Asians (including Chinese) attend more
to the contextual information than North Americans. Thus, we may
expect a similar pattern along the temporal dimension—that is,
East Asians may be more likely than North Americans to attend to
information pertaining to the past and the future, which is less
immediate or accessible and more likely to be in the background of
attention, compared with information pertaining to the present.
How people value the past, present, or future has been the topic
of some research. There is evidence that for Europeans and North
Americans, events may be represented differently depending on
whether they occur in the near or distant past or in the near or
distant future. In Semin and Smith (1999), participants described
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events that had taken place in either the recent or remote past, and
they found that people described remote past events more ab-
stractly than recent past events. Likewise, Liberman and Trope
(1998) presented evidence that temporal distance affects the way
people mentally represent the future, such that distant future events
are represented in a more abstract way than are near future events.
Other researchers have found that journalists from England, Spain,
and France focused more on the recent past than distant past when
citing information (Pollman, 1998). Thus, it appears that events
that are closer to the present are considered more relevant and are
construed more concretely than events that are farther away in
time.
Several researchers (e.g., Brislin & Kim, 2003; Doob, 1971;
Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, 1961) have shown that Chinese tend to
think about the past, respect traditions and time-honored ap-
proaches, and have a long-term orientation. Time is cyclical to
Chinese. Time and events are inseparable, and they repeat them-
selves, which leads to great similarities between past, present, and
future. Thus, the problems in the present or in the future can be
resolved by focusing on the past and following the traditions. If the
practices from the past have worked for countless generations, then
it is wise to follow the past (Brislin & Kim, 2003; Burkhardt, 1955;
Yau, 1988). As a result of such a cyclical view of time, the past is
cherished, and traditions and established practices are respected
(Zuo, 2001). At the same time, Americans are believed to be more
present oriented than Chinese by living in the here-and-now and
having a short-term perspective (Brislin & Kim, 2003; Cho, Kwon,
Gentry, Jun, & Kropp, 1999). Time is viewed by North Americans
in a linear way, such that time is unidirectional, which goes
ceaselessly forward and never returns to a previous state (Zuo,
2001). The tendency to focus on the present is also found in
Western science (Gergen, 1997; Howard & Tuffin, 2002). Scien-
tists strive to achieve an accurate understanding of reality. One of
the key assumptions in science is that knowledge accumulates and
advances over time, as newer theories continually replace older,
faulty theories. Past theories are seen as irrelevant as scientists tend
to focus on the latest developments in their field (Gergen, 1997).
It is very likely that the general public in North America has also
adopted this linear approach in their everyday thinking.
In summary, previous research suggests that Chinese should be
more likely to attend to past information than European North
Americans when making judgments. The present research com-
pared Chinese and European Canadians. We made the following
predictions: (a) Chinese would consider past information more
relevant than would Canadians; (b) accordingly, they would rep-
resent past information in greater detail than would Canadians; (c)
past events would be perceived as closer to the present for Chinese
than for Canadians. We included present (in Studies 1 and 2) or
immediately past (in Study 3) information in some of the studies to
provide a reference point. Throughout the present article, present
events were defined as events that were ongoing or concurrent with
a focal event (e.g., occurring on the same day), whereas past events
were defined as events that happened in the past and were not
ongoing.
Study 1: Perceived Relevance of Past Events
(Within-Participant Design)
In Study 1, we presented participants with a theft scenario along
with a list of clues about potential suspects’ past and present
behaviors. Participants evaluated how relevant and helpful each of
the clues was in solving the case. We predicted that Canadians and
Chinese would use the clue information differently. Specifically,
Chinese would consider past information to be more relevant to the
case than would Canadians.
Method
Participants. One hundred sixty European Canadian students
(22 men and 138 women) in Canada and 183 Chinese students (99
men and 84 women) in China participated in the study.1 All
participants were recruited from psychology classes and received
course credit or small gifts for their participation.
Procedure. Participants read the following text:
This morning, student A in an all-female residence left for class in a
rush and forgot to lock the door of her room. When she returned this
evening, she found that the $200 cash that she had kept in her desk
drawer was missing. Since non-residents are not allowed in the
building, it is only possible that other residents in this all-female
dormitory would be responsible for the disappearance of the money.
Subsequently, participants were asked to
imagine that you are a detective and you came in this evening to solve
the case. After talking with the people living in the dorm, you found
the following pieces of information. Some may be irrelevant, and
some may be relevant. If an item of information can help to infer that
a student is guilty or innocent, then it is relevant; if the information is
not helpful for the case, then it is irrelevant.
They then read 66 behavioral information items and judged the
relevance of each of the items on a scale ranging from 0 (not
relevant at all) to 8 (extremely relevant), where 1 was labeled as
slightly relevant.
1
There was no significant gender main effect or interaction effect
involving gender in Study 1. Due to the unbalanced gender ratio in the
Canadian participant pool, we had many more women than men in
the Canadian sample. When we compared women only across cultures, the
findings remained the same. Study 2 had too few men in the Canadian
sample to allow a meaningful comparison involving gender. When only
women were included in the analysis, the results remained the same. There
were no gender effects in Studies 3, 4A, and 4B, and therefore gender is not
mentioned further.
 CULTURE AND TEMPORAL INFORMATION
In total, there were 22 sets of three items. The items may or may
not have had to do with money. Within each set, three behavioral
items comparable or similar in their implications were created,
which were randomly associated with one of three time frames:
remote past (a long time ago), recent past (relatively recent in
comparison to the remote past), and present/immediate (on the day
of the theft or current).2 Different time words were used to indicate
remote past, recent past, and present; otherwise, if “last year, last
week, and today” were used 22 times, then it would have been too
obvious to participants that time perception was the focus of the
study. This design allowed for the presentation of each item only
once to each participant while keeping time as a within-participant
factor. Thus, responses to different time frames within participants
could be compared.
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Next, two different versions of the questionnaire were created in
which the same behavioral items were associated with different
time frames3, and the order of the items was randomized. In most
of the sets (17 out of 22), the items associated with the present time
frame in one version were associated with one of the past time
frames in the other version.
The following are examples of items:
Set 1:
A. (When she was 13,) one student was ranked No. 1 in her
class.
B. (Last year,) one student won a prize at a provincial math
competition.
C. (Currently,) one student is among the top of her class.
Set 2:
A. (Three years ago,) one student spent all her money on
lottery tickets.
B. (Two weeks ago), one student lost a bet of $100 to her
roommate.
C: (This afternoon), one student was out playing poker for
money.
Set 3:
A. (Last term,) one student had a quarrel with student A.
B. (Last week,) one student got mad at student A.
C. (Currently,) one student is on bad terms with student A.
Participants received one of the two versions of the question-
naire in their native language (there was no difference in responses
between the two versions). The testing materials were first devel-
oped in English by a team consisting of both Chinese and Cana-
dian researchers, who took into consideration the item relevance
and equivalence in both cultures and the ease of translation. The
materials were then translated into Chinese and back-translated
(Brislin, 1970). Studies 2– 4 followed the same procedure for
translation.
Results and Discussion
We predicted that Chinese would consider past information to
be more relevant than would Canadians. Figure 1 shows the results
for both Chinese and Canadians participants. A 2 (culture) ⫻ 3
(time of information) mixed-design analysis of variance
(ANOVA) conducted on relevance ratings revealed no significant
cultural difference overall, F(1, 341) ⫽ 1.14, p ⬎ .28. The main
effect of time, however, was significant, F(2, 340) ⫽ 323.00, p ⬍
763
China
4
Canada
3
2
1
0
Remote past Recent Past Present
Figure 1. Mean ratings of relevance given by Chinese and Canadian
participants (⫾SE) in Study 1.
.001, partial ␩2 ⫽ .66, such that participants considered present
information as more relevant than past information. More impor-
tant, the interaction between culture and time was significant, F(2,
340) ⫽ 30.15, p ⬍ .001, partial ␩2 ⫽ .15.
We conducted simple effects analyses separately for each time
category. Chinese participants gave higher relevance ratings than
did Canadians for remote past information (M ⫽ 1.78, SD ⫽ 1.13
for Chinese and M ⫽ 1.52, SD ⫽ 1.02 for Canadians), F(1, 341) ⫽
5.26, p ⬍ .03, and for recent past information (M ⫽ 2.18, SD ⫽
1.16 for Chinese and M ⫽ 1.91, SD ⫽ 1.07 for Canadians), F(1,
341) ⫽ 5.22, p ⬍ .03. The two cultural groups did not differ
significantly in their ratings for present information (M ⫽ 2.56,
SD ⫽ 1.20 for Chinese and M ⫽ 2.73, SD ⫽ 1.12 for Canadians),
F(1, 341) ⫽ 1.91, p ⫽ .17. Within-culture comparisons revealed
that Chinese perceived present information to be more relevant
than recent past information, and recent past information to be
more relevant than remote past information, ts(182) ⬎ 9.50, ps ⬍
.001. Canadians showed a similar pattern: They perceived present
information to be most relevant, and remote past information least
relevant, and recent past information in between, ts(159) ⬎ 10.00,
ps ⬍ .001.
Overall, consistent with our predictions, Chinese participants
considered past information items, both remote and recent, as more
relevant to helping them solve the theft case than did Canadian
participants. There was no significant difference between Chinese
and Canadians for rating the present information.
Study 2: Perceived Relevance of Past Events
(Between-Participant Design)
Study 1 provided support for our prediction that Chinese pay
more attention to the past than Canadians. One potential problem
2
We did not define remote past and recent past in a quantitative way, but
instead, they were defined relative to each other. The reason was that we
did not have a strong theoretical reason for an arbitrary separation of the
recent past from the remote past.
3
Within each set, there were six different ways to associate each of the
three items with each of the three time frames. Considering there were 22
sets, potentially there could be 622 ways of arranging the items and the
associated time frames.
 764 JI, GUO, ZHANG, AND MESSERVEY
with Study 1 is that we used a within-participant design, in which
different behavioral items within a set associated with different
time frames might have introduced a confounding factor, although
we did our best in equating items within each set. We used similar
materials in Study 2 as those in Study 1, but applied a between-
participant design to eliminate this potential confound.
Method
Participants. Eighty-three European Canadian students (10
men and 73 women) in Canada and 57 Chinese students (27 men
and 29 women, 1 did not report gender) in China participated in the
study. All participants were recruited from psychology classes and
received course credit or small gifts for their participation.
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Procedure. Using the same story line as in Study 1, partici-
pants read a campus theft case and judged whether each of the 20
behavioral items was relevant to solving the case. These behavioral
items were a subset of those used in Study 1. Participants were
randomly assigned to either the present or the past condition (given
that remote and recent past in Study 1 produced very similar
patterns across culture, a decision was made to use only one past
condition in Study 2). In the present condition, the 20 behaviors
were supposed to take place on the same day (or concurrently)
when the theft occurred. In the past condition, the 20 behaviors
were supposed to have taken place in the past (ranging from in
high school to last term). The same behavioral items were used
across conditions, and the only difference was whether they were
associated with the present or the past time frames.
Results and Discussion
We predicted that Chinese would consider past information
items to be more relevant than would Canadians. To test this
hypothesis, we conducted a 2 (culture: Chinese vs. Canadian) ⫻ 2
(time of information: past vs. present) ANOVA on relevance
ratings. Overall, the main effect of time was not significant, F(1,
136) ⬍ 1, ns. Chinese participants (M ⫽ 2.90, SD ⫽ 1.17) gave
overall higher ratings than did Canadians (M ⫽ 2.05, SD ⫽ 0.97),
F(1, 136) ⫽ 23.78, p ⬍ .001, partial ␩2 ⫽ .15. This effect,
however, was qualified by an interaction effect of culture and time,
F(1, 136) ⫽ 5.94, p ⬍ .02, partial ␩2 ⫽ .04. A closer examination
of the results showed, as seen in Figure 2, that Chinese (M ⫽ 3.16,
SD ⫽ 1.17) considered past behavioral items to be more relevant
than did Canadians (M ⫽ 1.85, SD ⫽ 0.96), F(1, 65) ⫽ 25.41, p ⬍
.001, partial ␩2 ⫽ .28, whereas cultural differences for present
behavioral items did not reach statistical significance (M ⫽ 2.66,
SD ⫽ 1.14 for Chinese and M ⫽ 2.22, SD ⫽ 0.96 for Canadians),
F(1, 71) ⫽ 3.13, p ⫽ .081. Thus, with a different design, Study 2
successfully replicated the cultural differences found in Study 1.
In Study 1, both Chinese and Canadians rated present items to
be more relevant than past items; however, this was not replicated
in Study 2, in which Canadians showed a nonsignificant trend to
rate present information more relevant than past information, F(1,
81) ⫽ 3.09, p ⫽ .08, whereas Chinese showed no significant
difference in their ratings for past and present information, F(1,
55) ⫽ 2.71, p ⫽ .105. We conjecture that such results may be due
to the difference in design: a within-participant design in Study 1
and a between-participant design in Study 2. In a within-
participant design, the contrast between past and present was more
4
China
Canada
3
2
1
0
Past Present
Figure 2. Mean ratings of relevance given by Chinese and Canadians
(⫾SE) in Study 2.
salient, and participants might have rated items comparatively,
whereas in a between-participant design, participants would not be
able to contrast past versus present and therefore would not use
their ratings for one type of information as a reference for their
ratings for another type of information.
Study 3: Mental Representation of Past Events
Studies 1 and 2 showed that Chinese considered past behavioral
items as more relevant than did Canadians, whereas the two
cultural groups considered present behavioral items to be equally
relevant. In Study 3, we assessed memory for behavioral items that
varied across time. If the past is more important to Chinese than to
Canadians, then past information could be represented in greater
detail by Chinese than by Canadians. Applying a within-
participant design, we asked Canadian and Chinese participants to
recall information about their first day of class, both immediately
after the first day of class (Time 1) and 2 weeks later (Time 2). The
measurement at Time 1 served as a baseline to control for possible
cultural differences in the complexity of the events (such that
Chinese students may run into more people on campus on the first
day of class, or Canadians may go to a greater number of buildings
for classes, and so on). We hypothesized that, relative to Time 1,
Chinese would have a more detailed representation of the first day
of class than would Canadians when tested at Time 2. Note that the
first day of class was considered as the immediate past, instead of
present for Time 1. Ideally, we would like to get data for the
present by getting the information items on the first day of class,
but it would be difficult to do so without intruding in participants’
life and making it more memorable. Therefore, we decided to use
the information from the immediate past as an approximation.
Method
Participants. Thirty-four European Canadian students in Can-
ada (12 men and 22 women) and 41 Chinese students in China (20
men and 21 women) took part in the study. All were first-year
university students. The two groups did not differ in age (mean
age ⫽ 17.91 years, SD ⫽ 1.36 for Canadians; mean age ⫽ 18.15
years, SD ⫽ 0.53 for Chinese). Participants received either course
credit or monetary compensation.
 CULTURE AND TEMPORAL INFORMATION
Procedure. The study was conducted at the beginning of the
2007 fall term. It happened that the participating Canadian and
Chinese universities started their fall term classes on the same
Monday. Participants were first contacted within 2 days of the first
day of class (Time 1: on Tuesday or Wednesday). They were given
a questionnaire that they had to finish in 10 min. In the question-
naire, they were asked to think about the first day of class for the
current term and then recall as much information as they could
about the first day of class by listing and numbering (a) the names
of people they talked to on that day, (b) the places they went to, (c)
the things they did, and (d) the contents of the conversations they
had with people listed in (a) above. About 2 weeks later (Time 2),
participants were contacted again and completed the same ques-
tionnaire. The number, rather than the content, of the items par-
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ticipants wrote down in response to each question was of most
interest.
Results and Discussion
The numbers of listings in responses to the four questions within
each time period were highly correlated (Cronbach’s ␣s ⫽ .64 for
Time 1 and .74 for Time 2). We computed the mean number of
listings for the four questions at Time 1 and Time 2 separately4
(shown in Figure 3) and submitted them to a 2 (culture) ⫻ 2 (time)
mixed-design ANOVA. There was no culture main effect, F(1,
73) ⫽ 0.06, ns. Overall, participants recalled more details at Time
1 (M ⫽ 6.87, SD ⫽ 2.83) than at Time 2 (M ⫽ 4.59, SD ⫽ 2.10),
F(1, 73) ⫽ 77.77, p ⬍ .001, partial ␩2 ⫽ .52. However, there was
a significant Culture ⫻ Time interaction effect, F(1, 73) ⫽ 18.68,
p ⬍ .001, partial ␩2 ⫽ .20. The two culture groups reported a
similar number of details at Time 1 (M ⫽ 6.36, SD ⫽ 2.25 for
Chinese and M ⫽ 7.48, SD ⫽ 3.33 for Canadians), F(1, 73) ⫽
3.04, p ⫽ .09, but at Time 2, Chinese (M ⫽ 5.14, SD ⫽ 1.86)
reported significantly more details than did Canadians (M ⫽ 3.93,
SD ⫽ 2.20), F(1, 73) ⫽ 6.66, p ⫽ .01, partial ␩2 ⫽ .08. Thus,
supporting our prediction, Chinese showed a more detailed repre-
sentation of past events than did Canadians.5
How did the recalls at Time 1 and at Time 2 match each other?
Two bilingual coders unaware of the research hypothesis indepen-
10
China
8
Canada
6
4 4
2 5
0 memorable for the interdependent Chinese than for the independent Cana-
Time 1 Time 2
Figure 3. Frequency of information items recalled by Chinese and Ca-
nadians at Time 1 (within 2 days) and Time 2 (2 weeks later) (⫾SE) in
Study 3.
765
dently coded the contents of recalls by Chinese and Canadian
participants to determine whether items recalled at Time 1 were
also recalled at Time 2. The preconsensus percentage of agreement
between the two coders was 98.7%, and the discrepancies were
discussed until consensus was reached. A greater percentage of
items recalled at Time 1 were recalled at Time 2 for Chinese (M ⫽
58%, SD ⫽ 0.14) than for Canadians (M ⫽ 41%, SD ⫽ 0.16), F(1,
73) ⫽ 24.23, p ⬍ .001, partial ␩2 ⫽ .25. Because the recalls at
Time 1 reflected what actually happened on the first day of school,
the results indicated that what happened in the past was more
likely to be remembered by Chinese than by Canadians.
Study 4: Perceived Distance of Past Events
Studies 1–3 demonstrated that Chinese considered past infor-
mation more relevant than did Canadians and that Chinese had a
more detailed representation of past events than did Canadians. If
Chinese attend more to past events, then subjectively past events
should be more accessible and salient and, therefore, feel closer to
the present for Chinese than for Canadians. Thus, we expected that
Chinese would perceive the past to be closer to the present than
would Canadians. We adapted Ross and Wilson’s (2002) approach
to measure subjective temporal distance. We obtained similar
results from two studies, Studies 4A and 4B, in which Chinese and
Canadian university students were asked to think about a time in
the past and then indicate how far away it felt to them.
Study 4A
Method
Participants. Fifty-nine Canadian students (41 women and 17
men; 1 did not report gender) in Canada and 67 Chinese students
(32 women and 34 men; 1 did not report gender) in China partic-
ipated in the study. Canadian (M ⫽ 19.46 years, SD ⫽ 1.43) and
Chinese (M ⫽ 19.26 years, SD ⫽ 3.70) students did not differ in
age. Participants received small gifts for compensation.
Procedure. Participants received a short questionnaire with
the following instruction: “The past may feel quite close or far
away, regardless of the amount of time that has actually passed.
Think about the present month, one year ago. How far away does
this month last year feel to you?” Participants indicated their
answers on a scale ranging from 1 (feels like yesterday) to 7 (feels
very far away). The study was conducted at roughly the same time
in Canada and in China.
The correlation across time was .79 ( p ⬍ .001) for Chinese and .42
( p ⫽ .01) for Canadians, indicating that participants who recalled more
information at Time 1 also recalled more information at Time 2.
One alternative explanation for the finding is that reporting their first
day experience to the experimenter may make the information more
dians. The experimenters, however, were strangers to the participants and
had no authority power over them; this was true in both cultures. Literature
has suggested that Chinese interdependence manifests itself mainly with
ingroup members (e.g., Heine, 2007), and the experimenters in the present
study were never participants’ ingroup members. Thus, the influence of
interdependence or independence should be minimal.
 766 JI, GUO, ZHANG, AND MESSERVEY
Results
Chinese participants reported a shorter subjective distance (M ⫽
4.12, SD ⫽ 1.84) than did Canadian participants (M ⫽ 4.95, SD ⫽
1.83), F(1, 124) ⫽ 6.41, p ⫽ .01, partial ␩2 ⫽ .05. In other words,
the same month 1 year ago felt closer to the present for Chinese
than for Canadians, even though the objective temporal distance
was the same —1 year. These results, thus, supported our predic-
tion.
Study 4B
In Study 4B, we tested participants’ subjective temporal
distance of a past event, which showed similar results as
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Study 4A.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Method
Participants. Forty-nine Canadian students (30 women and 19
men) in Canada and 57 Chinese students (35 women and 22 men)
in China participated in the study. Canadian participants (M ⫽
20.00, SD ⫽ 1.55) were slightly younger than Chinese participants
(M ⫽ 20.68, SD ⫽ 1.76), but age was not correlated with any of
the variables that were examined. Participants received small gifts
for compensation.
Procedure. The study took place in the winter of 2005, ap-
proximately 1 month before the beginning of final exams. Partic-
ipants were asked to think about the final exam for a course that
they had taken in the previous term. To make sure that the
participants were thinking about one specific course and exam,
participants were asked to write down the course name, the final
exam date, and any two thoughts they had about the exam. After-
ward, they read, “Past events may feel quite close or far away,
regardless of when they actually occurred,” and then participants
indicated the subjective temporal distance of the exam (“How far
away do you feel this final exam is?”) on a scale ranging from 1
(feels like yesterday) to 7 (feels very far away). In addition, they
were given a line that was 150 mm long, with the starting point
labeled “feels like yesterday” and the end point labeled “feels very
far away.” Participants placed a vertical slash through the line
where they felt the final exam fell along the timeline. Past research
has shown that personally positive events may feel closer, and
negative events may feel farther, at least to North Americans (Ross
& Wilson, 2002). To control for such a factor, participants also
indicated their performances on the exam (“How well did you do
on the final exam?”) on a scale ranging from ⫺3 (extremely
poorly) to 3 (extremely well).
Results
We excluded 11 Canadian participants and 12 Chinese partici-
pants from data analysis, either because they did not specify the
exact date of their final exams from the previous term or because
the date they specified was not in the previous term. As a result, 38
Canadians (24 women and 14 men) and 45 Chinese (27 women
and 18 men) were included in the following analysis.
Actual temporal distance of the past exams. We computed the
actual temporal distance (number of days) between the day par-
ticipants participated in the study and the day when the past exam
took place. The actual distance of the past exam was farther for
Chinese (M ⫽ 124.47, SD ⫽ 8.89) than for Canadians (M ⫽ 93.76,
SD ⫽ 8.76), F(1, 81) ⫽ 248.92, p ⬍ .001, because schools in
China run longer (about 5 months in each term) than do those in
Canada (about 4 months in each term).
Performance on the past exams. The performance on the past
exams did not significantly differ across cultures (M ⫽ 0.96, SD ⫽
1.36 for Chinese; M ⫽ 1.42, SD ⫽ 1.60 for Canadians), F(1, 81) ⫽
2.04, p ⫽ .16, indicating that Canadians and Chinese perceived
their past exam performances in a similar way.6
Subjective temporal distance of the past exams. We measured
subjective temporal distances of the past exams in two ways: one
was on a 7-point scale and the other was the distance indicated on
a line (in millimeters). The two measures were highly correlated
(r ⫽ .88, p ⬍ .001). In terms of responses on the scale, the past
exams felt closer to Chinese (M ⫽ 4.78, SD ⫽ 1.40) than to
Canadians (M ⫽ 5.66, SD ⫽ 1.19), F(1, 81) ⫽ 9.35, p ⫽ .003,
partial ␩2 ⫽ .10. We found a similar pattern when we used line
distance as the indicator of subjective temporal distance. Chinese
(M ⫽ 92.82, SD ⫽34.84) felt that the past exam was much closer
than did Canadians (M ⫽ 108.11, SD ⫽ 29.64), F(1, 80) ⫽ 4.50,
p ⬍ .05, partial ␩2 ⫽ .05.
In summary, Chinese indicated that past events felt subjectively
closer to the present than did Canadians, even though the actual
temporal distances were greater for Chinese than for Canadians.
These findings provided support for our hypothesis that Chinese
attend to the past more than Canadians do, and therefore they
perceive past events to be more closely connected to the present.
Noting that past research has indicated that Chinese and Japanese
have much in common when it comes to reasoning styles (e.g.,
Nisbett et al., 2001), the present results show agreement with Ross,
Heine, Wilson, and Sugimori (2005), who reported that past events
in general felt closer to Japanese than to Canadians.
General Discussion
In summary, we found that Chinese participants considered past
information as more important and remembered it in greater detail
than did Canadians. In addition, compared with Canadians, Chi-
nese participants indicated that past events felt closer to the present
even though the actual temporal distances of the past events were
similar across cultures in one case and were greater for Chinese
than for Canadians in another. These findings provide converging
evidence that Chinese attend to the past more than do Canadians.
6
We found no significant correlations between performance on the past
exam and the subjective temporal distance of the past exam, for either
Canadians (r ⫽ ⫺.09, p ⬎ .58) or Chinese (r ⫽ ⫺.07, p ⬎ .67) when using
the scale response as an indicator of subjective temporal distance. Similar
results were obtained when using the line distance as the indicator. This
pattern of findings does not replicate Ross and Wilson’s (2002) results.
One explanation for the discrepancy is that participants in our study were
allowed to choose an exam to report, whereas participants in Wilson and
Ross’s study were told explicitly to record the best or the worst final grade
they received from the previous term. It was likely that participants in our
study chose an exam on which they did well to report. Indeed, 84.2% of
Canadians (N ⫽ 32 out of 38), and 86.7% of Chinese (N ⫽ 39 out of 45)
reported that their exam performance was positive (1, 2 or 3) or at least
neutral on the scale from ⫺3 to 3. As a result, there may not be enough
variance in the responses to detect a significant correlation.
 CULTURE AND TEMPORAL INFORMATION
Previous research (see Nisbett et al., 2001) has shown that
Chinese pay attention to contextual information more than North
Americans do. If this also applies to the time dimension, where the
past may serve as the context or background for the present, then
Chinese may perceive and represent the past in a more contextual
way than Canadians do. As a result, Chinese may have more
details about the past and feel that the past is closer to the present.
These have been confirmed in Study 3 (representation) and Studies
4A and 4B (subjective distance).
Norenzayan and Heine (2005) outlined four different levels of
cultural universals and variations: accessibility universal (no vari-
ation), functional universal (variation in accessibility), existential
universal (variation in function), and nonuniversal (cultural inven-
tion). Specifically, accessibility universal refers to a psychological
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
process that is cognitively available to most people in most cul-
tures, has functionally the same use across cultures, and is acces-
sible to the same degree across cultures. Functional universal
refers to a psychological process that is available in most cultures,
is used to solve the same problem across cultures, but is more
accessible in some cultures than in others. Existential universal
refers to a process that exists in most cultures but is not used to
solve the same problem and is not accessible to the same degree
across cultures. A process that does not exist in most cultures is
considered nonuniversal. According to Norenzayan and Heine
(2005), the phenomenon we studied here meets the criteria of
functional universals (both culture groups considered past infor-
mation to be relevant) but differs across cultures in accessibility
(Chinese considered past information more relevant than did
Canadians).
Implications for Lay Theories of Change
The finding that Canadians place less emphasis on the past than
do Chinese may explain lay theories of change, which refer to
implicit theories or beliefs people have regarding the development
of events, people, and things across time (Ji, 2005, 2008). Previous
work has shown that people from different cultural backgrounds
often have different beliefs about how change occurs (Ji, 2005; Ji,
Nisbett, & Su, 2001). European North Americans believe that
things tend to remain the same (stability) or to follow an estab-
lished pattern of change (continuity) in the future. Thus, if life is
improving, they expect it to continue to improve. In contrast,
Chinese tend to believe that established patterns are not necessarily
to continue in the future. They expect change and even reversals of
trends instead. For example, they are more likely than North
Americans to expect an improving situation to take a turn in the
opposite direction.
We believe that differences in attending to temporal information
may lead to differences in anticipating change. That is, looking at
minimal temporal information may lead to a linear thinking style,
whereas looking at a greater range of temporal information may
promote a cyclical thinking style. It is reasonable to assume that
one has ups and downs throughout one’s whole life (thus life is
nonlinear in general), but if one focuses only on the immediate
present (e.g., today, or this week), things may look more stable. As
a result, someone with a narrow temporal focus may be more likely
to have a linear theory of change (i.e., expecting stability and
continuity), whereas someone with a broader temporal focus (e.g.,
including not only the immediate present but also the past 10 or 20
767
years) may be more likely to see the big picture and appreciate the
nonlinear aspect of life, and therefore may be more likely to
develop a nonlinear theory of change (expecting change and trend
reversal). Chinese greater attention to the past may lead them to
develop more nonlinear theories than do North Americans. North
Americans, however, may be more likely to hold a linear theory of
change because they focus mainly on the present.
There is evidence indicating that focusing people’s attention on
distal or proximal temporal information has different effects on
their lay theories of change. Guo and Ji (2008) found that both
European Canadian and Chinese participants who were induced to
focus on a short range of temporal information (such as “now” and
“this week”) predicted more continuous developments and less
reversals, in comparison with those who were induced to focus on
a long range of temporal information (such as “childhood” and
“last decade”). As a result, cultural differences disappeared when
participants’ temporal information focuses were manipulated.
These results provide converging evidence that temporal informa-
tion focus influences the way people make predictions about the
future and accounts for the cultural differences in anticipating
continuity and reversal of trends. Additional research is needed to
verify the mechanism through which temporal information focus
influences one’s thinking styles.
Other Implications
Our findings have several important theoretical and practical
implications. First, when forming an impression of a person, an
event, or a product, presenting past information may have a greater
impact on Chinese than on Canadians. Likewise, in the domain of
persuasion, past information may be more effective in persuading
Chinese people than persuading Canadians. Second, when making
judgments and decisions, Chinese may be more likely than North
Americans to take past information into account. Third, in the
practice of cross-cultural communication and collaboration, past
information might be neglected by North Americans, but important
in the minds of the Chinese. As a result, conflicts may arise in
cross-cultural interactions. This may be the case in the plane
collision incident introduced at the beginning of this article, in
which the Americans emphasized what happened at the time of
collision, whereas the Chinese considered what had happened in
the past as well.
Our findings provide a new dimension in exploring cultural
differences and may potentially stimulate new cross-cultural re-
search in other domains. For example, in the domain of attribution
and self, research shows that when thinking about past selves,
North Americans tend to focus on the behaviors without paying
attention to the internal states of past selves due to the great
distance of the past selves. As a result, North Americans tend to
see their past selves from the perspective of an observer, instead of
that of an actor. They make more dispositional attributions about
their past behavior than about their present behaviors (Pronin &
Ross, 2006). Our findings indicate that Chinese people tend to
focus more on the past and perceive past events as being closer to
the present, in comparison with European Canadians. Thus, the
temporal effect observed in attribution-of-self behaviors may be
less applicable to Chinese people because they may be more likely
to perceive the past self as part of the present self.
 768 JI, GUO, ZHANG, AND MESSERVEY
Our findings have significant practical implications as well. For
example, in consumer behavior, Chinese people are famous for
their brand loyalty because of their past orientation (Yau, 1988).
Similarly, Lowe and Corkindale (1998) found that familiarity of
the brand is more important for Chinese consumers than for
Australian consumers when selecting a new product. They also
found that Chinese people are more likely to be influenced by an
elderly person (model) used in the advertisement than Australians,
who belong to a Western culture. Cheng and Schweitzer (1996)
compared television commercials in China and in the United
States. They found that compared with American TV commercials,
Chinese commercials are more likely to emphasize the experience
of the past, being historical, time-honored, and legendary.
Valuing the past can be beneficial. Lessons learned in the past
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
(directly or indirectly) can inform the present. Relative to Euro-
pean North Americans, Chinese may be more likely to learn from
the past because it is a natural reference point to them. One piece
of wisdom from the past is that effort can lead to success. Chinese
students are more likely to believe in the power of effort in
improving their performance and contributing to their success (Ji,
2008; Stevenson & Lee, 1996; Stevenson & Stigler, 1992). They
also put greater effort into academic pursuits than Anglo-
Australian and Euro-American students (Rosenthal & Feldman,
1991). In addition, Chinese teachers are more likely than American
teachers to discuss students’ past mistakes in public and regard
mistakes as an indicator of what still needs to be learned and as a
natural part of the learning process (Stevenson & Stigler, 1992).
As a result of these different approaches to learning, Chinese and
Chinese Americans tend to outperform European North Americans
(e.g., Pearce & Lin, 2007; Stevenson & Stigler, 1992).
In the meantime, too much emphasis on the past and tradition
may hinder innovations. A mindset by Chinese people that the past
looms large may result in slower acceptance (and development) of
cultural innovations, which may be responsible for the relatively
stable Chinese culture over thousands of years despite the presence
of cultural change. In contrast, cultural innovations may be more
readily accepted in the United States and Canada where there is not
as much concern about the past. Marketing research has indicated
that countries scoring high on individualism (such as the United
States and Canada) have a higher coefficient of innovation —
defined as the likelihood that someone who is not using a product
yet will start using it because of mass media coverage or other
external forces (but not due to the influence of others who are
already using the product)—than countries or areas low on indi-
vidualism (such as Taiwan) (Yaveroglu & Donthu, 2002). Re-
search (Steenkemp, Hofstede, & Wedel, 1999) has also shown a
positive association between a country’s individualism level and
consumer innovativeness, defined as the predisposition to buy new
and different products and brands rather than remain with previous
choices and consumption patterns. Similarly, Sengun and Janell
(2003) examined how cultural values affect the acceptance of new
products in a country. They found that the acceptance of new
products is typically slow in countries with large power distance
and low individualism, such as in many East Asian countries
(Hofstede, 2001).
Overall, the present research has demonstrated important cross-
cultural differences between Chinese and Canadians in a novel
domain, namely temporal information perception. Previously, little
attention had been paid to temporal information perception and
representation in cultural research. As argued by Heine and Noren-
zayan (2006), establishing cultural differences (as the first stage of
cultural psychological research) is as important as establishing
mechanisms for the observed difference, and has its own merits
and priorities. It informs theories about their boundaries. Besides
establishing cultural differences in a novel domain, the present
research may potentially stimulate new cross-cultural research in
many other domains such as self perception, person perception,
judgment and decision making, and persuasion.
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Received September 4, 2006
Revision received September 3, 2008
Accepted September 16, 2008 䡲