Judging a Book by Its Cover

The world can be represented by two layers of information: how it appears on the outside (outward appearance) and what it is on the inside (inner state). To what extent an outward appearance is assumed to reflect the inner state is fundamental to social inference and judgments. Conceptualizing inference in terms of the relationship between the outward appearance and the inner state generates an integrative interpretation for a wide range of phenomena. We showed that Chinese were more likely than Euro-Canadians to make inference of inner state that deviated from outward appearance, whereas Euro-Canadians were more likely than Chinese to infer a convergence between outward appearance and inner state (Studies 1-5). We observed these cross-cultural patterns in various contexts involving people or physical structures. Individual differences in correspondence bias or response bias did not explain these patterns. The lay belief that outward appearance can be misleading mediated the cultural effects (Study 4). To probe the underlying process, two additional experiments showed that highlighting the misleading nature of appearance, but not highlighting the power of the situation, reduced Americans’ beliefs (Study 6) and inference (Study 7) that the outward appearance reflects the inner state. By focusing on the assumed relationship between the outward appearance and inner state, these findings provide a unique angle for understanding cross-cultural phenomena and have practical implications in daily life.

世界可被划分为两层信息：其一为事物外在的呈现形式——外显表现（outward appearance），其二为事物内在的本质状态——内在状态（inner state）。外显表现在多大程度上被认为能够反映内在状态，是社会推理与判断的核心议题。从外显表现与内在状态的关系维度对推理进行概念化，可为诸多社会现象提供整合性的解释框架。本研究（研究1至研究5）发现，相较于加拿大欧裔群体，中国被试更倾向于做出与外显表现相悖的内在状态推理；而加拿大欧裔被试则更倾向于推断外显表现与内在状态具有一致性。上述跨文化差异模式在涉及人际互动或物理结构的多种情境中均得到了验证。对应偏差（correspondence bias）或反应偏差（response bias）的个体差异无法解释上述跨文化模式。研究4表明，认为外显表现可能具有误导性的朴素信念（lay belief）在文化效应中起到了中介作用。为探究背后的认知机制，额外两项实验发现：仅强调外显表现的误导性（而非强调情境的影响力），会降低美国被试认为外显表现能够反映内在状态的信念（研究6）以及此类推理倾向（研究7）。本研究聚焦于外显表现与内在状态之间的预设关联，为理解跨文化现象提供了独特视角，同时也具备日常生活中的实际应用价值。