ABSTRACT
It is an established view in psychology that social perception is culturally rooted. One of the most fundamental elements of the processes of social perception and social cognition is attitude. Cross-culturally, attitudes help us understand and make sense of the world around us. Cultures develop, maintain, and justify particular sets of values along the following dimensions: conservatism versus autonomy, hierarchy versus egalitarianism, and mastery versus harmony. Research on social attributions provides some evidence that people across countries, despite many similarities, can and do express different attribution styles, and these differences are deeply rooted in one’s social and cultural background. Culture can have an impact on various manifestations of the fundamental attribution error and other patterns of social attribution. Individuals make distinctions between the world within them and the world outside them. Both individual traits and environmental circumstances shape people’s self-perception in a variety of ways. Anthropologists confirm that people tend to form groups in all known human societies. Despite many similarities across countries, various social, religious, and cultural factors regulate our specific interactions, such as conformity, groupthink, and social loafing.
