Two studies investigated the impact of culturally instilled folk
theories on the perception of physical events. In Study 1, Americans
and Chinese with no formal physics education were found
to emphasize different causes in their explanations for eight
physical events, with Americans attributing them more to
dispositional factors (e.g., weight) and less to contextual factors
(e.g., a medium) than did Chinese. In Study 2, Chinese Americans’
identity as Asians or as Americans was primed before having
them explain the events used in Study 1. Asian-primed participants
endorsed dispositional explanations to a lesser degree
and contextual explanations to a greater degree than did
American-primed participants, although priming effects were
observed only for students with little physics education. Together,
these studies suggest that culturally instilled folk theories of physics
produce cultural differences in the perception of physical
causality.
Keywords: culture; attribution; ethnic identity; physical causality