Cultural differences in conceptual representation of "Privacy": A comparison between Iran and the United States

Abstract

Culture consists of shared conceptual representations in an individual's cognition. Thus, there may be cultural differences in the representation of a concept. To assess this possibility, we compared the subjective semantic structure of "privacy" in Iran and the United States. Participants were 200 adults, 100 from Iran and 100 from the United States. In the first phase of the experiment, using the associative terms task, we detected nine of the most frequent terms that were associated with the concept of "privacy" in each culture. In the second phase, using the judged-similarity task, we asked participants to rate the degree to which each of the nine terms from the previous phase was associated with every other term and with the concept of "privacy." Results from a correspondence analysis model suggest similarities in the mapping of terms related to "privacy" along the dichotomous dimension of physical vs. informational concerns. However, cultural differences emerged in a second dimension, the extent to which individualism vs. collectivism was stressed. While "personal privacy" and an individual's relationship with the government was important for American adults, the main focus for Iranian adults was "familial privacy" and family-centered living.

Keywords: Conceptual representation; cultural differences; privacy; semantic structure.