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¹² Almond and Verba (fn. 2).

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¹⁴ See Nemeth, Charlan, “A Critical Analysis of Research Utilizing the Prisoner's Dilemma Paradigm for the Study of Bargaining,” in Berkowitz, Leonard, ed., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, VI (New York: Academic Press, 1972) 203–34Google Scholar; Schlenker, Barry R. and Bonoma, Thomas V., “Fun and Games: The Validity of Games for the Study of Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 22 (March 1978), 7–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹⁷ Steinbruner, John D., The Cybernetic Theory of Decision: New Dimensions of Political Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974) 121–22Google Scholar.

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²² For greater detail, see Gaenslen, Fritz, “Fiction and Reality: A Case Study,” Sociological Methods and Research 10 (May 1982), 379–420CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gaenslen, Fritz, “Culture and Decision Making: Social Influence in China, Japan, Soviet Russia, and the United States,” Ph.D. diss. (University of Michigan, 1984)Google Scholar.

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²⁴ The government-controlled Chinese list consisted of all fiction appearing in the monthly journal Chinese Literature (Peking: Foreign Language Press), and also listed in Tsai's, MeishiContemporary Chinese Novels and Short Stories 1949–1974: An Annotated Bibliography (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar as having been available to mainland Chinese readers. The uncensored Chinese list consisted of all fiction mentioned in Gibbs, Donald A. and Li, Yun-chen, A Bibliography of Studies and Translations of Modern Chinese Literature 1918–1942 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The government-controlled Soviet list consisted of all fiction appearing in the monthly journal Soviet Literature (Moscow: Writers Union of the U.S.S.R.) and set in the R.S.F.S.R. The Soviet samizdat list consisted of all appropriate fiction mentioned in Hayward, Max, “Literature in the Soviet Period 1917–1975,” in Auty, Robert and Obolensky, Dimitri, eds., Companion to Russian Studies 2: An Introduction to Russian Language and Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 185–230Google Scholar, or in Brown, Deming, Soviet Russian Literature Since Stalin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Japanese list consisted of all fiction mentioned in Fujino, Yukio, Modem Japanese Literature in Western Translations: A Bibliography, 1868 to the Present (Tokyo: International House of Japan Library, 1972)Google Scholar, or appearing in Japan Quarterly (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbum) between 1972 and 1977. The American list consisted of all fiction appearing in the annual anthology, Best American Short Stories, between 1915 and 1970 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin).

²⁵ It is appropriate here to say something about the use of fiction in English translation. In a study concerned with the impact of interpersonal relations on how people behave in disagreements, the use of translations is less than ideal because speech often contains subtle clues as to the nature of the relationship between speaker and listener. The reader who relies on translations, then, may be left with fewer clues with which to work. In the present case, how-ever, the available clues were sufficient; if they had not been, we should have found much less agreement between the readers in their coding of the variables and much less correspondence between fiction and reality. Although elements of tone, idiom, and characterization may be lost in the move from one language to another, this is less likely to be the case with plot, with the who-says-what-to-whom-with-what-effect that is the stuff of disagreements. For present purposes, it is irrelevant to what extent the translated fiction is representative of fiction that has not been translated. The proper question is whether there is some basis for supposing that in this fiction relationships between variables will mirror those found in life. For the uncensored fiction, I have reported such a basis.

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²⁹ I conceive of the pure collectivist as a good deal less egalitarian than some readers might deem appropriate; however, I am concerned with man as I think we have known him historically and not as we, or Marx, or Rousseau, might like him to be.

³⁰ The statistical associations reported throughout this study are small, and they sometimes do not meet standard levels of formal significance. Are the results likely to be an artifact of chance? Since all of the nine comparisons made in this study (three hypotheses by three countries) are in the expected direction, an argument can be made against such a conclusion. Nevertheless, are the results of sufficient magnitude to warrant our attention? In answering this question, readers should consider the following: First, the data probably understate the differences in cultural assumptions about the meaning of “self and “others.” This is so because these assumptions are not measured directly, but inferred from associations between attitudes and behavior. Research shows that the magnitude of such associations is likely to be modest even under the best of circumstances. (See Schuman, Howard and Johnson, Michael P., “Attitudes and Behavior,” Annual Review of Sociology 2 [1976], 161–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.) Second, the data can also be seen as understating the differential impact of cultural assumptions on small-group decision making among political elites. This is so because we expect this impact to be most noteworthy under conditions of complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity. In fiction, decision makers often face complexity, but the competing values and interests to be reconciled are rarely those of more than two people. The fictional decision makers also commonly face un-certainty about the relation of means to ends, but rarely do they face complexity at the same time. Finally, in no case do fictional decision makers face ambiguity. Disputants are always able to envision the outcomes they prefer. In short, the situations described in the fiction are simpler than those commonly said to confront political elites. Finally, collective decision processes are likely to be relatively indeterminate in character; in view of such indeterminacy, even modest levels of “explained variance” may be the best we can hope for.

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⁴² Swap, Walter C. and Rubin, Jeffrey Z., “Measurement of Interpersonal Orientation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 44 (January 1983), 211CrossRefGoogle Scholar. None of the differences found in the fiction is an artifact of different proportions of female disputants in the different sets of fiction.

⁴³ Ibid., 218.

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