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Whose values are artificial intelligence models aligning with? How culture shapes people's normative expectations of artificial intelligence value

Tiffany Deng1, Yumeng Sun2, Xinyu Zhu3, Nanying Li4, Xinrui Huang5, Qingqing Du6, Liyuhan Peng7, Kaiping Peng8, Xiaomeng Hu2,*

1Berkeley Summit House Foundation, PALO ALTO, California 94301-3818, United States

2Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China

3Department of Psychology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia

4Department of Psychology, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

5Department of Social Work, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh 15260, USA

6Department of Psychology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637616

7Department of Psychology, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

8Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China


Well-bing Sciences Review 2026, 2(1); https://doi.org/10.54844/wsr.2025.1106
Submitted19 Mar 2026
Revised19 Mar 2026
Accepted19 Mar 2026
Published19 Mar 2026
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Cite This Article
Abstract

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), growing attention has been paid to the role of culture in shaping AI values, yet existing research has rarely provided a systematic synthesis of both human universals and cultural differences in people's normative expectations of AI. Our study reveals both human universals and cultural differences among AI values. The findings indicate widespread cross-cultural commonality in the pursuit of values such as safety and universalism, as well as shared ethical standards concerning privacy, transparency, fairness, justice, and accountability. Moreover, cultural differences are evident in attitudes, behaviors, and policy orientations toward the application and regulation of AI across cultural contexts. In addition, we discuss the vital role of implicit cultural beliefs and cultural norms in the ethical supervision and practical applications of AI systems in human society. Future work should further explore developing and iterating algorithms for diverse culturally informed application scenarios, thereby both promoting the globalization of AI systems and meeting diverse cultural psychological demands to ultimately improve the well-being of individuals and groups and humanity as a whole.

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Copyright: © by the authors. Licensee ISTS. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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