Control-response compatibility: Fuzzy clustering analysis and a comparison among populations of different regions

A group of 96 Mainland Chinese subjects were asked to respond to 12 questions by indicating their expectations about operation, direction-of-motion, and description of movement for items such as doors, keys, taps, and switches. Strong response preferences were found for the whole questionnaire. Fuzzy clustering was used to analyze the structure and characteristics of Mainland Chinese stereotypes. The results for Mainland Chinese subjects were compared with those for Hong Kong Chinese and Americans reported earlier. There are no significant differences for the population stereotypes for daily operational tasks in the three regions. The responses of the Hong Kong Chinese and Mainland Chinese are similar, but with significant variations between different populations, especially for some specific items in the questionnaire.