Cultural dimensions in the perception of success: Comparative analysis of word associations across languages using LLM word embedding

This study investigates how the concept of success is semantically associated with culturally salient attributes across nine languages using monolingual embeddings derived from large language models. Twelve key attributes—effort, ambition, talent, collaboration, happiness, luck, creativity, discipline, education, status, wealth, and respect—were analyzed based on their cosine distances to “success.” Lower distances indicate stronger conceptual ties. Findings reveal that effort is universally central, appearing closest to success in all languages studied. Cultural nuances were evident: collaboration and ambition showed varying levels of association, with collectivist cultures such as Chinese and Arabic emphasizing collaboration, while individualistic cultures like Finnish and English highlighted ambition. Talent and happiness emerged as significant in specific contexts, particularly in Finnish, Russian, and Turkish corpora. Luck showed a stronger link in European languages like German and Russian, suggesting higher attribution of success to chance. Conversely, external markers like status and wealth showed weaker associations overall. These results offer a data-driven, cross-linguistic perspective on how success is framed within different cultural value systems.