This section includes papers focused mainly on culture and its consequences. Papers are intended for educational use.
2023
Abstract: Culture-as-situated cognition theory provides insight into the system 1 monitoring algorithm. Culture provides people with an organizing framework, facilitating predictions, focusing attention, and providing experiential signals of certainty and uncertainty as system 1 inputs. When culture-based signals convey that something is amiss, system 2 reasoning is triggered and engaged when resources allow; otherwise, system 1 reasoning dominates.
Abstract: Difficulty can signal low odds (impossibility) and high value (importance). We build on culture-as-situated cognition theory’s description of culture-based fluency and disfluency to predict that the culturally fluent meaning of difficulty is culture-bound. For Americans, the culturally fluent understanding of ability is success-with-ease-not-effort, hence difficulty implies low odds of ability. This may disadvantage American institutions and practices—learning requires gaining competence and proficiency through effortful engagement. Indeed, Americans (Studies 1, 3–8; N = 4,141; Study 2, the corpus of English language) associate difficulty with impossibility more than importance. This tendency is not universal. Indian and Chinese cultures imply that difficulty can equally signal low odds and value. Indeed, people from India and China (Studies 9–11, N = 762) are as likely to understand difficulty as being about both. Effects are culture-based; how much people endorse difficulty-as-importance and difficulty-as-impossibility in their own lives did not affect results.
Abstract: Some ideas just feel right, others not so much. Familiar ideas are easier to process, seem to enjoy broad support, and are more likely to be accepted. Culture-based familiarity with the gist of an idea enhances the sense that things are as they ought to be. An idea’s cultural fluency reduces the likelihood that people apply systematic rule-based reasoning strategies even when these would be appropriate. People shift to more skeptical reasoning strategies when ideas are unfamiliar and do not fit culture-based assumptions. This commentary applies a cultural fluency lens and a set of metascience principles to compare the meta-analytic syntheses of growth mindset interventions by Macnamara and Burgoyne (2023) and Burnette et al. (2023). In doing so, the commentary raises more fundamental questions about the relationship between theoretical claims, their popular acceptance, and the demanded level of evidence.
2022
Abstract: Culture provides people with rich, detailed, implicit, and explicit knowledge about associations (what goes together) and contingencies (how situations are likely to unfold). These culture-based expectations allow people to get through their days without much systematic reasoning. Experimental designs that unpack these situated effects of culture on thinking, feeling, and doing can advance bias research and direct policy and intervention.
Abstract: People often find truth and meaning in claims that have no regard for truth or empirical evidence. We propose that one reason is that people value connecting and fitting in with others, motivating them to seek the common ground of communication and generate explanations for how claims might make sense. This increases the likelihood that people experience empty claims as truthful, meaningful, or even profound. Seven studies (N > 16,000 from the U.S. and China) support our prediction. People who score higher in collectivism (valuing connection and fitting in) are more likely to find fake news meaningful and believe in pseudoscience (Studies 1 to 3). China-U.S. cross-national comparisons show parallel effects. Relative to people from the U.S., Chinese participants are more likely to see meaning in randomly generated vague claims (Study 4). People higher in collectivism are more likely to engage in meaning-making, generating explanations when faced with an empty claim, and having done so, are more likely to find meaning (Study 5). People who momentarily experience themselves as more collectivistic are more likely to see empty claims as meaningful (Study 6). People higher in collectivism are more likely to engage in meaning-making unless there is no common ground to seek (Study 7). We interpret our results as suggesting that conditions that trigger collectivism create fertile territory for the spread of empty claims, including fake news and misinformation.
2021
Abstract: Are grounded procedures like cleansing value-neutral main effects? Culture-as-situated-cognition theory suggests otherwise. Societies differ in how frequently they trigger membership and individualizing cultural mindsets and their linked mental-procedures –connecting and separating, respectively. Commonly triggered mindsets (and their linked mental-procedures) feel fluent. Fluency feels good. Cleansing can separate from but also connect to others in the form of membership-based rituals.
2020
Honor is abstract. We predict that people make sense of honor metaphorically as an up–right position in space and that endorsing honor values makes this metaphor more accessible. Supporting our prediction, people in China (Study 1) and the United States (Studies 1–4) associate honor with up and right and dishonor with down and left, controlling for the association of positive with up–right (Studies 3, 4). We document downstream consequences for choice and perception of this metaphoric representation. Regarding choice, Americans who endorse honor values and voted for then-candidate Trump prefer photographs in which President Trump is positioned in the up–right quadrant (Study 5). Images from conservative news websites position the President’s face in the up–right quadrant more than nonconservative ones (Study 6). Regarding perception, Americans who rate President Trump as honorable are more likely to perceive him as facing up and to the right in news website images (Study 7).
2019
Abstract: People can think about themselves as both separate and distinct from others (an individualistic mindset) and as connected and related to others (a collectivistic mindset) though societies differ in the frequency that each mindset is cued in everyday life. We predicted that an activated collectivistic mindset bolsters perspective-taking compared to an activated individualistic mindset for tasks requiring 2- and 3-dimensional mental rotation. We tested our prediction in four studies (n = 910) with German participants. We used an autobiographical recall task (Studies 1 and 2) and a pronoun-circling task (Studies 3 and 4). The recall task was to look at a photograph of children playing alone and think about a time one had worked alone (individualistic mindset) or to look at a photograph of children playing together and think about a time that one worked together with others (collectivistic mindset). The pronoun-circling task entailed reading a different narrative paragraph before each dependent measure and circling the first person singular (individualistic mindset) or plural (collectivistic mindset) pronouns in the text. Brief cultural mindset priming was sufficient to change perspective-taking (performance on a 3-buildings variant of the classic 3-mountains task). Our results support our prediction that accessible collectivistic mindset improves momentary ability to perspective-take – see things from another perspective. Effects are small but consistent and specific. Self-reported social sensitivity, self-reported perspective-taking skill, and empathy are not affected across studies. Neither, consistently, is performance on a R mental-rotation task.
Abstract: Being part of a culture means knowing what to expect in most everyday situations –with the implication that something maybe awry if unfolding situation mismatches culture-based expectation. We tested the predictionthat culture-based mismatches challenge people’s sense that current patterns (e.g. the color of money, the taste of toothpaste) represent a natural order, calling into question whether social categories have stable essences. To do so, we asked peoplein China, Israel, and the U.S. (N=1,803) to rate products (e.g., breakfast plates, wedding photographs, Valentines)thencomplete unrelated scales, randomly assigning them to products that matched or mismatched theirrespective cultural expectations. Exposure to mismatch reduced psychological inherence–the feeling that existing patterns in the world reflect how things ought to be in unrelated domainsand this reduced cultural essentializing(the feeling that cultures have fixed essences thatcannot change). Effects were small-to-moderate-sizedand consistent across countries.
Abstract: Do brides wear green? Are animals and plants patriotic holiday-themed decorations? Being part of a culture means knowing (implicitly) what to expect in everyday situations and mostly not feeling flummoxed by what actually unfolds. This experience of cultural fluency makes daily life feel easy to process –requiring little thought. In contrast, cultural disfluency arises in situations in which observation mismatches prediction. Mismatch is a problem signal that elicits more deliberate thought and systematic reasoning to figure out what went awry. Because people are sensitive to their experiences of ease but not necessarily to the source of their experiences, ease arising from cultural fluency can be misattributed to unrelated judgment tasks, increasing credulity and gullibility. Indeed, Americans’, Chinese, and Israelis’ mindlessness and gullibility are reduced and their reasoning improved after exposure to irrelevant cultural disfluency – e.g., photographs of brides wearing the “wrong” colored gown, plates with the “wrong” patterns.
2018
Oyserman, D. & Yan. V. X. (2018). Making meaning: A culture-as- situated cognition approach to the consequences of cultural fluency and disfluency. In S. Kitayama and D. Cohen (Eds.), Handbook of Cultural Psychology (pp. 536-565). NY: Guilford Press. (See figures here)
Abstract: Cultures are dynamic and changing, yet at any point in time, being a part of a culture means knowing what to expect in everyday life as it unfolds. We describe a culture-as-situated- cognition approach to understanding how culture helps people get through their everyday lives, conceptualizing culture as a sense-making framework including the practices, meanings, structures and values shared by members of a group in a particular time and place. Culture-as- situated-cognition starts with the idea that people have available in memory an array of culturally-rooted associative knowledge networks: some of these networks include content, procedures, and goals related to overarching themes of individualism, collectivism, and honor (cultural mindsets). Other networks organize knowledge about various aspects of everyday life (e.g., what breakfast entails). In their own culture, people mostly experience situations that match their (implicit) expectations so that not much thought is needed. When these (implicit) expectations are violated, something feels awry and closer consideration is warranted. The terms ‘cultural fluency’ and ‘cultural disfluency’ capture both the cultural and the metacognitive (thinking about thinking) aspects of this process. People do not have to interpret their metacognitive experiences but often do. Cultural fluency and disfluency are the result of the interface between what observers’ cultural expertise leads them to (implicitly) expect, what they actually observe, and the meaning they draw from their metacognitive experience of ease or difficulty. Downstream consequences of these interpretations depend on whether people infer that the source of experienced ease or difficulty is external (in the situation) or internal (themselves). Taking a culture-as-situation approach spotlights an underappreciated aspect of culture, which is that culture allows people to get through their days without much thought and while also alerting them when attention might be warranted. Taking a culture-as-situated- cognition approach also solves a puzzle in cultural psychology research, which is that small situational cues are sufficient to change seemingly fixed societal-group differences. This puzzle is resolved by considering that individualistic, collectivistic, and honor cultural mindsets are universally available though differentially situationally cued. Some seemingly fixed cultural differences are actually differences in accessibility, rather than in availability, of a cultural mindset.
This Chapter details the relationship between culture, identity and metacognition. Particularly focusing on the concepts of cultural fluency and disfluency.
2017
Abstract: Culture can be thought of as a set of everyday practices and a core theme— individualism, collectivism, or honor—as well as the capacity to understand each of these themes. In one’s own culture, it is easy to fail to see that a cultural lens exists and instead to think that there is no lens at all, just reality. Hence, studying culture requires stepping out of it. There are two main methods to do so, the first involves using cross-group comparisons to highlight differences and the second involves using experimental methods to test the consequences of disruption to implicit cultural frames. These methods highlight three ways that culture organizes experience: (a) It shields reflexive processing by making everyday life feel predictable, (b) it scaffolds which cognitive procedure (connect, separate, or order) will be the default in ambiguous situations, and (c) it facilitates situation-specific accessibility of alternate cognitive procedures. Modern societal social-demographic trends reduce predictability and increase collectivism and honor- based go-to cognitive procedures.
2016
Abstract:Honor values articulate gender roles, the importance of reputation in maintaining one’s place in society, and maintaining respect for the groups one belongs to. In that sense honor provides a template for organizing social interactions and hence may be functional even among people and societies that do not report valuing and endorsing honor. We test the prediction that honor influences judgment and attention when activated in two experiments (N=538). Using a culture-as-situated cognition perspective, we predicted that activating one aspect of honor would activate other aspects, even among individuals who do not much endorse honor values. We tested these predictions among European Americans, a group that is not typically associated with honor values. In each study, participants were randomly assigned to experimental or control groups, which differed in one way: the experimental group read statements about honor values as a first step and the control group did not. Participants then judged stick-figure pairs (judging which is male; Study 1, n = 130) or made lexical decisions (judging whether a letter-string formed a correctly spelled word; Study 2, n = 408). In Study 1, experimental group participants were more likely to choose the visually agentic figure as male. In Study 2, experimental group participants were more accurate at noticing that the letter-string formed a word if the word was an honor-relevant word (e.g., noble), but they did not differ from the control group if the word was irrelevant to honor (e.g., happy). Participants in both studies were just above the neutral point in their endorsement of honor values. Individual differences in honor values endorsement did not moderate the effects of activating an honor mindset. Though honor is often described as if it is located in space, we did not find clear effects of where our letter strings were located on the computer screen. Our findings suggest a new way to consider how honor functions, even in societies in which honor is not a highly endorsed value.
2015
Abstract: Cultural expertise implies knowing how things are done in everyday life (‘pink on Valentine’s Day’, ‘obituaries celebrate and are mournful’) such that one’s conscious or nonconscious culture- based expectations typically match situations as they unfold. We synthesize cultural, neural prediction, and social cognition models to predict that a hallmark of this culture-based expectation- to-situation match is the experience of cultural fluency (and its opposite, cultural disfluency). Cultural disfluency arises as a result of a mismatch between culture-based conscious or nonconscious expectation and situation, cuing a switch in processing style from associative to rule- based systematic processing. Eight experiments demonstrate that these effects are cultural, found only among people who know the culture and only if the cultural situation is cued. People are influenced by plate design on holidays they know, not ones they do not know. Effects are found during, but not after, cultural events and generalize beyond holidays to everyday events.
Abstract: Culture-as-situated-cognition (CSC) theory proposes that culture can be thought of at three levels. At the highest level, culture is a human universal, a ‘good enough’ solution to universal needs. At the intermediate level, culture is a specific meaning-making framework, a ‘mindset’ that influences what is attended to, which goals or mental procedure is salient. At the most proximal level, culture is a set of particular practices within a specific society, time, and place which influences what feels fluent and to-be-expected. Cross-national comparisons demonstrate that differences exist. To understand what observed differences imply for underlying process, a situated cognition framework and experimental methods are needed. Indeed individualistic and collectivistic mindsets are accessible cross-culturally so both can be primed. Whether an individualistic or collectivistic cultural mindset is salient in the moment matters, resulting in downstream consequences for meaning making, self-processes, willingness to invest in relationships, and for complex mental procedures. Between-group differences arise in part from momentary cues that make either individualistic or collectivistic mindset accessible. Within a culture, people experience cultural fluency if situations match their expectations and cultural disfluency if they do not. Cultural disfluency has downstream consequences for choice and behavior. Moving from one culture to another is difficult because people experience many situations in which they either do not know what to expect or their expectations are not met and feedback as to the nature of the mismatch is almost always ambiguous. For these reasons, while cultural processes are universal, acculturation is often fraught, lengthy, and incomplete.
Abstract: Values are internalized cognitive structures that guide choices by evoking a sense of basic principles of right and wrong, a sense of priorities, and a willingness to make meaning and see patterns. Like other cognitive constructs, values can be studied at the individual level or at the group level. That is societies, cultures, and other social groups have value-based norms, priorities, and guidelines, which describe what people ought to do if they are to do the ‘right,’ ‘moral,’ ‘valued’ thing. The study of values currently focuses more explicitly on the circumstances in which values predict action.
2014
2013
Abstract: People often make multiple choices at the same time, choosing a snack and drink or a cell phone and case, only to learn that some of their choices are unavailable. Do they take the available item(s) or something else entirely? Culture-as-situated-cognition theory (Oyserman, 2011) predicts that this choice is importantly determined by accessible cultural mindset. Accessible collectivistic (vs. individualistic) mindset should heighten sensitivity to an emergent relationship among items chosen together so that having some is not acceptable if not all can be obtained. Indeed Latinos (not Anglos) refuse chosen items if not all can be obtained (Study 1a). Making collectivistic mindset accessible reproduces this between-group difference (Study 1b), increases people’s willingness to pay to complete sets (Study 1b), and shifts choice to previously undesired items if no set-completing option is provided (Studies 2, 4). Greater sensitivity to an emergent relationship among chosen items mediates these effects (Studies 3-4).
Abstract: Cultural mindset priming modulates human behavior and associated neural activity. However, the neural activity associated with priming cultural mindset itself remains unknown. It is also unclear whether and how cultural mindset priming affects neural activity prior to engaging in a particular task. To address this gap, we scanned Chinese adults, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), during cultural mindset priming and a following resting state. We found that, relative to a calculation task, individualistic and collectivistic mindset priming activated the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and the posterior cingulate (PCC). Contrasting participants in the collectivistic and individualistic cultural mindset conditions revealed increased activity in the dorsal MPFC and left middle frontal cortex. Regional homogeneity analysis of the resting-state activity revealed increased local synchronization of spontaneous activity in the dorsal MPFC but decreased local synchronization of spontaneous activity in the PCC when contrasting participants in the collectivistic and individualistic cultural mindset conditions. Functional connectivity analysis of the resting-state activity, however, did not show significant difference in synchronization of activities in remote brain regions between priming conditions. Our findings suggest that accessible collectivistic and individualistic mindset induced by priming is associated with modulations of both task-related and resting-state activity in the default mode network.
Abstract: To respond to a question, respondents must make culturally-relevant, context-sensitive pragmatic inferences about what the question means. Participants in a culture of modesty (China), a culture of honor (Turkey) and a culture of positivity (U.S.) rated their own (Study 1) or someone else’s (their parents or people their parents’ age, Study 2) success in life using either a rating scale that implied a continuum from failure to success (-5 to +5) or varying degrees of success (0 to 10). As predicted, culture and rating format interacted with rating target to influence response patterns. Americans, sensitive to the possibility of negativity, rated all targets more positively in the bipolar condition. Chinese were modesty-sensitive, ignoring the implications of the scale, unless rating strangers for whom modesty is irrelevant. Turks were honor-sensitive, rating themselves and their parents more positively in the bipolar scale condition and ignoring scale implications of rating strangers.
2011
Abstract: Culture is a human universal, a ‘good enough’ solution to universal needs. It is also a specific meaning-making framework, a ‘mindset’ that influences what feels fluent, what is attended to, which goals or mental procedure is salient. Cross-national comparisons demonstrate both universality and between-group difference (specificity) but cannot address underlying process or distinguish fixed from context-dependent effects. I use a situated cognition framework and experimental methods to address these gaps, demonstrating that salient cultural mindsets have causal downstream consequences for meaning-making, self-processes, willingness to invest in relationships, and complex mental procedures. Moreover, individualistic and collectivistic mindsets are accessible cross-culturally so both can be primed. Between-group differences arise in part from momentary cues that make either individualistic or collectivistic mindset accessible.
2010
Abstract: Westerners tend to judge themselves positively unless their failure relative to others is obvious, in which case they tend to distance themselves from outperforming others. Whether this tendency to self-enhance in social-comparison situations is universal or culture-bound is hotly debated. Rather than construe self-enhancement as either universal or culture-bound, we propose that its effects depend on the cultural mindset that is salient at the moment of self-reflection. A cultural mindset is a mental representation containing culture-congruent content, procedures, and goals. We focused on individual and collective mindsets, using language as an unobtrusive mindset prime and predicting that people would be more self-enhancing when an individual mindset was made salient by using English than when a collective mindset was made salient by using Chinese. Three studies supported this hypothesis. Chinese students self-enhanced (rating themselves as better than others and distancing themselves from outperforming others) more when primed with an individual mindset.
Abstract: The present studies examine the persuasive effects of tailored health messages comparing those tailored to match (vs. not match) both chronic cultural frame and momentarily salient cultural frame. Evidence from two studies (Study 1 n = 72 European Americans, Study 2 n = 48 Asian Americans) supports the hypothesis that message persuasiveness increases when chronic cultural frame, health message tailoring and momentarily salient cultural frame all match. The hypothesis was tested using a message about health risks of caffeine consumption among individuals prescreened to be regular caffeine consumers. After being primed for individualism, European Americans who read a health message that focused on the personal self were more likely to accept the message — they found it more persuasive, believed they were more at risk, and engaged in more message-congruent behavior. These effects were also found among Asian Americans who were primed for collectivism and who read a health message that focused on relational obligations. The findings point to the importance of investigating the role of situational cues in persuasive effects of health messages and suggest that matching content to primed frame consistent with the chronic frame may be a way to know what to match messages to.
Abstract: In the current chapter, we move beyond East Asian, Confucian-based collectivism, to address another form of collectivism, honor-based collectivism, a kind of collectivism prevalent in other parts of the world– including the Middle East, Mediterranean and Latin American countries. Because relatively less empirical work has focused on honor-based collectivism, we emphasize this literature in the next section of this chapter, providing an overview comparing collective cultures of honor with collective cultures of modesty and individualistic cultures that could be termed cultures of self-enhancement. Much of this literature is ethnographic and even when quantitative research exists, it does not have in mind the needs of survey researchers. However, this literature does highlight issues that survey methodologists should start attending to. To begin to create a bridge between this literature and the concerns of survey methodologists, in the second section of this chapter we briefly summarize the communicative and cognitive processes involved, making predictions about how culture of honor should influence pragmatic meaning, judgment and recall, and response editing.
2009
Abstract: What is meant by culture and how does it matter? In the current paper, we argue that culture is best understood as a multi-dimensional rather than a unitary construct. Specifically, we propose that societies socialize for and individuals have access to a diverse set of overlapping and contradictory processes and procedures for making sense of the world and that the processes and procedures that are cued in the moment influence the values, relationality, self-concept, well-being and cognition that are salient in the moment. This interpretation contrasts with the more common discourse on culture as a single unified chronically accessible whole that is isomorphic with one’s country of origin. In the following sections, we outline our perspective and supporting evidence from recent meta-analytic summaries and follow-up studies that, taken together, suggest that such a situated syndrome perspective offers the potential to unpack more of what is meant by “culture’s consequences” — to borrow the title of Geert Hofstede’s (1980) seminal book. What is meant by culture and how does it matter? In the current paper, we argue that culture is best understood as a multi-dimensional rather than a unitary construct. Specifically, we propose that societies socialize for and individuals have access to a diverse set of overlapping and contradictory processes and procedures for making sense of the world and that the processes and procedures that are cued in the moment influence the values, relationality, self-concept, well-being and cognition that are salient in the moment. This interpretation contrasts with the more common discourse on culture as a single unified chronically accessible whole that is isomorphic with one’s country of origin. In the following sections, we outline our perspective and supporting evidence from recent meta-analytic summaries and follow-up studies that, taken together, suggest that such a situated syndrome perspective offers the potential to unpack more of what is meant by “culture’s consequences” — to borrow the title of Geert Hofstede’s (1980) seminal book.
Abstract: People perceive meaningful wholes and later separate out constituent parts (D. Navon, 1977). Yet there are cross-national differences in whether a focal target or integrated whole is first perceived. Rather than construe these differences as fixed, the proposed culture-as-situated-cognition model explains these differences as due to whether a collective or individual mind-set is cued at the moment of observation. Eight studies demonstrated that when cultural mind-set and task demands are congruent, easier tasks are accomplished more quickly and more difficult or time-constrained tasks are accomplished more accurately (Study 1: Koreans, Korean Americans; Study 2: Hong Kong Chinese; Study 3: European- and Asian-heritage Americans; Study 4: Americans; Study: 5 Hong Kong Chinese; Study 6: Americans; Study 7: Norwegians; Study 8: African-, European-, and Asian-heritage Americans). Meta-analyses (d .34) demonstrated homogeneous effects across geographic place (East–West), racial– ethnic group, task, and sensory mode—differences are cued in the moment. Contrast and separation are salient individual mind-set procedures, resulting in focus on a single target or main point. Assimilation and connection are salient collective mind-set procedures, resulting in focus on multiplicity and integration. People perceive meaningful wholes and later separate out constituent parts (Navon, 1977). Yet there are cross-national differences in whether a focal target or integrated whole is first perceived. Rather than construe these differences as fixed, the proposed culture-as-situated-cognition model explains these differences as due to whether a collective or individual mindset is cued at the moment of observation. Eight studies demonstrate that when cultural mindset and task demands are congruent, easier tasks are accomplished more quickly and more difficult or time-constrained tasks are accomplished more accurately (Study 1 Koreans, Korean Americans; Study 2 Hong Kong Chinese, Study 3 European- and Asian-heritage Americans, Study 4 Americans, Study 5 Hong Kong Chinese, Study 6 Americans, Study 7, Norwegians, Study 8, African-, European- and Asian-heritage Americans). Meta-analyses (d = .34) demonstrate homogenous effects across geographic place (East-West), racial-ethnic group, task and sensory mode — differences are cued in the moment. Contrast and separation are salient individual mindset procedures, resulting in focus on a single target or main point. Assimilation and connection are salient collective mindset procedures, resulting in focus on multiplicity and integration.
2008
Abstract: In this chapter we focus on how individualism and collectivism as cultural syndromes are likely influence cognitive content, procedures, and motivations. We start with an integrative summary and then step beyond summary to ask what a situated cognition approach to culture says about how culture influences cognitive content (what), cognitive process (how), and motivation (for what purpose). In this chapter we focus on how individualism and collectivism as cultural syndromes are likely influence cognitive content, procedures, and motivations. We start with an integrative summary and then step beyond summary to ask what a situated cognition approach to culture says about how culture influences cognitive content (what), cognitive process (how), and motivation (for what purpose).
Abstract: Do differences in individualism and collectivism influence self-concept content, relational assumptions and cognitive style? On the one hand, the cross-national literature provides an impressively consistent picture of the predicted systematic differences; on the other hand, the nature of the evidence is inconclusive. Cross-national evidence is insufficient to argue for a causal process and comparative data cannot specify if effects are due to both individualism and collectivism, only individualism, only collectivism, or other factors (including other aspects of culture). To address these issues, a meta-analysis of the individualism and collectivism priming literature was conducted, with follow-up moderator analyses. Effect sizes are moderate for relationality and cognition, small for self-concept and values, robust across priming methods and dependent variables, and consistent in direction and size with cross-national effects. Results lend support to a situated model of culture in which cross-national differences are not static but dynamically consistent due to the chronic and moment-to-moment salience of individualism and collectivism. Examination of the unique effects of individualism and collectivism versus other cultural factors (e.g., honor, power) awaits availability of research which primes these factors. Do differences in individualism and collectivism influence self-concept content, relational assumptions and cognitive style? On the one hand, the cross-national literature provides an impressively consistent picture of the predicted systematic differences; on the other hand, the nature of the evidence is inconclusive. Cross-national evidence is insufficient to argue for a causal process and comparative data cannot specify if effects are due to both individualism and collectivism, only individualism, only collectivism, or other factors (including other aspects of culture). To address these issues, a meta-analysis of the individualism and collectivism priming literature was conducted, with follow-up moderator analyses. Effect sizes are moderate for relationality and cognition, small for self-concept and values, robust across priming methods and dependent variables, and consistent in direction and size with cross-national effects. Results lend support to a situated model of culture in which cross-national differences are not static but dynamically consistent due to the chronic and moment-to-moment salience of individualism and collectivism. Examination of the unique effects of individualism and collectivism versus other cultural factors (e.g., honor, power) awaits availability of research which primes these factors.
2007
Abstract: In the current chapter we provide a brief summary of the mostly correlational evidence suggesting that a focus on individualism and collectivism captures at least some important aspects of culture and cross-cultural difference, highlighting what appear to be systematic differences between Western European and especially Anglo-Saxon based cultures and other cultures. We then examine gaps in causality that correlational evidence cannot address and propose that in order to understand the processes that underlie how individualism and collectivism influence motivation, cognition and behavior, more systematic experimental approaches are needed. We highlight the efficacy of a particular experimental paradigm that involves priming or bringing to mind particular content or cognitive processes. We outline what the priming literature can tell us about the effects of culture (both as operationalized by individualism and collectivism and as operationalized by other relevant axes such as high power-low power and equality) on content and process of cognition. We suggest a situated cognition approach to culture and outline what the cultural syndrome priming literature tells us about how culture influences what we think and how we process information about ourselves and the world.
2006
Abstract: Models of culture are operationalized as individualism and collectivism and have not given sufficient attention to other organizing axes—especially how a society handles power, dependence, and equality. Shavitt, Lalwani, Zhang, and Torelli (2006) make a significant contribution by first reminding the field of power distance (Hofstede, 1980) and then moving beyond a single factor to highlight benefits of Triandis’ (1995) horizontal (valuing equality) individualism–collectivism and vertical (emphasizing hierarchy)individualism–collectivism model. But this approach makes it difficult to disentangle the effects of power and individualism or collectivism; priming procedures and experimental variations of power can counter this limitation. Moreover, current horizontal/vertical approaches do not distinguish between having and not having power, although social cognition research documented differential effects of high and low power on content of self-concept, relationality, and cognition, which suggest previously neglected cultural differences.
Abstract: We integrate cross-cultural literature with broader literature in survey methodology, human cognition, and communication. First, we briefly re- view recent work in cognitive survey methodology that advances our un- derstanding of the processes underlying question comprehension and response. Then, using a process model of cultural influence, we provide a framework for hypothesizing how cross-cultural differences may system- atically influence the meaning respondents make of the questions that researchers ask, how memory is organized, and subjective theories about what constitutes an appropriate answer and therefore the answers par- ticipants are likely to give.
2004
Abstract: This chapter uses the World Values Survey to establish change over time in individualism that is related to change in political climate and economic stability.
2002
Abstract: Question answering requires close attention to the common ground to determine what the questioner wants to know. Because attentiveness to others is more likely to be a self-defining goal when the self is thought of as interdependent with others rather than independent of others, we predicted that self-construal influences attentiveness to the common ground. In Experiment 1, participants’ temporary self-construal was manipulated through a priming technique. As predicted, interdependence-primed participants were more likely than independence-primed participants to take the recipient’s knowledge into account and avoided providing redundant information in a self-administered questionnaire. Drawing on chronic differences in self-construal, Experiment 2 replicated these findings with participants from independent (Germany) and interdependent (China) cultures. Throughout, participants’ differential attentiveness to the common ground resulted in differential question order effects, raising important methodological issues for cross-cultural research.
Abstract: Two studies support our hypothesis that connected and interdependent self-focus evokes a generally context-dependent cognitive mode (focused on object–context relations) and provide some evidence that separate and independent self-focus evokes a generally context-independent cognitive mode (focused on objects,independent of contexts). Consistent with our predictions,experimental manipulation of interdependent self-focus influences cognitive speed/accuracy (Experiment 1) and memory (Experiment 2). When primed self-focus is congruent with the perceptual task at hand,perceptual speed increases (as shown by a significant task by prime interaction effect) and when primed,interdependent self-focus improves memory for incidentally encoded contextual information. Further research to link primed and chronic self-focus effects is called for.
Abstract: M. H. Bond (2002), A. P. Fiske (2002), S. Kitayama (2002), and J. G. Miller (2002) joined D. Oyserman, H. M. Coon, and M. Kemmelmeier (2002) in highlighting limitations of the individualism-collectivism model of culture. Concern is warranted; nevertheless, individualism-collectivism helps structure discourse on the influence of culture on the mind. To avoid level-of-analysis entanglements, Oyserman et al. propose an integrative model that includes distal, proximal, and situated cultural features of societies and internalized models of these features, highlights the importance of subjective construal, and uses evolutionary perspectives to clarify the basic problems cultures address. Framed this way, it is clear that, depending on situational requirements, both individualism- and collectivism-focused strategies are adaptive; thus, it is likely that human minds have adapted to think both ways.
Abstract: Are Americans more individualistic and less collectivistic than members of other groups? The authors summarize plausible psychological implications of individualism-collectivism (IND-COL), metaanalyze cross-national and within-United States IND-COL differences, and review evidence for effects of IND-COL on self-concept, well-being, cognition, and relationality. European Americans were found to be both more individualistic—valuing personal independence more—and less collectivistic—feeling duty to in-groups less—than others. However, European Americans were not more individualistic than African Americans, or Latinos, and not less collectivistic than Japanese or Koreans. Among Asians, only Chinese showed large effects, being both less individualistic and more collectivistic. Moderate IND-COL effects were found on self-concept and relationality, and large effects were found on attribution and cognitive style.
Abstract: This chapter shows how social movements must mobilize and ‘turn on’ collective values differently in societies that are dominated by collective vs. individualistic values and how this process can create a negative intergroup dynamic.
1998
Abstract: Implications of cultural accommodation-hybridization were explored within the framework of individualism-collectivism. Individualism highlights the personal and centralizes individuals as the unit of analyses, whereas collectivism highlights the social and contextualizes individuals as parts of connected social units. In 2 experiments, the ways in which individualism, collectivism, and identity salience influence social obligation to diverse others was explored. The authors varied the personal goal interrupted (achievement-pleasure ), the target (individual-group), and focus (in-group-larger society) of social obligation within subjects. The authors hypothesized that collectivism would increase obligation to the in-group when identity was made salient; that individualism alone would dampen social obligation; and that cultural accommodation-hybridization (being high in both individualism and collectivism) would increase obligation to larger society.
1997
Abstract: The interplay between individualist and collectivist orientations, ethnic identity, and beliefs about stereotypes was explored among Asian Americans. The authors proposed four components of Asian American Identity: feelings of interdependence with family, a sense of connectedness to heritage and tradition, a belief that achievement would reflect well on one’s family and group generally, and an awareness of structural barriers and racism. A sample of 162 Asian American university students perceived stereotypes about Asian Americans as focusing primarily on school achievement and secondarily on social attributes. Although rarely engaging in strategies to avoid being academically labeled, students engaged in strategies to avoid labeling in other domains. Students varied in their valuation of the model minority label, with those high in Asian American Identity, collectivism, and work ethic more likely to view the label positively.
1993
Abstract: A series of studies showing that individualism and collectivism are independent, that collectivism is related to the personalization of intergroup conflict, and that individualism and collectivism relate to differ conceptions of valued self characteristics. Abstract: Some aspects of the subjective experience of individualism and collectivism in Israel, a society that simultaneously emphasizes both worldviews, were explored. Ss were Arab and Jewish Israeli students (Study 1 n = 211, Study 2 n = 370, Study 3 n = 160, and Study 4 n = 280). As hypothesized, endorsing individualism as a worldview was related to focusing on private aspects of the self and conceptualizing the self in terms of distinction between the self and others. Hypotheses suggesting a relationship between collectivism, centrality of social identities to self-definition, a focus on public aspects of the self, and heightened perception of intergroup conflict were also supported by the data. Unexpectedly, endorsement of an individualistic worldview was also related to these variables. Discussion focuses on the meld of individualism and collectivism that may occur in Israel.
Abstract: This chapter describes the ways social context influences how the self is defined. By focusing on the differences in how the self is structured (self as separate and different, or connected and related to others) we argue that culture influences not only content but also basic self-structure.
1989
Abstract: This chapter articulates the distinction between ensembled, connected self-schemas and separate, independent self-schemas, drawing on both gender differences and differences between the West and non-West in making the case for their distinct impact on cognitive processing.