Ideological inheritance: Implicit Puritanism in American moral cognition

摘要

The current work investigated the hypothesis that, even after 400 years since settling in the United States, cultural mores of the Protestant settlers still are active in the minds of Americans. Using theories of implicit social cognition (Banaji & Greenwald, 1995; Heider, 1958) it is proposed that settlers' norms hailing the piety of sexual purity, frugality and hard work have become entrenched in American minds and remain connected by identifiable cognitive schemas. In addition, this schema has also become automatized such that Americans need not recognize their source, or subjectively experience their influence to act in accordance with their tenets. Six studies provide evidence that the judgments of contemporary Americans implicitly reflect traditional Puritan-Protestant values regarding work and sexual purity. Moreover, among Americans, values regarding sexuality activates work and frugality values and vice versa. Many of these effects (particularly the intertwined cognitive schema of sexual these beliefs are functionally intertwined: nonconsciously priming traditional purity and hard work/frugality) are not shared across nations, even in Western Europe where Protestantism had its start. Strikingly, these schemas are just as strong among American Catholics and less, or even non-religious individuals as among devout Protestants. Study 1 reveals Americans' commitment to Protestant work norms through judgments of a hypothetical lottery winner. Study 2 reveals Americans' intuitive commitment to Puritanical sexual norms. Study 3 demonstrates the implicit Puritan schema linking sexual values and values associated with work and frugality among American participants and included a comparison group of French participants. Study 4 more specifically implicates the role of American identity in this schema by demonstrating the moderating role of identity salience in this link. Study 5 uses a memory error paradigm to show this link results in tacit inferences not simply reducible to affect. Finally, Study 6 demonstrates the behavioral relationship between traditional work norms and divinity among Americans of a wide range of belief systems. This implicit Puritanism in American moral cognition may help account for a wide range of differences between Americans' social judgments and those of members of other cultures. Implications for the influence of culture on automatic mental processes are discussed.