Culture as situated cognition: Cultural mindsets, cultural fluency, and meaning making

摘要

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 procedures are 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.View full textDownload full textKeywordsCulture, Situated cognition, Individualism, CollectivismRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2011.627187