代写留学生论文-代写美国留学生论文SCIENCE WATCH
Multicultural Minds
A Dynamic Constructivist Approach to Culture and Cognition
Ying-yi Hong
Michael W. Morris
Chi-yue Chiu
Ver6nica Benet-Martfnez
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Stanford University
University of Hong Kong
University of Michigan
The authors present a new approach to culture and cognition,which focuses on the dynamics through which specificpieces of cultural knowledge (implicit theories) becomeoperative in guiding the construction of meaningfrom a stimulus. Whether a construct comes to the fore ina perceiver's mind depends on the extent to which theconstruct is highly accessible (because of recent exposure).In a series of cognitive priming experiments, the authorssimulated the experience of bicultural individuals (peoplewho have internalized two cultures) of switching betweendifferent cultural frames in response to culturally ladensymbols. The authors' discuss how this dynamic, constructivistapproach illuminates (a) when cultural constructs arepotent drivers of behavior and (b) how bicultural individualsmay control the cognitive effects of culture.
A lthough the multiplicity of cultural identities andinfluences is hardly a new phenomenon, it is oneincreasingly discussed. In contemporary populardiscourse, it is becoming increasingly rare to hear the word
cultural without the prefix multi-. Multicultural experience,however, has been underinvestigated in psychological researchon culture, particularly within the most prominentresearch paradigm of cross-cultural psychology (see Segall,
Lonner, & Berry, 1998). There are several reasons for this.First, somewhat obviously, methodological orientations influencea researcher' s choice of topics, and culture has beenassessed primarily as an individual difference, with themethods for its evaluation developed by clinical and personality
researchers to distinguish types of persons. Insofaras the cross-cultural method relies on uncovering differencesacross cultural groups (usually indexed by nationality),the influence of multiple cultures on an individualmerely creates error variance. Second, on a more subtlelevel, the theoretical assumptions predominant in crossculturalscholarship have impeded an analysis of the dynamicsof multiple cultures in the same mind. The effort toidentify the knowledge that varies between but not withinlarge cultural groups has led to the conceptualization ofcultural knowledge in terms of very general constructs,such as individualistic as opposed to collectivist value
orientations, which apply to all aspects of life (Segall et al.,1998). With the emphasis on domain-general constructshas come the assumption that the influence of culture oncognition is continual and constant. Cultural knowledge is
conceptualized to be like a contact lens that affects theindividual's perceptions of visual stimuli all of the time.
This conception unfortunately leaves little room for a secondinternalized culture within an individual's psychology.In sum, the methods and assumptions of cross-culturalpsychology have not fostered the analysis of how individualsincorporate more than one culture.Our introduction of an alternative approach to culturetakes as a point of departure a commonly reported experience,which we call frame switching, among biculturalindividuals. While frameswitching, the individual shiftsbetween interpretive frames rooted in different cultures inresponse to cues in the social environment (LaFromboise,Coleman, & Gerton, 1993). To capture how bicultural
individuals switch between cultural lenses, we adopt aconceptualization of internalized culture as a network ofdiscrete, specific constructs that guide cognition only whenthey come to the fore in an individual's mind. Fortunately,
theories and methods have been developed in cognitive andsocial psychology, such as the technique of cognitive prim-Editor's note. Denise C. Park served as action editor for this article.Author's note. Ying-yi Hong, Division of Social Science, Hong KongUniversity of Science and Technology, Hong Kong; Michael W. Morris,Graduate School of Business, Stanford University; Chi-yue Chiu, Departmentof Psychology, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; Ver6nicaBenet-Martfnez, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan.
Preparation of this article was supported by Research GrantsHKU7045/99H and HKUST6182/98H from the Research Grants Council
of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China. We thankRobert Gore, Steven Heine, Emiko Kashima, Hazel Markus, RichardNisbett, Barry Sautman, Virgina Unkefer, and Robert Wyer for their
comments on an earlier version of this article.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Ying-yi Hong, Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University ofScience and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong. Electronic mailmay be sent to /, to manipulate through experiment which of the constructs
in an individual's mind comes to the fore (for a
review, see Higgins, 1996)• We illustrate in this article howthis conceptualization creates a set of new methods thatinvolves bicultural participants testing the consequences of
culture. These methods offer greater internal validity thanthe quasi-experimental comparisons typically relied on
in cross-cultural research. After reviewing studies of culturalframe switching, we then discuss how this approachelucidates other topics, such as the relation between culturalbeliefs and action, the role of culture in emotions andmotivations, and the process of acculturation. This approachilluminates not only the experiences of biculturalindividuals but also the more general roles that cultureplays in mental and emotional life.
Frame Switching
Bicultural individuals are typically described as peoplewho have internalized two cultures to the extent that bothcultures are alive inside of them. Many bicultural individualsreport that the two internalized cultures take turns inguiding their thoughts and feelings (LaFromboise et al.,1993; Phinney & Devich-Navarro, 1997). This is interesting
because it suggests that (a) internalized cultures are notnecessarily blended and (b) absorbing a second culturedoes not always involve replacing the original culture withthe new one. Classical scholarship on African Americans,
for instance, describes movement back and forth between
"two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two
warring ideals" (DuBois, 1903/1989, p. 5). Ethnographies
of Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans, among other
groups, describe switches between mindsets rooted in different
cultures. Consider, for example, the following experienceof a Mexican American individual:
At home with my parents and grandparents the only acceptablelanguage was Spanish; actually that's all they really understood.Everything was really Mexican, but at the same time they wantedme to speak good English . . . . But at school, I felt really differentbecause everyone was American, including me. Then I would go
home in the afternoon and be Mexican again• (quoted in Padilla,1994, p. 30)
This example illustrates that frame switching may occur inresponse to cues such as contexts (home or school) and
symbols (language) that are psychologically associatedwith one culture or the other. Reports of frame switching at
work are common in the literature on minority or expatriateemployees (e.g., Bell, 1991). Similar experiences are reportedby ethnographers during fieldwork:
I found myself constantly flip-flopping .代写留学生论文The longer I lived inSamoa, the more I was able to use the Samoans' cultural resources•.. the flow of my everyday experiences was increasingly filtered
through Samoan models. (Shore, 1996, p. 6)
A Dynamic Construcfivist Analysis
To understand frame switching in bicultural individuals,we have adopted an approach influenced by constructivistapproaches to culture in several disciplines and by contemporarysocial psychological research on the dynamics of
knowledge activation. A first premise is that a culture is notinternalized in the form of an integrated and highly general
structure, such as an overall mentality, worldview, or valueorientation. Rather, culture is internalized in the form of aloose network of domain-specific knowledge structures,such as categories and implicit theories (Bruner, 1990;
D'Andrade, 1984; Shore, 1996; Strauss, 1992). A second
premise is that individuals can acquire more than one suchcultural meaning system, even if these systems contain
conflicting theories. That is, contradictory or conflictingconstructs can be simultaneously possessed by an individual;
they simply cannot simultaneously guide cognition.
The key to this distinction is that possessing a particularconstruct does not entail relying on it continuously; only a
small subset of an individual's knowledge comes to the
fore and guides the interpretation of a stimulus. This dynamic
constructivist approach differs in its conception of
culture from cross-cultural psychology, yet it is a complementary
rather than a rival approach in that it builds onprevious insights and draws attention to novel researchquestions and novel accounts of phenomena, such as frameswitching.
A basic research question relevant to frame switchingis how particular pieces of cultural knowledge becomeoperative in particular interpretive tasks. To investigate thisquestion, we have drawn concepts and methods from social
psychological research on how stereotypes, schemas, andother constructs move in and out of operation (Fiske,1998). A key concept is that the pieces of an individual'sknowledge vary in accessibility (Higgins, 1996; Wyer &
Srull, 1986). The more accessible a construct, the more710 July 2000 • American Psychologist
Michael W.Morris
Photo by S. Gladfelter
likely it is to come to the fore in the individual's mind andguide interpretation.
But what determines whether a piece of knowledge ishighly accessible? A long-standing hypothesis in cognitiveand social psychology holds that a construct, such as a
category, is accessible to the extent that it has been activatedby recent use (Bruner, 1957). Abundant evidence for
this comes from experiments in which researchers manipulatewhether participants are exposed to a word or image
related to a construct (a prime) and then measure the extentto which the participants' subsequent interpretations of a
stimulus are influenced by the primed construct (for areview, see Higgins, t996). For example, in one experiment
(Chiu et al., 1998), participants were primed eitherwith pictures of a masculine man and a feminine woman orwith gender-unrelated (control) pictures. Later, in a purportedlyunrelated task, they were asked to interpret an
ambiguous behavior (e.g., "Donna's friend ordered a coffee,and so did Donna"). Participants primed with genderrelated
pictures constructed interpretations that showed aninfluence of gender stereotypes: For example, they judged
Donna to be dependent on others in making decisions.Participants in the control condition did not make such
interpretations. In this experiment, gender-related picturesactivated stereotypes in the minds of participants, which
then made it more likely that these stereotypes becameoperative and guided inferences when participants sought
to make sense of the behavioral stimulusAn important design feature in many priming studies
is that the priming is presented to participants as part of anunrelated experiment, and participants are not aware of its
influence in the interpretive task. Some studies have primedconstructs that are one step removed from the construct that
applies to the interpretive task. For example, priming withwords related to African Americans led White participantsto interpret hostility in stimulus behavior by race-unspecifiedactors (Gaertner & McLaughlin, 1983); priming withcues with positive affective valence led participants tosubsequently rely on person categories having the sameaffective valence (Niedenthal & Cantor, 1986). Thesepriming effects rely on the spillover or spread of activation
from one construct to other linked constructs within anetwork of constructs that are psychologically associated
for participants (see Anderson, 1976).In our research on flame switching, we used the
concept of accessibility and the technique of priming tomodel the phenomenon experimentally. We posited that
bicultural individuals who have been socialized into twocultures, A and B, have, as a result, two cultural meaningreferred to as A' and B'. Accordingly, priming bicultural
individuals with images from Culture A would spreadactivation through Network A', elevating the accessibility
of the network's categories and the implicit theories thenetwork comprises. Likewise, priming with images from
Culture B would spread activation through Network B',elevating the accessibility of the constructs that networkcomprises. In looking for the ideal primes to test thisaccount, we searched for symbols that would activate constructs
central to specific cultural networks yet not sodirectly related to the interpretive task. Thus, participants
could not consciously connect the prime with the stimulus.We turned to iconic cultural symbols.
Icons: Triggers of Cultural Knowledge
Icons have been called "magnets of meaning" in that they
connect many diverse elements of cultural knowledge
(Betsky, 1997). Like religious icons, cultural icons areimages created or selected for their power to evoke in
observers a particular frame of mind in a "powerful and
relatively undifferentiated way" (Ortner, 1973, p. 1339).
The potency and distinctiveness of icons make them idealcandidates for primes that would spread activation in a
network of cultural constructs. Some examples of centralicons in the mainstream American and Chinese cultural
traditions are shown in Figure 1. Exposing Chinese American
bicultural individuals to American icons should activateinterpretive constructs in their American cultural
knowledge network; exposing the same individuals to Chineseicons instead should activate constructs in their Chinese
cultural knowledge network.
Interpreting Behavior of Individual andGroup Actors: A Litmus Test
Our research also required an interpretive task that is influencedby cultural knowledge in a well-understood manner.
Here the legacy of cross-cultural psychology is invaluablein that we can seek to replicate, by priming different
cultures within the minds of bicultural individuals, thepatterns of differences that have been discovered in previous
cross-national comparative studies. Many such patternsJuly 2000 • American Psychologist 711
Chi-yue ChiuPhoto I~y Iman Poon
exist. For example, in self-description tasks, North Americans
are consistently more likely than Japanese to make
self-enhancing statements (Kitayama & Markus, 1994). An
important consideration, however, is that many Japanese
American biculturals are, no doubt, aware of this difference.
Hence, exposing bicultural individuals to cultural
icons could affect this difference either through unobtrusive
priming of knowledge structures or through demand
characteristics. We needed a stimulus task that participants
would not consciously connect to cultural icons. In short,
the task could not be transparently related to culture.
To develop a test for cultural priming that would be
nontransparent to participants, we turned to interpretations
of social behavior. Social psychologists have long studied
how perceivers attribute the behavior of others to causes,
noting systematic biases, such as tracing an individual's
actions to personality dispositions rather than other plausible
代写留学生论文factors such as social context (Heider, 1958; Ross,
1977). Perhaps the most famous evidence for this bias
came from studies conducted by Heider and Simmel (1944)
in which participants were presented with animated films of
geometric shapes, such as triangles and circles, that were
moving in patterns suggestive of social interactions. Participants
tended to interpret the films by ascribing motives
and personalities to an individual shape. Heider (1958)
concluded that social information is interpreted by forming
units, primarily the unit of an individual person. The person
unit then tends to attract most of the perceiver's attention,
resulting in causal attributions that overweigh internal personal
factors and underweigh factors in the surrounding
social situation. Other researchers have studied everyday
interactions in which this bias of tracing an individual's
behavior to dispositions leads to incorrect interpretations of
the individual's behavior and suboptimal ways of interacting
with him or her (Jones & Harris, 1967; Morris, Larrick,
& Su, 1999). Because of its pervasiveness and consequentiality,
this dispositionist bias has been called the fundamental
attribution error (Ross, 1977).
Recent research has allowed psychologists to identify
the role that culture plays in shaping the dispositionist bias
in social perception. Prompted by ethnographic accounts of
Chinese social understanding (Hsu, 1953), Morris and Peng
(1994) investigated the hypothesis that the tendency of
perceivers to focus on individuals and interpret behavior in
terms of their internal dispositions may be more marked in
North America than in China. They reasoned that an implicit
theory that individuals are autonomous relative to the
pressures of the group is central to American culture,
whereas in Chinese culture a more salient implicit theory
emphasizes that individuals accommodate the greater autonomy
of groups (Suet al., 1999). In studies in which they
used several methods, Morris and Peng showed that American
participants accorded more weight to an individual's
personal dispositions, whereas Chinese participants accorded
more weight to an individual's social context. Further
evidence for the difference in implicit theories
emerged from studies directly measuring generalized beliefs
about individuals versus social groups and institutions
(Chiu, Dweck, Tong, & Fu, 1997). In a recent review of
studies comparing North American and East Asian perceivers,
researchers concluded that the sharpest differences in
Figure 1
Examples of Iconic Images in American and
Chinese Cultures
American Primes Chinese Primes
712 July 2000 • American Psychologist
Ver6nica
Benet-
Martinez
attributions for the cause of an individual's behavior lie in
the weight accorded to the contexts of constraints and
pressures imposed by social groups (Choi, Nisbett, &
Norenzayan, 1999). Consistent with this indication that
East Asians accord causal potency to social collectives, in
studies of how perceivers attribute actions by groups researchers
have found that East Asians make attributions to
the dispositions of groups more than Americans do (Menon,
Morris, Chiu, & Hong, 1999). In sum, cultural differences
in the attributional weight accorded to the dispositions
of individuals versus groups are well documented.
An important feature of attribution differences is that
they can be studied with nontransparent methods. One of
the methods used by Morris and Peng (1994) adapted
Heider's strategy of presenting animated films that participants
do not consciously associate with social or cultural
topics. Morris and Peng designed animated films of fish
featuring an individual and a group in which it was ambiguous
whether the individual's differing trajectory reflected
internal dispositions or the influence of the group. In
one type of display, the individual fish swam outside of the
group, leaving ambiguous whether the individual's separation
reflected an internal disposition (a leader leading other
fish) or pressure from the group (an outcast being chased by
other fish). In explaining the individual fish's behavior,
Chinese participants attributed less to internal disposition
of the fish in front but more to the external (group) factors
than did American participants (see Figure 2). This method
of measuring cultural differences through the ways social
perceptions are anthropomorphically projected onto animals
has the advantage that participants are unaware culture
is relevant to the task.
Cultural Priming Studies
In a series of studies, we experimentally created frame
switching among bicultural individuals. Next, we review
three of the studies. The first two studies used the priming
method to replicate in bicultural individuals the crossnational
attribution differences revealed by Morris and
Peng (1994). The third study is a conceptual replication of
the first two studies, but the dependent measures were
attributions for a social event.
Bicultural Participants
Who were the bicultural individuals we recruited in the
studies? Our initial studies involved Westernized Chinese
students in Hong Kong. Although traditional Chinese values
are emphasized in the socialization processes in Hong
Kong (Ho, 1986), contemporary university students in
Hong Kong are acculturated with Western social beliefs
and values (Bond, 1993). This is related to the fact that
Hong Kong was a British-administrated territory for more
than a century. Before 1997, English, not Chinese, was the
official language of instruction in about 80% of the secondary
schools (Young, Giles, & Pierson, 1986). Furthermore,
large British and American expatriate communities
and the salient presence of English-language television,
films, and so forth means that Hong Kong Chinese students
Figure 2
A Display Adapted From Morris, Nisbett,
and Peng (1995)
INTERNAL FORCE
1 4 5
EXTERNALFORCE
I I I A 4 &C I 1 2 3 5
Note. Points A and C mark the mean American and Chinese ratings, respectively,
on the internal and external attribution scales. From "Causal Attribution
Across Domains and Cultures," by M. W. Morris, R. E. Nisbett, and K. Peng,
1995, in D. Sperber, D. Premack, and A. J. Premack, Causal Cognition: A
Multidisciplinary Debate {pp. 577-612}, Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
Copyright 1995 by Crarendon Press. Adapted with permission.
July 2000 • American Psychologist 713
have been exposed to Euro-American social constructs
extensively. Yet, although Hong Kong Chinese students are
rather Westernized in some aspects of their self-concept
and value system (see Bond & Cheung, 1981; Fu, 1999;
Triandis, Leung, & Hui, 1990), they maintain their primary
social identity as Hong Kong Chinese (Hong, Yeung, Chiu,
& Tong, 1999) and subscribe to core Chinese values (Chinese
Culture Connection, 1987). In sum, Hong Kong Chinese
students in the late 1990s belong to a population of
biculturally socialized individuals.
In our later experiment (reported in Hong, Morris,
Chiu, & Benet-Martfnez, 2000), we tested a different group
of bicultural individuals. These were China-born Californian
college students who had lived at least five years in a
Chinese society and at least five years in North America
before attending college. Whereas the Hong Kong bicultural
group represented bicultural identification resulting
from extensive Westernization of a society, the Chinese
American group represented bicultural identification resulting
from immigration: These are two primary ways that
culture moves across territories to create multicultural societies
(Hermans & Kempen, 1998). Although we do not
report in this article the study with Chinese American
biculturals, results revealed that these participants recognized
and were influenced by American and Chinese cultural
icons in similar ways as were the members of the
Hong Kong bicultural group.
Priming Materials
We presented Hong Kong Chinese students with a set of
cultural icons designed to activate the associated social
theories that produce cultural biases in attribution. In our
research we used several kinds of icons. Some involved
symbols (e.g., the American flag vs. a Chinese dragon),
legendary figures from folklore or popular cartoons (e.g.,
Superman vs. Stone Monkey), famous people (e.g., Marilyn
Monroe vs. a Chinese opera singer), and landmarks
(e.g., the Capitol Building vs. the Great Wall). Several
prior studies have demonstrated that exposure to such icons
activates the corresponding cultural meaning system. For
instance, Hong, Chiu, and Kung (1997, Experiment 1)
found that exposure to these Chinese icons led Hong Kong
Chinese students to increase their endorsement of Chinese
values. Recently, Kemmelmeier and Winter (1998) found
that Americans showed an elevated endorsement of independence
values after being exposed to the American flag.
Initial Tests
In one study (Hong et al., 1997, Experiment 2), 303 Hong
Kong Chinese undergraduate students were randomly assigned
to the American culture priming condition, the
Chinese culture priming condition, or the control condition.
Participants in the American culture priming condition
were shown six pictures of American icons and were asked
to answer short questions about the pictures (e.g., "Which
country does this picture symbolize?" "Use three adjectives
to describe the character of the legendary figure in this
picture"). Participants in the Chinese culture priming condition
were shown six pictures of Chinese icons and were
asked to answer the same short questions. These conditions
were designed to inject activation into American and Chinese
construct networks, respectively, leading to elevated
accessibility of their respective implicit theories about the
causality of social events. Participants in the control condition
were shown six drawings of geometric figures and
asked to indicate where they thought there should be a
shade or a shadow. This condition was designed to inject
no activation into cultural knowledge networks but to otherwise
resemble the cultural prime conditions.
Then, in an allegedly unrelated task, participants were
given an attribution task adapted from Morris and Peng
(1994). In this measure, participants were shown a realistic
picture of a fish swimming in front of a group of fish (see
Figure 3) and asked to indicate on a 12-point scale why one
fish was swimming in front of the group. A score of 1 on
the scale meant very confident that it is because the one fish
is leading the other fish (an internal cause), and a score of
12 meant very confident that it is because the one fish is
being chased by the other fish (an external cause). Consistent
with the pattern identified in cross-national studies
(Morris & Peng, 1994), we expected that participants
would be less inclined to interpret the individual fish's
behavior in terms of the external social pressure after
American priming than after Chinese priming. Indeed, as
predicted, participants who were exposed to American pictures
were significantly less confident in the external (vs.
internal) explanation than were those who were exposed to
Chinese pictures (see Figure 4). Participants in the control
condition fell midway between the two culture priming
conditions.
In a second experiment, we replicated the cultural
priming effect with a less constricted measure of causal
attributions (Hong et al., 1997, Experiment 3). Participants
were 75 Hong Kong Chinese undergraduate students who
were randomly assigned to the American culture priming
condition, the Chinese culture priming condition, or the
control condition. In the American culture priming condi-
Figure 3
Stimulus Material Used as the Attributional Stimulus
in the First Two Studies
714 July 2000 • American Psychologist
Figure 4
Results From Two Studies That Demonstrated
Consistent Cultural Priming Effects in External
Attributions About Fish Behavior Among Hong
Kong Chinese Bicultural Individuals
6
~5.8
=.~, 5.6
~ ..~ 5.4
~ s.2
~'~ "~ 4.8
~ 4.4
4.2
4 I
American Control Chinese
Priming Condition Priming
Condition Condition
o
-~.~
American Control Chinese
Priming Condition Priming
Condition Condition
Note. Data in the top graph are from Hang et al., 1997, Experiment 2, in which
participants interpreted on a scale of 1 (very confident that it is because the one
fish is leading the other fish) to 12 (very confident that it is because the one fish
is being chased by the other fish) the social behavior of the fish in Figure 3. Data
in the bottom graph are from Hong et al., 1997, Experiment 3, in which
participants were asked to provide an open-ended response about the social
behavior of the fish in Figure 3. The explanations were coded on the basis of
Miller's (1984) coding scheme.
tion, participants were shown five pictures of American
icons and asked to write 10 sentences to describe the
pictures in terms of American culture. Participants in the
Chinese culture priming condition were shown five pictures
of Chinese icons and asked to write 10 sentences to describe
the pictures in terms of Chinese culture. In the
control condition, participants were shown five pictures of
physical landscapes and asked to write 10 sentences about
the landscapes. This procedure lasted for 10 minutes. Then,
in an ostensibly unrelated task, participants were presented
with a picture depicting a fish swimming in front of a
school of fish and asked to write down what they thought
was the major reason why the fish was swimming in front
of other fish. This open-ended response format allowed
participants to generate explanations that were not limited
to the options we provided. On the basis of Miller's (1984)
coding scheme, the explanations were coded into inferences
of internal properties or external properties. Again,
participants' likelihood of generating external explanations
differed significantly across the three experimental conditions.
As predicted, fewer participants in the American
culture priming condition than in the Chinese culture priming
condition generated explanations referring to the external
social context (see Figure 4). The proportion of participants
who generated external explanations in the control
condition fell midway between the proportions of the two
culture priming conditions, much as in the previous study.
A Conceptual Replication
In our third study, we checked that the priming effect is
replicated when the task involves interpreting human actions.
We asked participants to make an attribution for a
character's deviation from a diet--an action chosen because
it has no obvious connection to the cultural icons. We
randomly assigned 234 Hong Kong Chinese high school
students to one of three priming conditions. Participants in
the American culture priming condition saw eight American
icons and wrote 10 sentences about American culture.
Participants in the Chinese culture priming condition saw
eight Chinese icons and wrote 10 sentences about Chinese
culture. Participants in the control condition saw pictures of
natural landscapes and wrote 10 sentences about the landscapes.
This priming manipulation lasted approximately 15
minutes.
Then participants in all conditions read a story about
an overweight boy who was advised by a physician not to
eat food with high sugar content. One day, he and his
friends went to a buffet dinner where a delicious-looking
cake was offered. Despite its high sugar content, he ate it.
After reading this brief description, participants were asked
to respond to three sets of questions. Participants were
asked to indicate the extent to which the boy's weight
problem was caused by his dispositions. That is, they rated
factors such as his personality dispositions (e.g., he lacks
the ability to control himself, etc.) on a 10-point scale,
ranging from 1 (has very little influence on his action) to 10
(has a lot of influence on his action). In addition, participants
were asked to indicate the extent to which the boy's
eating of the cake was caused by pressures and constraints
of his external social situation (situational reasons, friends'
pressure on him, etc.) on the same 10-point scale.
As in the previous two studies, participants in the
three priming conditions differed on the weight accorded to
the external, social situations as determinants of the boy's
behavior (see Figure 5). As predicted, participants in the
American culture priming condition accorded less weight
to external social factors than did participants in the Chinese
culture priming condition (see Figure 4). On this
measure, participants in the control condition fell in between
those in the Chinese and American culture priming
conditions. Participants in the three priming conditions,
however, did not differ on the internal attribution measure.
This result is consistent with the conclusions in Choi et
July 2000 • American Psychologist 715
Figure 5
Results From a Study That Demonstrated Cultural
Priming Effects in External Attributions About
a Boy s Diet Deviation Among Hong Kong
Chinese Bicultural Individuals
7.4
7.2
o
"~ 7
,.Q
L.
<= 6.8
"~ 6.6
~ 6.4
6.2
T
l n American Control Chinese
Priming Condition Priming
Condition Condition
Note. In this study, participants were asked to rate the suggested external and
internal causes of a boy's deviation from his diet on a scale of 1 (had very little
influence on his action) to 10 (has a lot of influence on his actian).
al.'s (1999) review that cultural influences on attributions
for an individual's behavior originate more from the differential
weight placed on the external social context (when
these factors are salient) than from the differential weight
placed on the actor's internal dispositions.
In sum, through priming bicultural individuals, we
have replicated the differences in attribution previously
identified in quasi-experimental comparisons of groups in
different countries. In so doing, we have experimentally
modeled the phenomenon of frame switching in bicultural
individuals and have demonstrated that multiple cultures
can direct cognition within one individual's mind.
Extending the Dynamic Constructivist
Approach
We began by analyzing the experience of flame switching
reported by multicultural individuals in terms of a dynamic
constructivist view of culture and cognition. We have experimentally
modeled the phenomenon through priming
experiments and have found support for our predictions.
Culturally conferred implicit theories became operative in
guiding the interpretation of stimuli to the extent that their
accessibility was high because of recent activation. Having
documented the fruitfulness of a dynamic constructivist
approach to this phenomenon in the experience of bicultural
individuals, we now discuss its assumptions and implications
more generally as a framework for analyzing the
role of culture in psychology.
Our assumption that cultural knowledge exists at the
level of domain-specific categories and theories derives
from the constructivist tradition that knowledge must be
specific enough to constrain interpretations of stimulus
information (Bruner, 1957; Heider, 1958). Bruner (1990)
and others have explicated a constructivist view of cultural
knowledge as a toolbox of discrete, specific constructs that
differs from the dominant view in cross-cultural psychology
that cultural knowledge exists as an integrated, domain-
general construct. Several contemporary anthropologists
(Shore, 1996; Sperber, 1996) and sociologists (Di-
Maggio, 1997) have staked out similar positions within
their disciplines, challenging more general conceptions of
cultural knowledge as foundational schemas or value orientations.
However, our approach goes beyond these other
constructivist approaches to culture in its emphasis on the
dynamics of knowledge activation.
In describing the dynamics of cultural knowledge, we
see great potential in drawing on research concerning construct
accessibility. Whereas the cross-cultural literature
generally explains judgment and decision outcomes in
terms of whether individuals in a given cultural group
possess a given knowledge construct, we see the possession
of a construct as a less critical variable than whether the
construct is highly accessible (cf. Trafimow, Triandis, &
Goto, 1991). Our guess is that the most important implicit
theories about the social world are possessed by people
everywhere; the variance across cultural groups probably
lies in the relative accessibility of particular implicit theories,
not in whether the theories are possessed. In our
experiments concerning flame switching in bicultural individuals,
the emphasis was on temporary accessibility of a
construct caused by the priming of related constructs.
Equally useful in theories of culture may be the related
notion that some constructs attain chronic accessibility, in
part because accessibility is maintained by frequency of use
(Higgins, King, & Mavin, 1982; for a review, see Higgins,
1996). Some findings in the cross-cultural literature that
have been interpreted in terms of whether participants
possess a construct (i.e., a performance difference reflects
which self-concepts individuals possess in Culture A vs.
Culture B) might be fruitfully reframed in terms of chronic
accessibility (i.e., a performance difference reflects which
self-concepts are made chronically accessible in Culture A
vs. Culture B). Another virtue of an account based on
accessibility is that it points to how factors outside of the
individual person--such as institutions, discourse, or relationships-
might prime cultural theories and keep these
theories prominent in the minds of culture members.
Cross-cultural researchers have been troubled at times
that the influence of a given cultural construct does not
emerge consistently when tasks are run under different
conditions. Accessibility may provide an important clue to
understanding this observation. Social cognition researchers
have found that some conditions create an epistemic
motivation for a quick reduction of ambiguity (the need for
cognitive closure), and this increases the extent to which
perceivers work top-down from accessible constructs, such
as cultural theories, when constructing interpretations
(Kruglanski & Webster, 1996). Consistent with the notion
716 July 2000 • American Psychologist
that the need for closure amplifies cultural influence, in
recent research it has been found that a high need for
closure fosters the tendency to make attributions to individual
dispositions among North Americans and the tendency
to make attributions to the dispositional properties of
a group among Chinese perceivers (Chiu, Morris, Hong, &
Menon, 2000). More generally, cultural psychology may
benefit from the incorporation of many of the insights in
social cognition research about the moderating factors
(e.g., need for cognition, availability of cognitive capacity)
that determine when constructs become accessible and
when accessible constructs have the most influence on
cognition. Many of the processes and conditions that moderate
perceivers' reliance on stereotypes and other knowledge
structures may also affect their reliance on cultural
theories. Stronger support may emerge for models of the
consequences of culture once the moderating factors are
better specified.
Implications for Other Research
Areas
Methodology
The research reviewed here shows that it is possible to
conduct experimental studies on culture. In the same way
that quasi-experimental cross-cultural studies added a new
tool for cultural research with some advantages over ethnographic
observation, priming experiments offer a new
tool for cultural research that has advantages over the
preexisting methods. A first use of the priming method is to
explore the content of cultural knowledge. This is usually
done by analyzing the content of samples of conversation
and other texts. An alternative method is to analyze the
content of thoughts elicited by priming with cultural icons.
For example, by priming North American perceivers with
pictures of the American flag and querying their associations,
Kemmelmeier and Winter (1998) have been able to
analyze the constellation of values associated with this
cultural icon. Similarly, exposing Hong Kong Chinese to
pictures of Chinese cultural icons leads to elevated endorsement
of certain social values (Hong et al., 1997,
Experiment 1). Thus, the culture priming technique creates
a new way to uncover content of cultural knowledge.
A second role of priming lies in establishing the causal
consequences of cultural knowledge. Experiments with the
priming method allow for true random assignment of participants
to cultural conditions, thus providing tests of
culture's consequences with greater internal validity than
that of tests provided by the quasi-experimental method of
cross-national studies. Hence, the priming method complements
cross-cultural comparisons in isolating the causal
role of culture.
Language as Prime
Aside from cultural icons, language could also be an effective
means of activating cultural constructs. In fact,
considerable research evidence shows language effects in
bilingual individuals' responses to a wide range of psychological
inventories such as measures of personality (Earle,
1969; Ervin, 1964), values (Bond, 1983; Marfn, Triandis,
Betancourt, & Kashima, 1983), self-concept (Trafimow,
Silverman, Fan, & Law, 1997), emotional expression (Matsumoto
& Assar, 1992), or even other-person descriptions
(Hoffman, Lau, & Johnson, 1986). A compelling explanation
for these findings has been that for bilingual individuals,
the two languages are often associated with two
different cultural systems. In Bond's (1983) and Earle's
(1969) studies, for instance, the responses of bilingual
Chinese were more Western when they responded to the
original (English) questionnaire than when they responded
to a Chinese translation of it. Interestingly, Earle explained
these results in dynamic constructionist terms. According
to him, these bilingual individuals had learned Chinese at
home and English at school and had, at the same time,
acquired two distinct sets of cultural constructs reflecting
the two languages' cultures. The Chinese version of the
questionnaire activated the Chinese language culture, and
the English version, the English language culture (see
Krauss & Chiu, 1998). As such, the dynamic constructivist
approach could help researchers to better understand the
research on sociopersonality factors in bilingualism.
Moving Beyond Cognition
Heretofore, we have discussed the application of the dynamic
approach to culture solely in the study of cognition.
Clearly, however, the priming method can be used in
analogous ways to study emotions. This experimental technique
can be used to investigate the emotions triggered by
exposure to cultural icons, and this may prove more incisive
than trying to infer culture-emotion relationships from
cross-national comparisons. Although research could commence
with the study of a single culture, it would be
interesting to see whether culturally distinct emotional
states could be induced in bicultural individuals through
priming with different icons.
It is also interesting to explore the other side of this
question: What emotions lead people to embrace cultural
icons and cultural ideas more generally? Some evidence
that cultural icons have more than a cold cognitive impact
comes from work by Greenberg, Porteus, Simon, Pyszczynski,
and Solomon (1995), in which they demonstrated
that individuals led to think about their mortality are
subsequently more respectful toward iconic cultural objects
(e.g., a flag or crucifix). Central cultural symbols play a key
role in the motivated identification of self with enduring
cultural traditions.
At the same time that the dynamic constructivist approach
can be extended more broadly, it is also important
to note that this model of culture in terms of an individual's
knowledge structures obviously does not capture all the
manifestations of culture that matter. Culture exists in
many forms other than knowledge in an individual's head
(see Kitayama & Markus, 1994). Other carriers of culture,
such as practices, have been identified by psychological
researchers using the sociocultural approach (see Rogoff,
1990) and by sociologists studying relationship patterns
July 2000 • American Psychologist 717
and institutions (see Morris, Podolny, & Ariel, 1999).
Hence, although the activation of cultural knowledge may
have important influences on emotions and motives as well
as judgments and decisions, many interesting aspects of
culture may not be mediated by knowledge activation at all.
A complete understanding of culture and psychology requires
that the dynamic constructivist approach be complemented
by analyses that are less knowledge-oriented.
Also, to a large extent, cultures are shaped in relation
to each other, so the tension between cultures needs to be
part of a comprehensive account of any single culture. This
is particularly relevant in understanding the dynamics of a
multiply acculturated individual. In our studies, we chose
individuals identified with two cultures (North American
and Chinese) that for the most part are not antagonistic to
each other. If the two cultural groups an individual has
been extensively exposed to involved intense political antagonism
(such as Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia), presenting
cultural icons of one culture may elicit reactive identification
with the opposite culture (see Krauss & Chiu,
1998). Two conclusions can be drawn from this point.
First, even within studies of culture and cognition, researchers
need to proceed with an awareness of the intergroup
and political connotations of particular cultural
group membership. Second, reaction against unwanted reminders
of a culture may be amenable to a dynamic constructivist
analysis. One possibility is that antagonism leads
to a psychological linking of the two cultural networks, so
that activation of the constructs from the antagonist culture
spreads to the other culture. Another possibility is that
individuals actively control the dynamics of construct accessibility
rather than being passively affected by them.
Then, activating the antagonist culture may cause active
suppression and thus would not yield any cultural priming
effect. These possibilities can be explored in future
research.
The Process of Acculturation
In addition to creating an understanding of internalized
culture as an antecedent variable, the dynamic constructivist
approach may lead to fresh insights about how culture
gets inside minds in the first place, in other words, the
psychology of acculturation. Theoretical models proposed
by Berry (1988), Birman (1994), LaFromboise et al.
(1993), and Phinney (1996) are useful in describing the
behavioral (e.g., how active one is in ethnic organizations
and social groups), motivational-attitudinal (e.g., how
much value is given to assimilating into the mainstream
culture), or phenomenological (e.g., how much conflict or
discrimination is experienced in the new culture) aspects of
the acculturation process. These models, however, focus on
the outcome of acculturation more than on the process.
Individuals are scored on the extent to which they have
absorbed the new culture or retained the original one. The
dynamic constructivist approach could supplement the traditional
approach by emphasizing the process of internalizing
a new culture, highlighting dynamics such as frame
switching that many people experience in the process.
More important, a dynamic constructivist approach
lends itself to viewing acculturation as a more active process.
The end result thinking and behaving like a member
of the host culture is seen as a state, not a trait. This state
will occur when interpretive frames from the host culture
are accessible. We submit that individuals undergoing acculturation,
to some extent, manage the process by controlling
the accessibility of cultural constructs. People desiring
to acculturate quickly surround themselves with symbols
and situations that prime the meaning system of the host
culture. Conversely, expatriates desiring to maintain the
accessibility of constructs from their home culture surround
themselves with stimuli priming that culture. For example,
one of the current authors, who is Spanish but has lived for
some years in the United States, often surrounds herself
with Spanish music, food, and paintings to keep alive her
Spanish ways of thinking and feeling. Active processes of
priming oneself may help multicultural individuals in their
ongoing effort to negotiate and express their cultural identities.
Future research should investigate not only the outcome
of acculturation but also the processes through which
individuals navigate cultural transitions.
Conclusion
We have proposed a dynamic constructivist approach to
culture and cognition and have reported supportive evidence.
A distinctive contribution of this approach is in
describing how a given individual incorporates multiple
cultures and in describing how and when particular pieces
of cultural knowledge become operative in guiding an
individual's construction of meaning. This less monolithic
view of .culture seems particularly appropriate at this time
of increasing cultural interconnection. Across the world,
there is a drift toward culturally polyglot, pluralistic societies.
Yet, in part because of the strain of negotiating
cultural complexity, a countervailing resurgence of efforts
to separate individuals into culturally "pure" groups also
exists. By experimentally modeling flame switching
among bicultural individuals, our model shows that research
on "uncontaminated" cultural groups is not the only
viable way to identify cultural effects on cognition. In sum,
a dynamic constructivist approach may open new possibilities
in understanding culture and transcultural experiences.
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