Bethany Ojalehto

Perspectives on Culture and Concepts

The well-respected tradition of research on concepts uses cross-cultural comparisons to explore which aspects of conceptual behavior are universal versus culturally variable. This work continues, but it is being supplemented by intensified efforts to study how conceptual systems and cultural systems interact to modify and support each other. For example, cultural studies within the framework of domain specificity (e.g., folkphysics, folkpsychology, folkbiology) are beginning to query the domains themselves and offer alternative organizing principles (e.g., folksociology, folkecology). Findings highlight the multifaceted nature of both concepts and culture: Individuals adopt distinct conceptual construals in accordance with culturally infused systems such as language and discourse, knowledge and beliefs, and epistemological orientations. This picture complicates questions about cognitive universality or variability, suggesting that researchers may productively adopt a systems-level approach to conceptual organization and cultural epistemologies. Related implications for diversity in cognitive science are discussed.

Seeing Cooperation or Competition: Ecological Interactions in Cultural Perspectives

Do cultural models facilitate particular ways of perceiving interactions in nature? We explore variability in folkecological principles of reasoning about interspecies interactions (specifically, competitive or cooperative). In two studies, Indigenous Panamanian Ngöbe and U.S. participants interpreted an illustrated, wordless nonfiction book about the hunting relationship between a coyote and badger. Across both studies, the majority of Ngöbe interpreted the hunting relationship as cooperative and the majority of U.S. participants as competitive. Study 2 showed that this pattern may reflect different beliefs about, and perhaps different awareness of, plausible interspecies interactions. Further probes suggest that these models of ecological interaction correlate with recognition of social agency (e.g., communication, morality) in nonhuman animals. We interpret our results in terms of cultural models of nature and nonhuman agency.

Bringing history back to culture: on the missing diachronic component in the research on culture and cognition

A growing body of evidence shows that cognitive processes in general, and causal cognition in particular, are variable across cultures (Choi et al., 1999; Norenzayan and Heine, 2005; Henrich et al., 2010). The majority of these findings are based on cross-cultural comparisons contrasting well-defined groups, with little explicit consideration of temporal change within those groups. While this strategy has undoubtedly proven successful, an important limitation is that it can implicitly lead to a view of cultures as stable entities and associated cognitive processes as essentialized. A prosaic illustration serves to introduce this idea. Suppose we hypothesize that smoking cigarettes and culture are closely related. We measure the number of cigarettes per capita and find that Chinese smoke more than Americans (Ng et al., 2014). If we collect time-series data, however, we might notice that had our measurements been taken in 2000, we would have found no cultural difference. Further, if our time-series had gone even further back to measurements taken in the 1980s, we would have found just the opposite pattern, such that Americans smoked more than the Chinese. Clearly, findings for cultural differences are of limited utility when they do not account for within-culture historical trends. Furthermore, theoretical explanations for cultural difference risk reifying an incomplete perspective if they take such results as indicative of some atemporal notion of “culture” itself. In this paper we argue for the need to develop methods of within-culture diachronic analysis as a necessary step for understanding the complex links between culture and cognition. We specifically focus on the link between culture and causal cognition, yet the argument is applicable to the field as a whole.

Systems of (non-)diversity

Intrinsic to the social, educational and behavioural sciences is the aim of addressing patterned variation in human thought and action across settings. Surprisingly, however, empirical work in these sciences continues to be limited by a lack of diversity in study populations, research methodology and the researchers themselves. This Perspective analyses these dimensions of diversity as they are situated in and affected by the larger organizational systems for publication, grants and academic advancement. This complex system appears to operate in a mutually reinforcing manner to discourage diversity. Our analysis suggests that diversity goals central to our sciences will require systems-level action rather than a focus on any one component in isolation.

Children's Spiritual Development in Forced Displacement: A Human Rights Perspective.

This article provides a synthesis of current research and theories of spiritual development in forced displacement from a human rights perspective. Spirituality, understood as a cognitive‐cultural construct, has shown positive impact on children’s development through both collective and individual processes and across ecological domains of the physical world, the community and the individual child. Findings support a human rights framework of spiritual development that privileges the child’s and the community’s own understandings of human development, and this framework may further serve as an important resource for scaffolding refugee children’s development. The study of spiritual development will enable more effective human rights protection of child development in situations of war and forced displacement.

Grounding principles for inferring agency: Two cultural perspectives

The present research investigates cultural variation in grounding principles for inferring agency in order to address an important theoretical debate: does cultural diversity in agency concepts reflect an animistic overextension of (universal) folkpsychology, as many have argued, or an alternative theory of folkcommunication based on relational principles? In two experiments, mind perception measures were adapted to assess beliefs concerning the agency of non-animal kinds (plants, abiotic kinds, complex artifacts) among Indigenous Ngöbe adults in Panama and US college students. Agency attributions varied systematically, with Ngöbe ascribing greater agency to non-animal natural kinds and US college participants ascribing greater agency to complex artifacts. Analysis of explanations revealed divergent interpretations of agency as a prototypically human capacity requiring consciousness (US), versus a relational capacity expressed in directed interactions (Ngöbe). Converging measures further illuminated the inferential principles underlying these agency attributions. (1) An experimental relational framing of agency probes facilitated Ngöbe but not US agency attributions. (2) Further analysis showed that three key dimensions of agency attribution (experience, cognition, animacy) are organized differently across cultures. (3) A Bayesian approach to cultural consensus modeling confirmed the presence of two distinct consensus models rather than variations on a single (universal) model. Together, these results indicate that conceptual frameworks for agency differ across US college and Ngöbe communities. We conclude that Ngöbe concepts of agency derive from a distinct theory of folkcommunication based on an ecocentric prototype rather than overextensions of an anthropocentric folkpsychology. These observations suggest that folkpsychology and mind perception represent culture specific frameworks for agency, with significant implications for domain-specificity theory and our understanding of cognitive diversity.

Conceptualizing agency: Folkpsychological and folkcommunicative perspectives on plants

The present research addresses cultural variation in concepts of agency. Across two experiments, we investigate how Indigenous Ngöbe of Panama and US college students interpret and make inferences about nonhuman agency, focusing on plants as a critical test case. In Experiment 1, participants predicted goal-directed actions for plants and other nonhuman kinds and judged their capacities for intentional agency. Goal-directed action is pervasive among living kinds and as such we expected cultural agreement on these predictions. However, we expected that interpretation of the capacities involved would differ based on cultural folktheories. As expected, Ngöbe and US participants both inferred that plants would engage in goal-directed action but Ngöbe were more likely to attribute intentional agency capacities to plants. Experiment 2 extends these findings by investigating action predictions and capacity attributions linked to complex forms of plant social agency recently discovered in botanical sciences (communication, kin altruism). We hypothesized that the Ngöbe view of plants as active agents would productively guide inferences for plant social interaction. Indeed, Ngöbe were more likely than US participants to infer that plants can engage in social behaviors and they also attributed more social agency capacities to plants. We consolidate these findings by using bottom-up consensus modeling to show that these cultural differences reflect two distinct conceptual models of agency rather than variations on a single (universal) model. We consider these findings in light of current theories of domain-specificity and animism, and offer an alternative account based on a folktheory of communication that infers agency on the basis of relational interactions rather than having a mind.