Jinkyung Na

Cultural differences are not always reducible to individual differences

We show that differences in social orientation and in cognition that exist between cultures and social classes do not necessarily have counterparts in individual differences within those groups. Evidence comes from a large-scale study conducted with 10 measures of independent vs. interdependent social orientation and 10 measures of analytic vs. holistic cognitive style. The social measures successfully distinguish between interdependence (viewing oneself as embedded in relations with others) and independence (viewing oneself as disconnected from others) at the group level. However, the correlations among the measures were negligible. Similar results were obtained for the cognitive measures, for which there are no coherent individual differences despite the validity of the construct at the group level. We conclude that behavioral constructs that distinguish among groups need not be valid as measures of individual differences.

Reasoning about social conflicts improves into old age.

It is well documented that aging is associated with cognitive declines in many domains. Yet it is a common lay belief that some aspects of thinking improve into old age. Specifically, older people are believed to show better competencies for reasoning about social dilemmas and conflicts. Moreover, the idea of aging-related gains in wisdom is consistent with views of the aging mind in developmental psychology. However, to date research has provided little evidence corroborating this assumption. We addressed this question in two studies, using a representative community sample. We asked participants to read stories about intergroup conflicts and interpersonal conflicts and predict how these conflicts would unfold. We show that relative to young and middle-aged people, older people make more use of higher-order reasoning schemes that emphasize the need for multiple perspectives, allow for compromise, and recognize the limits of knowledge. Our coding scheme was validated by a group of professional counselors and wisdom researchers. Social reasoning improves with age despite a decline in fluid intelligence. The results suggest that it might be advisable to assign older individuals to key social roles involving legal decisions, counseling, and intergroup negotiations. Furthermore, given the abundance of research on negative effects of aging, this study may help to encourage clinicians to emphasize the inherent strengths associated with aging.

Spontaneous Trait Inference Is Culture-Specific: Behavioral and Neural Evidence

People with an independent model of the self may be expected to develop a spontaneous tendency to infer a personality trait from another person’s behavior, but those with an interdependent model of the self may not show such a tendency. We tested this prediction by assessing the cumulative effect of both trait activation and trait binding in a diagnostic task that required no trait inference. Participants first memorized pairings of facial photos with trait-implying behavior. In a subsequent lexical decision task, European Americans showed clear evidence of spontaneous trait inference: When they were primed with a previously studied face, lexical decision for the word for the implied trait associated with that face was facilitated, and the antonym of the implied trait elicited an electrophysiological sign associated with processing of semantically inconsistent information (i.e., the N400). As predicted, however, neither effect was observed for Asian Americans. The cultural difference was mediated by independent self-construal.

A route to well-being: intelligence versus wise reasoning.

Laypeople and many social scientists assume that superior reasoning abilities lead to greater well-being. However, previous research has been inconclusive. This may be because prior investigators used operationalizations of reasoning that favored analytic as opposed to wise thinking. We assessed wisdom in terms of the degree to which people use various pragmatic schemas to deal with social conflicts. With a random sample of Americans, we found that wise reasoning is associated with greater life satisfaction, less negative affect, better social relationships, less depressive rumination, more positive versus negative words used in speech, and greater longevity. The relationship between wise reasoning and well-being held even when controlling for socioeconomic factors, verbal abilities, and several personality traits. As in prior work, there was no association between intelligence and well-being. Further, wise reasoning mediated age-related differences in well-being, particularly among middle-aged and older adults. Implications for research on reasoning, well-being, and aging are discussed.

Aging and Wisdom Culture Matters

People from different cultures vary in the ways they approach social conflicts, with Japanese being more motivated to maintain interpersonal harmony and avoid conflicts than Americans are. Such cultural differences have developmental consequences for reasoning about social conflict. In the study reported here, we interviewed random samples of Americans from the Midwest United States and Japanese from the larger Tokyo area about their reactions to stories of intergroup and interpersonal conflicts. Responses showed that wisdom (e.g., recognition of multiple perspectives, the limits of personal knowledge, and the importance of compromise) increased with increasing age among Americans, but older age was not associated with wiser responses among Japanese. Younger and middle-aged Japanese showed greater use of wise-reasoning strategies than younger and middle-aged Americans did. This cultural difference was weaker for older participants’ reactions to interpersonal conflicts and was actually reversed for intergroup conflicts. This research has important implications for the study of aging, cultural psychology, and wisdom.

Social Class Differences in N400 Indicate Differences in Spontaneous Trait Inference.

An emerging literature indicates that dispositional bias in causal attribution of social behavior is weaker for people with working-class (vs. middle-class) backgrounds. However, it is unknown whether this difference is also present in spontaneous forms of trait inference. In the current work, American undergraduates were asked to merely memorize many pairings of a target face and a trait-implying behavior. In a subsequent lexical judgment task, after each face was presented as a fixation, either an implied trait or its antonym was given as a target. As expected, participants with college-educated parents (middle class) showed a strong N400 event-related potential component to the antonym (vs. the implied trait), suggesting spontaneous trait inference during the memorization phase. In contrast, those with high-school-educated parents (working class) showed no such effect. It is important to note that the N400 spontaneous trait inference effect was associated with perceived significance of dispositions in accounting for social behaviors.

Culture and First-Person Pronouns

Priming research has shown that repeated exposures to first-person singular pronouns (I, my, me, mine) activate an individualistic orientation, whereas first-person plural pronouns (we, our, us, ours) activate a collectivistic orientation. However, little research has been done to explore the opposite direction of influence such that one’s cultural orientation determines one’s choice between first-person singular versus plural pronouns. The authors conducted three studies to examine the effects of one’s cultural orientation on one’s use of first-person possessive pronouns. Results show that, compared to their individualistic counterparts, participants who have a collectivistic orientation, chronically or temporarily by priming, preferred to use first-person plural possessive pronouns.

Research in culture and psychology: past lessons and future challenges

Since the dawn of psychology as a science, conceptual and methodological questions have accompanied research at the intersection of culture and psychology. We review some of these questions using two dominant concepts-independent versus interdependent social orientation and analytic versus holistic cognitive style. Studying the relationship between culture and psychology can be difficult due to sampling restrictions and response biases. Since these challenges have been mastered, a wealth of research has accumulated on how culture influences cognition, emotion, and the self. Building on this work, we outline a set of new challenges for culture and psychology. Such challenges include questions about conceptual clarity, within-cultural and subcultural variations (e.g., variations due to social class), differentiation and integration of processes at the group versus individual level of analysis, modeling of how cultural processes unfold over time, and integration of insights from etic and emic methodological approaches. We review emerging work addressing these challenges, proposing that future research on culture and psychology is more exciting than ever. WIREs Cogn Sci 2014, 5:1-14. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1267 CONFLICT OF INTEREST: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Research in culture and psychology

Since the dawn of psychology as a science, conceptual and methodological questions have accompanied research at the intersection of culture and psychology. We review some of these questions using two dominant concepts-independent versus interdependent social orientation and analytic versus holistic cognitive style. Studying the relationship between culture and psychology can be difficult due to sampling restrictions and response biases. Since these challenges have been mastered, a wealth of research has accumulated on how culture influences cognition, emotion, and the self. Building on this work, we outline a set of new challenges for culture and psychology. Such challenges include questions about conceptual clarity, within-cultural and subcultural variations (e.g., variations due to social class), differentiation and integration of processes at the group versus individual level of analysis, modeling of how cultural processes unfold over time, and integration of insights from etic and emic methodological approaches. We review emerging work addressing these challenges, proposing that future research on culture and psychology is more exciting than ever. WIREs Cogn Sci 2014, 5:1-14. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1267 CONFLICT OF INTEREST: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

When a New Tool Is Introduced in Different Cultural Contexts Individualism–Collectivism and Social Network on Facebook

What will happen if a new tool is introduced to different cultures? What if the tool can potentially bridge those cultures? Will it be used in the same way across cultures and contribute to a decrease in cultural differences? Or will it be used in culturally appropriate ways and eventually integrated into preexisting cultural practices? To answer these questions, we predicted and examined cultural differences in the use of Facebook focusing on social networks. In support of the prediction, the present work found that users in individualistic cultures had more ego-centric networks (i.e., members of networks were connected via the self) than users in collectivistic cultures. The results were consistent across a two-culture comparison and a multicultural analysis across 49 nations. Additional findings suggest that (a) living in individualistic/collectivistic cultures are closely linked to these differences in social networks and (b) the individualism–collectivism may have stronger influences than ecological factors that gave rise to it.