Integrating culture-as-situated-cognition and neuroscience prediction models

Abstract

The interface of mind, brain, culture, and behavior has provided rich ground for speculation, theorizing and empirical research. To date, theorizing has focused on between-country difference and much research has focused on quasi-experimental design in which groups are compared and the reasons for found differences imputed to be about the culture-brain interface. The authors of this paper argue for a somewhat different approach. We conceptualize culture as a set of human universals that are dynamically triggered in context. In doing so we integrate culture-as-situated-cognition (CSC) and neuroscience prediction (NP) models to yield a number of novel predictions: first, all societies include cues triggering both individualistic and collectivistic mindsets. Second, whether a mindset is triggered by a particular cue and what a triggered mindset implies for judgment, affective and behavioral response depends on spreading activation within the associative network activated at that moment. Third, universal features of culture are likely necessary from an evolutionary perspective; societies develop and sustain specific instantiations of these universals whether or not these particular instantiations were ever optimal, simply because they are the way ‘we’ do things. The CSC–NP model explains why models that assume fixed differences do not always find behavioral differences; effects are probabilistic, not deterministic. It also explains why models that assume that particular cultural practices are functional are unlikely to be supported. We review extant studies that combine neuroscientific and priming methods and highlight what needs to be done in future studies to address gaps in current understanding of the mind–brain–culture–behavior interface.