Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Challenges to the Study of Cultural Variation in Cognition

  • Published:
Review of Philosophy and Psychology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We describe seven challenges that confront the kind of cross-cultural research currently practiced in experimental philosophy, illustrating them in an example in which intuitions about moral responsibility were studied in participants in four different countries. The seven challenge are (1) defining culture, (2) finding representative samples, (3) defining cognition, (4) task variation, (5) ecological validity, (6) interpreting the results, and (7) conducting ethical research. We suggest that these challenges can be overcome or avoided by attending to the ways cognition arises in everyday life, and briefly describe an approach which regards culture not as an independent variable but as the medium of human action and human life, and which regards cognition as situated in time and place.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Baldwin, J.R., S.L. Faulkner, M.L. Hecht, and S.L. Lindsley, eds. 2006. Redefining culture: Perspectives across the disciplines. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bartlett, F. 1958. Thinking: An experimental and social study. Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beins, B.C. 2019. Methodological and conceptual issues in cross-cultural research. In Cross-Cultural Psychology: Contemporary Themes and Perspectives, ed. K.D. Keith, 59–81. Wiley-Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berry, J.W. 2000. Cross-cultural psychology: A symbiosis of cultural and comparative approaches. Asian Journal of Social Psychology 3 (3): 197–205.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boas, F. 1896. The limitations of the comparative method of anthropology. Science 4 (103): 901–908.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boesch, E.E. 1996. The seven flaws of cross-cultural psychology: The story of conversion. Mind, Culture, and Activity 3 (1): 2–10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brewer, J., M. Gelfand, J.C. Jackson, I.F. MacDonald, P.N. Peregrine, P.J. Richerson, et al. 2017. Grand challenges for the study of cultural evolution. Nature Ecology & Evolution 1 (3): 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0070.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bronfenbrenner, U. 1988. Interacting systems in human development. Research paradigms: Present and future. In Persons in context: Developmental processes, ed. N. Bolger, A. Caspi, G. Downey, and M. Moorehouse, 25–49. Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cannonieri, G.C., L. Bonilha, P.T. Fernandes, F. Cendes, and L.M. Li. 2007. Practice and perfect: Length of training and structural brain changes in experienced typists. Neuroreport 18 (10): 1063–1066.

    Google Scholar 

  • Central Intelligence Agency. 2021. The World Factbook. Retrieved Mar 12, 2021, from https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook

  • Chen, F.F. 2008. What happens if we compare chopsticks with forks? The impact of making inappropriate comparisons in cross-cultural research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95 (5): 1005–1018. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013193.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cole, M. 1990. Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline? In Nebraksa symposium on motivation 1989, ed. J.J. Berman. University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, M. 1996. Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, M., and B. Means. 1981. Comparative studies of how people think: An introduction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, M., and M. Packer. 2019. Cognition and culture. In Cross-cultural psychology: Contemporary themes and perspectives (2nd ed., pp. 243-270), ed. K.D. Keith. Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, M., J. Gay, J.A. Glick, and D.W. Sharp. 1971. The cultural context of learning and thinking. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, M., L. Hood, and R.P. McDermott. 1997. Concepts of ecological validity: Their differing implications for comparative cognitive research. In Mind, culture, and activity: Seminal papers from the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, ed. M. Cole, Y. Engestrom, and O. Vasquez, 49–56. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, M., Y. Engestrom, and O. Vasquez, eds. 1999. Mind, culture, and activity: Seminal papers from the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • D’Andrade, R.G., and A.K. Romney. 1964. Summary of participants’ discussion. American Anthropologist 66 (3): 230–242. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1964.66.3.02a00910.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dehaene, S., L. Cohen, J. Morais, and R. Kolinsky. 2015. Illiterate to literate: Behavioural and cerebral changes induced by reading acquisition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 16 (4): 234–244.

    Google Scholar 

  • Delon-Martin, C., J. Plailly, P. Fonlupt, A. Veyrac, and J.P. Royet. 2013. Perfumers’ expertise induces structural reorganization in olfactory brain regions. Neuroimage 68: 55–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.11.044.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diamond, J. 1997. Guns, germs and steel: The fates of human societies. New York: Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, B.D., and H.J. Stam. 2015. Crisis? What crisis? Cross-cultural psychology’s appropriation of cultural psychology. Culture & Psychology 21 (3): 293–317. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X15601198.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ember, C.R. 1977. Cross-cultural cognitive studies. Annual Review of Anthropology 6 (1): 33–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Experimental philosophy. 2021. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Experimental_philosophy&oldid=1041448611

  • Geertz, C. 1973. The interpretation of cultures. New York: Harper and Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodenough, F.L. 1936. The measurement of mental functions in primitive groups. American Anthropologist 38 (1): 1–11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Groussard, M., F. Viader, B. Landeau, B. Desgranges, F. Eustache, and H. Platel. 2014. The effects of musical practice on structural plasticity: The dynamics of grey matter changes. Brain and Cognition 90: 174–180. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2014.06.013.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haddon, A.C., W.H.R. Rivers, C.G. Seligman, C.S. Myers, W. McDougall, S.H. Ray, and A. Wilkin. 1901. Reports of the Cambridge anthropological expedition to Torres Straits. London: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haidt, J., and C. Joseph. 2007. The moral mind: How five sets of innate intuitions guide the development of many culture-specific virtues, and perhaps even modules. In The innate mind, Volume 3, ed. P. Carruthers, S. Laurence, and S. Stich, 367–392. New York: Oxford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hänggi, J., K. Brütsch, A.M. Siegel, and L. Jäncke. 2014. The architecture of the chess player’s brain. Neuropsychologia 62: 152–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.07.019.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harkness, S., and C.M. Super. 1977. Why African children are so hard to test. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 285 (1): 326–331. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1977.tb29360.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J. 2020. The weirdest people in the world: How the West became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous. Straus and Giroux: Farrar.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J., S.J. Heine, and A. Norenzayan. 2010. The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (2-3): 61–83.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hommel, B., and L.S. Colzato. 2010. Religion as a control guide: On the impact of religion on cognition. Zygon 45 (3): 596–604.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hui, C.H., and H.C. Triandis. 1985. Measurement in cross-cultural psychology: A review and comparison of strategies. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 16 (2): 131.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hutchins, E. 1983. Understanding Micronesian navigation. In Mental models, ed. D. Gentner and A.L. Stevens, 191–225. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hutchins, E. 1995. Cognition in the wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jahoda, G. 2012. Critical reflections on some recent definitions of “culture”. Culture & Psychology 18 (3): 289–303. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X12446229.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jensen Mækelæ, M., and G. Pfuhl. 2019. Deliberate reasoning is not affected by language. PLoS One 14 (1): e0211428. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0211428.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kihlstrom, J.F. 2020. Ecological validity and “ecological validity”. Perspectives on Psychological Science 5 (1). https://doi.org/10.1037/1522-3736.5.1.536c.

  • Kim, U., K.-S. Yang, and K.-K. Hwang. 2006. Indigenous and cultural psychology: Understanding people in context. Springer Science & Business Media.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirshner, D., and J.A. Whitson, eds. 1997. Situated cognition: Social, semiotic, and psychological perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knobe, J. 2011. Thought experiments. Scientific American 305 (5): 56–59.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knobe, J., W. Buckwalter, S. Nichols, P. Robbins, H. Sarkissian, and T. Sommers. 2012. Experimental philosophy. Annual Review of Psychology 63: 81–99. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100350.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition (LCHC). 1979. What’s cultural about cross-cultural psychology? Annual Review of Psychology 30: 145–172.

    Google Scholar 

  • Labov, W. 1969. The logic of nonstandard English. Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics: 1–43.

  • Lave, J. 1977. Cognitive consequences of traditional apprenticeship training in West Africa. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 8 (3): 177–180.

    Google Scholar 

  • LCHC. 2013. The LCHC Polyphonic autobiography. Retrieved April 29, 2021, from https://lchcautobio.ucsd.edu/

  • Li, J., Z. Zhang, and R. Nisbett. 2004. Is it culture or is it language? Examination of language effects in cross-cultural research on categorization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87 (1): 57–65.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lufityanto, G. 2016. Measuring Intuition in Sensory Decision Making. PhD thesis. University of New South Wales.

  • Marcus, G.E. 1997. The uses of complicity in the changing mise-en-scene of anthropological fieldwork. Representations 59: 85–108.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matsumoto, D., & Van de Vijver, F. J. R. (Eds.). (2010). Cross-cultural research methods in psychology. Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morgan, L.H. 1877. Ancient society; or, researches in the lines of human progress from savagery, through barbarism to civilization. Holt and Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nadel, S.F. 1937. Experiments on culture psychology. Africa: Rivista Trimestrale di Studi e Documentazione dell’Istituto Italo-Africano 10: 421–435.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nichols, S., and J. Knobe. 2007. Moral responsibility and determinism: The cognitive science of folk intuitions. Nous 41 (4): 663–685.

    Google Scholar 

  • Packer, M.J. 1985. The structure of moral action: A hermeneutic study of moral conflict. Contributions to Human Development, whole number 13.

  • Rohner, R.P. 1977. Why cross-cultural research? Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 285 (1): 3–12.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosaldo, R. 1989. Imperialist nostalgia. Representations 26: 107–122.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sarkissian, H., A. Chatterjee, F. De Brigard, J. Knobe, S. Nichols, and S. Sirker. 2010. Is belief in free will a cultural universal? Mind and Language 25 (3): 346–358.

    Google Scholar 

  • Saxe, G.B. 1988. The mathematics of child street vendors. Child Development 59 (5): 1415–1425.

    Google Scholar 

  • Segall, M.H., W.J. Lonner, and J.W. Berry. 1998. Cross-cultural psychology as a scholarly discipline: On the flowering of culture in behavioral research. American Psychologist 53 (10): 1101.

    Google Scholar 

  • Serpell, R. 1979. How specific are perceptual skills? A cross-cultural study of pattern reproduction. British Journal of Psychology 70 (3): 365–380. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1979.tb01706.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shweder, R.A. 1990. Cultural psychology: What is it? In Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development, ed. J.W. Stigler, R.A. Shweder, and G. Herdt. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shweder, R.A. 2007. An anthropological perspective: The revival of cultural psychology — some premonitions and reflections. In Handbook of cultural psychology, ed. S. Kitayama and D. Cohen, 821–836. Guilford Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stich, S., and K. Tobia. 2016. Experimental philosophy and the philosophical tradition. In Blackwell companion to experimental philosophy, ed. W. Buckwalter and J. Sytsma, 5–21. Wiley Online Library.

    Google Scholar 

  • Talhelm, T., X. Zhang, S. Oishi, C. Shimin, D. Duan, X. Lan, and S. Kitayama. 2014. Discovery of large-scale psychological differences within China explained by rice vs. wheat agriculture. Science 344 (6184): 603–608.

    Google Scholar 

  • Titchener, E.B. 1916. On ethnological tests of sensation and perception with special reference to tests of color vision and tactile discrimination described in the reports of the Cambridge anthropological expedition to Torres Straits. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 55 (3): 204–236.

    Google Scholar 

  • Triandis, H.C. 2000. Dialectics between cultural and cross-cultural psychology. Asian Journal of Social Psychology 3 (3): 185–195.

    Google Scholar 

  • Triandis, H.C., R.S. Malpass, and A.R. Davidson. 1971. Cross-cultural psychology. Biennial Review of Anthropology 7: 1–84.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tuhiwai Smith, L. 1999. Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London & Dunedin, New Zealand: Zed Books & University of Otago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Valsiner, J. 2007. Culture in minds and societies: Foundations of cultural psychology. SAGE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van de Vijver, F.J.R., A. Chasiotis, and S.M. Breugelmans. 2011. Fundamental questions in cross-cultural psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Inwagen, P. 2013. A modal argument for incompatibilism. In The Philosophy of Free Will: Essential Readings from the Contemporary Debates, ed. P. Russell and O. Deery, 117–125. Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Viveiros de Castro, E. 2012. Cosmological perspectivism in Amazonia and elsewhere. Manchester: HAU Network of Ethnographic Theory.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whiting, B.B. 1976. The problem of the packaged variable. In The developing individual in a changing world, ed. K.F. Riegel and J.A. Meacham, 303–309. De Gruyter Mouton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Woollett, K., and E. Maguire. 2011. Acquiring “the Knowledge” of London’s layout drives structural brain changes. Current Biology 21: 2109–2114.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bogotá, Colombia

    Martin J. Packer

  2. University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Michael Cole

Authors
  1. Martin J. Packer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Michael Cole
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

None

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Packer, M.J., Cole, M. The Challenges to the Study of Cultural Variation in Cognition. Rev.Phil.Psych. 14, 515–537 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-022-00637-x

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-022-00637-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation