Culture and decision making

1. Culture and decision making

2. Cognitive universals? • Psychology has looked for cognitive universals • Piagetian vs. Vygotskian modes • Piaget: Fixed universal stages of thought culminating in formal logical operations • Very individual-based • Vygotsky: Deep influence of culture on cognition • Much more collective

3. Individualism vs. Collectivism • Cultural studies has focused on this dimension • Western culture is very individual oriented • Agency of individual people • Objects are identified individually • Independent of context • Determines what an object ‘is’ • Locus of causes is in specific objects • The ideal of reasoning is logic • Reasoning should be free from contradiction

4. Collectivism • East Asian cultures tend to be collectivist • Collective culture promotes relational thinking • Agency is part of the collection of individuals • Causality resides in situations • Objects are identified with respect to a field • Contradiction may be embraced • People may be more prone to see both sides of an issue • Seeking a third-way to solve conflicts

5. Dialectical reasoning • Appreciation for contradiction • Western culture seeks one solution or another • Finds certain outcomes to be surprising • Scientific reasoning seeks a winning theory • May have hampered the development of physics • Source of motion was placed within objects • Eastern culture embraces contradiction • Proverbs embody contradictions • Seeks compromise solutions in solving dilemmas • May have hampered science in Eastern cultures • Outcomes were not seen as surprising and so new theories were not required

6. Object identification and memory • Western culture • People tend to dis-embed objects from context • Memory for objects not strongly influenced by the context in which the object was seen • Eastern culture • People tend to view objects within a field • Memory for objects is more strongly affected by the context in which the object was seen

7. Risk and culture • Cushion hypthesis (Hsee and Weber) • Members of Eastern cultures have larger social networks than do members of Western cultures • This social network makes members of Eastern cultures more tolerant of financial risks • Members of Eastern cultures may be more risk-seeking for gains

8. Promotion, prevention & culture • Western cultures • More chronically promotion focused • Eastern cultures • More chronically prevention focused • Some have manipulated this experimentally • Focusing people on individuals leads to a promotion focus • Focusing people on relationship to a collective leads to a prevention focus

9. Summary • Much work to be done on this dimension • Individualism • Collectivism • Not a pure distinction • Both cultures have some elements of each • Still, effects of culture are strong.