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Multicultural Minds
Multicultural
Minds
A Dynamic
Constructivist Approach to Culture and
Cognition
Ying-yi
Hong
Michael W.
Morris
Chi-yue
Chiu
Ver6nica
Benet-Martfnez
The authors
present a new approach to culture and cog-
nition, which
focuses on the dynamics through which spe-
cific pieces of
cultural knowledge (implicit theories) be-
come operative
in guiding the construction of meaning
from a
stimulus. Whether a construct comes to the fore in
a perceiver's
mind depends on the extent to which the
construct is
highly accessible (because of recentexposure).
In a series of
cognitive priming experiments, the authors
simulated the
experience of bicultural individuals (people
who have
internalized two cultures) of switching between
different
cultural frames in response to culturally laden
symbols. The
authors discuss how this dynamic. construc-
tivist approach
illuminates (a) when cultural constructsare
potent drivers
of behavior and (b) how bicultural individ-
uals may
control the cognitive effects of culture.
A
lthough the
multiplicity of cultural identities and
influences
is hardly a new
phenomenon, it is one
increasingly
discussed. In contemporary popular
discourse, it is
becoming increasingly rare to hear the word
cultural
without the
prefix
multi-.
Multicultural
experience,
however, has been
underinvestigated in psychological re-
search on culture,
particularly within the most prominent
research paradigm
of cross-culturalpsychology (see Segall,
Lonner, &
Berry, 1998). There are several reasons for this.
First, somewhat
obviously, methodological orientations in-
fluence a
researcher's choice of topics, and culture has been
assessed primarily
as an individual difference, with the
methods for its
evaluation developed by clinical and per-
sonality
researchers to distinguish types of persons. Insofar
as the
cross-cultural method relies on uncovering differ-
ences across
cultural groups (usually indexed by national-
ity), the
influence of multiple cultures on an individual
merely creates
error variance. Second, on a more subtle
level, the
theoretical assumptions predominant in cross-
cultural
scholarship have impeded an analysis of the dy-
namics of
multiple cultures in the same mind. The effort to
identify the
knowledge that varies between but not within
large cultural
groups has led to the conceptualization of
cultural
knowledge in terms of very general constructs,
Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology
Stanford
University
University of
Hong Kong
University of
Michigan
such as
individualistic as opposed to collectivist value
orientations,
which apply to all aspects of life (Segall et al.,
1998). With the
emphasis on domain-general constructs
has come the
assumption that the influence of culture on
cognition is
continual and constant. Cultural knowledge is
conceptualized to
be like a contact lens that affects the
individual's
perceptions of visual stimuli all of the time.
This conception
unfortunately leaves little room for a sec-
ond internalized
culture within an individual's psychology.
In sum, the
methods and assumptions of cross-cultural
psychology have
not fostered the analysis of how individ-
uals incorporate
more than one culture.
Our introduction
of an alternative approach to culture
takes as a point
of departure a commonly reported experi-
ence, which we
call
frame
switching,
among
bicultural
individuals.
While frame switching, the individual shifts
between
interpretive frames rooted in different cultures in
response to cues
in the social environment (LaFromboise,
Coleman, &
Gerton, 1993). To capture how bicultural
individuals
switch between cultural lenses, we adopt a
conceptualization
of internalized culture as a network of
discrete,
specificconstructs that guide cognition only when
they come to the
fore in an individual's mind. Fortunately,
theories and
methods have beendeveloped in cognitive and
socialpsychology,
such as the technique of cognitive prim-
Editor's
note.
Denise C. Park
served as action editor for this article.
Authors
note.
Ying-yi Hong,
Division of Social Science, Hong Kong
University of
Science and Technology. Hong Kong; Michael W. Morris,
Graduate School
of Business, Stanford University; Chi-yue Chiu, Depart-
ment of
Psychology. University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; Verdnica
Benet-Martfnez,
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan.
Preparation of
this article was supported by Research Grants
HKU7045/99H and
HKUST6lR2/98H from the Research Grants Council
of the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region, China. We thank
Robert
Gore,
Steven Heine,
Emiko Kashima, Hazel Markus, Richard
Nisbert, Barry
Sautman. Virgina Unkefer, and Robert Wyer for their
comments on an
earlier version of this article.
Correspondence
conceming this article should be addressed to
Ying-yi Hong,
Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University of
Science and
Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong. Electronic mail
709
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Ying-yi
Hong
Photo by Imun
Poon
ing, to
manipulate through experiment which of the con-
structs in an
individual~s mind comes to the fore (for a
review, see
Higgins, 1996). We illustrate in this article how
this
conceptualization creates a set of new methods that
involves
bicultural participants testing the consequences of
culture. These
methods offer greater internal validity than
do the
quasi-experimental comparisons typically relied on
in
cross-cultural research. After reviewing studies of cul-
tural frame
switching, we then discuss how this approach
elucidates other
topics, such as the relation between cul-
tural beliefs
and action, the role of culture in emotions and
motivations, and
the process of acculturation. This ap-
proach
illuminates not only the experiences of bicultural
individuals but
also the more general roles that culture
plays in mental
and emotional life.
Frame
Switching
Bicultural
individuals are typically described as people
who have
internalized two cultures to the extent that both
cultures are
alive inside of them. Many bicultural individ-
uals report that
the two internalized cultures take turns in
guiding their
thoughts and feelings (LaFromboise et al.,
1993; Phinney
& Devich-Navarro, 1997). This is interest-
ing because it
suggests that (a) internalized cultures are not
necessarily
blended and (b) absorbing a second culture
does not always
involve replacing the original culture with
the new one.
Classical scholarship on African Americans,
for instance,
describes movement back and forth between
"two souls, two
thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two
warring ideals"
(DuBois, 1903/1989, p.
5).
Ethnographies
of Asian
Americans and Hispanic Americans, among other
groups, describe
switches between mindsets rooted in dif-
ferent cultures.
Consider, for example, the following expe-
rience of a
Mexican American individual:
At home with my
parents and grandparents the only acceptable
language was
Spanish; actually that's all they really understood.
Everything was
really Mexican, but at the same time they wanted
me to speak good
English.
...
But at school, I
felt really different
because everyone
was American, including me. Then I would go
home
in the afternoon
and be Mexican again. (quoted in Padilla,
1994, p.
30)
This example
illustrates that frame switching may occur in
response to cues
such as contexts (home or school) and
symbols
(language) that are psychologically associated
with one culture
or theother. Reports of frame switching at
work arecommon
in the literature on minority or expatriate
employees (e.g.,
Bell, 1991). Similar experiences are re-
ported by
ethnographers during fieldwork:
t found myself
constantly flip-flopping...
.
The longer
Ilived in
Samoa, the more
I wasable to use theSamoans' cultural resources
the flow of my
everyday experiences was increasingly filtered
through Samoan
models. (Shore, 1996, p. 6)
A Dynamic
Constructivist Analysis
To understand
frame switching in bicultural individuals,
we have adopted
an approach influenced by constructivist
approaches to
culture in several disciplines and by contem-
porary social
psychological research on the dynamics of
knowledge
activation. A first premise is that a culture is not
internalized in
the form of an integrated and highly general
structure, such
as an overall mentality, worldview, or value
orientation.
Rather, culture is internalized in the form of a
loose network of
domain-specific knowledge structures,
such as
categories and implicit theories (Bruner, 1990;
D'Andrade, 1984;
Shore, 1996; Strauss, 1992).
A
second
premise is that
individuals can acquire more than one such
cultural meaning
system, even if these systems contain
conflicting
theories. That is, contradictory or conflicting
constructs can
be simultaneously possessed by an individ-
ual; they simply
cannot simultaneously guide cognition.
The key to this
distinction is that possessing a particular
construct does
not entail relying on it continuously; only a
small subset of
an individual's knowledge comes to the
fore and guides
the interpretation of a stimulus. This dy-
namic
constructivist approach differs in its conception of
culture from
cross-cultural psychology, yet it is a comple-
mentary rather
than a rival approach in that it builds on
previous
insights and draws attention to novel research
questions and
novel accounts of phenomena, such as frame
switching.
A basic research
question relevant to frame switching
is how
particular pieces of cultural knowledge become
operative in
particular interpretive tasks. To investigate this
question, we
have drawn concepts and methods from social
psychological
research on how stereotypes, schemas, and
other constructs
move in and out of operation (Fiske,
1998). A key
concept is that the pieces of an individual's
knowledge vary
in
accessibility
(Higgins, 1996;
Wyer &
Srull, 1986).
The more accessible a construct, the more
710
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American
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Michael
W.
Morris
Photo by S.
G!odfelter
likely it is to
come to the fore in the individual's mind and
guide
interpretation.
But what
determines whether a piece of knowledge is
highly
accessible? A long-standing hypothesis in cognitive
and social
psychology holds that a construct, such as a
category, is
accessible to the extent that it has been acti-
vated by recent
use (Bruner, 1957). Abundant evidence for
this comes from
experiments in which researchers manip-
ulate whether
participants are exposed to a word or image
related to
aconstruct (a
prime)
and then measure
the extent
to which the
participants' subsequent interpretations of a
stimulus are
influenced by the primed construct (for a
review, see
Higgins, 1996). For example, in one experi-
ment (Chiu et
al., 1998), participants were primed either
with pictures of
a masculine man and a feminine woman or
with
gender-unrelated (control) pictures. Later, in a pur-
portedly
unrelated task, they were asked to interpret an
ambiguous
behavior (e.g., "Donna's friend ordered a cof-
fee, and so did
Donna"). Participants primed with gender-
related pictures
constructed interpretations that showed an
influence of
gender stereotypes: For example, they judged
Donna to be
dependent on others in making decisions.
Participants in
the control condition did not make such
interpretations.
In this experiment, gender-related pictures
activated
stereotypes in the minds of participants, which
then made it
more likely that these stereotypes became
operative and
guided inferences when participants sought
to make sense of
the behavioral stimulus.
An important
design feature in many priming studies
is that the
priming is presented to participants as part of an
unrelated
experiment, and participants are not aware of its
influence in the
interpretive task. Some studies have primed
constructs that
are one step removed from the constructthat
applies to the
interpretive task. For example, priming with
words related to
African Americans led White participants
to interpret
hostility in stimulus behavior by race-unspeci-
fied actors
(Gaertner & McLaughlin, 1983); priming with
cues with
positive affective valence led participants to
subsequently
rely on person categories having the same
affective
valence (Niedenthal & Cantor, 1986). These
priming effects
rely on the spillover or spread of activation
from one
construct to other linked constructs within a
network of
constructs that are psychologically associated
for participants
(see Anderson, 1976).
In our research
on frame switching, we used the
concept of
accessibility and the technique of priming to
model the
phenomenon experimentally. We posited that
bicultural
individuals who have been socialized into two
cultures, A and
B, have, as a result, two cultural meaning
systems or
networks of cultural constructs, which can be
referred to as
A' and B'. Accordingly, priming bicultural
individuals with
images from Culture A would spread
activation
through Network A', elevating the accessibility
of the network's
categories and the implicit theories the
network
comprises. Likewise, priming with images from
Culture B would
spread activation through Network B',
elevating the
accessibility of the constructs that network
comprises. In
looking for the ideal primes to test this
account, we
searched for symbols that would activate con-
structs central
to specific cultural networks yet not so
directly related
to the interpretive task. Thus, participants
could not
consciously connect the prime with the stimulus.
We turned to
iconic cultural symbols.
Icons:
Triggers of Cultural Knowledge
Icons have been
called "magnets of meaning" in that they
connect many
diverse elements of cultural knowledge
(Betsky, 1997).
Like religious icons, cultural icons are
images created
or selected for their power to evoke in
observers a
particular frame of mind in a "powerful and
relatively
undifferentiated way" (Ortner, 1973, p. 1339).
The potency and
distinctiveness of icons make them ideal
candidates for
primes that would spread activation in a
network of
cultural constructs. Some examples of central
icons in the
mainstream American and Chinese cultural
traditions are
shown in Figure 1. Exposing Chinese Amer-
ican bicultural
individuals to American icons should acti-
vate
interpretive constructs in their American cultural
knowledge
network; exposing the same individuals to Chi-
nese icons
instead should activate constructs in their Chi-
nese cultural
knowledge network.
Interpreting
Behavior of Individual and
Group
Actors: A Litmus Test
Our research
also required an interpretive task that is in-
fluenced by
cultural knowledge in a well-understood man-
ner. Here the
legacy of cross-cultural psychology is invalu-
able in that we
can seek to replicate, by priming different
cultures within
the minds of bicultural individuals, the
patterns of
differences that have been discovered in previ-
ous
cross-national comparative studies. Many such
patterns
July
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Chi-yue
Chiu
Photo by man
Poon
exist. For
example, in self-description tasks, North Amer-
icans are
consistently more likely than Japanese to make
self-enhancing
statements (Kitayama & Markus, 1994). An
important
consideration, however, is that many Japanese
American
biculturals are, no doubt, aware of this differ-
ence. Hence,
exposing bicultural individuals to cultural
icons could
affect this difference either through unobtru-
sive priming of
knowledge structures or through demand
characteristics.
We needed a stimulus task that participants
would not
consciously connect to cultural icons. In short,
the task could
not be transparently related to culture.
To develop a
test for cultural priming that would be
nontransparent
to participants, we turned to interpretations
of social
behavior. Social psychologists have long studied
how perceivers
attribute the behavior of others to causes,
noting
systematic biases, such as tracing an individual's
actions to
personality dispositions rather than other plausi-
ble factors such
as social context (Heider, 1958; Ross,
1977). Perhaps
the most famous evidence for this bias
came from
studies conducted by Heider and Simmel (1944)
in which
participants were presented with animatedfilms of
geometric
shapes, such as triangles and circles, that were
moving in
patterns suggestive of social interactions. Par-
ticipants tended
to interpret the films by ascribing motives
and
personalities to an individual shape. Heider (1958)
concludedthat
social information is interpreted by forming
units, primarily
the unit of an individual person. The person
unit then tends
to attract most of the perceiver's attention,
resulting
in
causal
attributions that overweigh internal per-
sonal factors
and underweigh factors in the surrounding
social
situation. Other researchers have studied
everyday
interactions in
which
this bias of
tracing an individual's
behavior to
dispositions leads to incorrectinterpretations of
the individual's
behavior and suboptimal ways of interact-
ing with him or
her (Jones & Harris, 1967; Morris, Larrick,
& Su, 1999).
Because of its pervasiveness and consequen-
tiality, this
dispositionist bias has been called the
funda-
mental
attribution error
(Ross,
1977).
Recent research
has allowed psychologists to identify
the role that
culture plays in shaping the dispositionist bias
in social
perception. Prompted by ethnographic accounts of
Chinese social
understanding (Hsu, 1953), Moms andPeng
(1994)
investigated the hypothesis that the tendency of
perceivers to
focus on individuals and interpret behavior in
terms of their
internal dispositions may be more marked in
North America
than in China. They reasoned that an im-
plicit theory
that individuals are autonomous relative to the
pressures of the
group is central to American culture,
whereas in
Chinese culture a more salient implicit theory
emphasizes that
individuals accommodate the greater au-
tonomy of groups
(So et al., 1999). In studies in which they
used several
methods, Morris and Peng showed that Amer-
ican
participants accorded more weight to an individual's
personal
dispositions, whereas Chinese participants ac-
corded more
weight to an individual's social context. Fur-
ther evidence
for the difference in implicit theories
emerged
from
studies directly
measuring generalized be-
liefs about
individuals versus social groups and institutions
(Chiu, Dweck,
Tong, & Fu, 1997). In a recent review of
studies
comparing NorthAmerican and East Asian perceiv-
ers, researchers
concluded that the sharpest differences in
Figure
1
Exampies of
Icanic Images in American and
Chinese
Cultures
American
Primes
********
~
**~*****
*
r
r*t
*-*
4
Chinese
Primes
U
A
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the weight
accorded to the contexts of constraints and
pressures imposed
by social groups (Choi, Nisbett, &
Norenzayan,
1999). Consistent with this indication that
East Asians
accord causal potency to social collectives, in
studies
of how
perceivers attribute actions by groups re-
searchers have
found that East Asians make attributions to
the dispositions
of groups more than Americans do (Me-
non, Morris,
Chiu, & Hong, 1999). In sum, cultural differ-
ences in the
attributional weight accorded to the disposi-
tions of
individuals versus groups are well documented.
An important
feature of attribution differences is that
they can be
studied with nontransparent methods. One of
the methods used
by Morris and Peng (1994) adapted
Heider' s
strategy of presenting animated films that partic-
ipants do not
consciously associate with social or cultural
topics. Morris
and Peng designed animated films of fish
featuring an
individual and a group in which it was am-
biguous whether
the individual's differing trajectory re-
flected internal
dispositions or the influence of thegroup. In
one type of
display, the individual fish swam outside of the
group, leaving
ambiguous whether the individual's separa-
tion reflected an
internal disposition (a leader leading other
fish) or pressure
from the group(an outcast being chased by
other fish). In
explaining the individual fish's behavior,
Chinese
participants attributed less to internal
disposition
of the fish in
front but more to the external (group) factors
than did American
participants (see Figure 2). This method
of measuring
cultural differences through the ways social
perceptions are
anthropomorphically projected onto ani-
mals has the
advantage that participants are unaware cul-
ture is relevant
to the task.
Cultural
Priming Studies
In a series of
studies, we experimentally
created
frame
switching among
bicultural individuals.
Next, we
review
three of the
studies. The first two studies used the priming
method to
replicate in bicultural individuals the cross-
national
attribution differences revealed by Morris and
Peng (1994). The
third study is a conceptual replication of
the first two
studies, but the dependent measures were
attributions for
a social event.
Bkultural
Participants
Who were the
bicultural individuals we recruited in the
studies? Our
initial studies involved Westernized Chinese
students in Hong
Kong. Although traditional Chinese val-
ues are
emphasized in the socialization processes in Hong
Kong (Ho, 1986),
contemporary university students in
Hong Kong are
acculturated with Western social beliefs
and values
(Bond, 1993). This is related to the fact that
Hong Kong was a
British-administrated territory for more
than a century.
Before 1997, English, not Chinese, was the
official
language of instruction in about 80% of the sec-
ondary schools
(Young, Giles, & Pierson, 1986). Further-
more, large
British and American expatriate communities
and the salient
presence of English-language television,
films, and so
forth means that Hong KongChinese students
Figure
2
A
DisplayAdapted From Morris, NisbeW
and Peng
(1995)
-H
INTERNAL
FORCE
fI
l~
I
2
3
4
I
S
EXTERNAL
FORCE
~
C
2
3
-
S
Note.
Paints A and C
mark the mean American and Chinese ratings, respec-
tively, on the
internal and external attribution scales. From `Causal Attribution
Across Domains
and Cultures," byM. W. Morris, R. E. Nisbett, and K.
Peng,
1995,
in D. Sperber,
D. Premack, and A. J. Premock, Cau.sa/
Cognition:
A
Multidisciplinary
Debate (pp. 577-612), Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
Copyright 1995
by Clarendon Press. Adapted with permission.
Veronica
Benet-
Martinez
attributions for
the cause of an individual's behavior lie in
July
2000
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713
have been
exposed to Euro-American social constructs
extensively.
Yet, although HongKong Chinese students are
rather
Westernized in some aspects of their self-concept
and value system
(see Bond & Cheung, 1981; Fo, 1999;
Triandis, Leung,
& Hui, 1990), they maintain their primary
social identity
as Hong Kong Chinese (Hong, Yeung, Chiu,
& Tong,
1999) and subscribe to core Chinese values (Chi-
nese Culture
Connection, 1987). In sum, Hong Kong Chi-
nese students in
the late 1990s belong to a population of
biculturally
socialized individuals.
In our later
experiment (reported in Hong, Morris,
Chiu, &
Benet-Martfnez, 2000), we tested a different group
of bicultural
individuals. These were China-born Califor-
nian college
students who had lived at least five years in a
Chinese society
and at least five years in North America
before attending
college. Whereas the Hong Kong bicul-
tural group
represented bicultural identification resulting
from extensive
Westernization of a society, the Chinese
American
grouprepresented bicultural identification result-
ing from
immigration: These are two primary ways that
culture moves
across territories to create multicultural so-
cieties (Hermans
& Kempen, 1998). Although we do not
report in this
article the study with Chinese American
biculturals,
results revealed that these participants recog-
nized and were
influenced by American and Chinese cul-
tural icons in
similar ways as were the members of the
Hong Kong
bicultural group.
Priming
Materials
We presented
Hong Kong Chinese students with a set of
cultural icons
designed to activate the associated social
theories that
produce cultural biases in attribution. In our
research we used
several kinds of icons. Some involved
symbols (e.g.,
the American flag vs. a Chinese dragon),
legendary
figures from folklore or popular cartoons (e.g.,
Superman vs.
Stone Monkey), famous people (e.g., Mari-
lyn Monroe vs. a
Chinese opera singer), and landmarks
(e.g., the
Capitol Building vs. the Great Wall). Several
prior studies
have demonstrated that exposure to such icons
activates the
corresponding cultural meaning system. For
instance, Hong,
Chiu, and Kung (1997, Experiment 1)
found that
exposure to these Chinese icons led Hong Kong
Chinese students
to increase their endorsement of Chinese
values.
Recently, Kemmelmeier and Winter (1998) found
that Americans
showed an elevated endorsement of inde-
pendence values
after being exposed to the American flag.
Initial
Tests
In one study
(Hong et al., 1997, Experiment 2), 303 Hong
Kong Chinese
undergraduate students were randomly as-
signed to the
American culture priming condition, the
Chinese culture
priming condition, or the control condition.
Participants in
the American culture priming condition
were shown six
pictures of American icons and were asked
to answer short
questions about the pictures (e.g., "Which
country does
this picture symbolize?" "Usethree adjectives
to describe the
character of the legendary figure in this
picture").
Participants in the Chinese culture priming con-
dition were
shown six pictures of Chinese icons and were
asked to answer
the same short questions. These conditions
were designed to
inject activation into American and Chi-
nese construct
networks, respectively, leading to elevated
accessibility of
their respective implicit theories about the
causality of
social events. Participants in the control con-
dition were
shown six drawings of geometric figures and
asked to
indicate where they thought there should be a
shade or a
shadow. This condition was designed to inject
no activation
into cultural knowledge networks but to oth-
erwise resemble
the cultural prime conditions.
Then, in an
allegedly unrelated task, participants were
given an
attribution task adapted from Morris and Peng
(1994). In this
measure, participants were shown a realistic
picture of a
fish swimming in front of a group of fish (see
Figure 3) and
asked to indicate on a 12-point scale why one
fish was
swimming in front of the group. A score of 1 on
thescale
meant
very
confident that it is because the onefish
is leading
the otherfish
(an internal
cause), and a score of
12
meant
very
confident that it is because the onefish is
being chased
by the otherfish
(an external
cause). Consis-
tent with the
pattern identified in cross-national studies
(Morris &
Peng, 1994), we expected that participants
would be less
inclined to interpret the individual fish's
behavior in
terms of the external social pressure after
American priming
than after Chinese priming. Indeed, as
predicted,
participants who were exposed to American pic-
tures were
significantly less confident in the external (vs.
internal)
explanation than were those who were exposed to
Chinese pictures
(see Figure 4). Participants in the control
condition fell
midway between the two culture priming
conditions.
In a second
experiment, we replicated the cultural
priming effect
with a less constricted measure of causal
attributions
(Hong et al., 1997, Experiment 3). Participants
were 75 Hong
Kong Chinese undergraduate students who
were randomly
assigned to the American culture priming
condition, the
Chinese culture priming condition, or the
control
condition. In the American culture priming
condi-
Figure
3
Stimulus
Material Used as the Attributianal Stimulus
in the First
Two Studies
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Figure
4
Results From
Two Studies That Demonstrated
Consistent
Cultural Priming Effects in External
Attributions
About Fish Behavior Among Hong
Kong Chinese
Bicultural Individuals
6.
~
5.8
.2
5.6
~g
5.4
5.2
~0<
5
~
4.8
4.6
~
4.4
4.2
4
American
Priming
Condition
50
~,
45
g
40
o
~
`~
35
~0
.0
5fl
o
c
30
g
25
20
0)
~
15
~
10
S
0
H-
American
Priming
Condition
Chinese
Priming
Condition
Control
Chinese
Condition
Priming
Condition
Note. Dato in
the top graph ore from Hongetal., 1997, Experiment 2, in which
participants
interpreted on a scale of 1
(veryconfident
thot
it
is becouse
the one
fish
is
leoding
the other
fish)
to 1 2
(very
confident
thot
it
is
becouse
the
one
fish
is being
chased by the other fish)
the social
behavior of
the
fish in figure
3. Data
in
the bottom graph
are from Hong et aI., 1997, Experiment 3, in which
participants
were asked
to
provide an
open.ended
response
about
the
social
behavior of the
fish in Figure 3. The explanations were coded on the basis of
Miller's (1984)
coding scheme.
tion,
participants were shown five pictures of American
icons and asked
to write 10 sentences to describe the
pictures in
terms of American culture. Participants in the
Chinese culture
priming condition were shown five pictures
of Chinese icons
and asked to write 10 sentences to de-
scribe the
pictures in terms of Chinese culture. In the
control
condition, participants were shown five pictures of
physical
landscapes and asked to write 10 sentences about
the landscapes.
This procedure lastedfor 10 minutes. Then,
in an ostensibly
unrelated task, participants were presented
with a picture
depicting a fish swimming in front of a
school of fish
and asked to write down what they thought
was the major
reason why the fish was swimming in front
of other fish.
This open-ended response format allowed
participants to
generate explanations that were not limited
-4
to the options
we provided. On the basis of Miller's (1984)
coding scheme,
the explanations were coded into infer-
ences of
internal properties or external properties. Again,
participants'
likelihood of generating external explanations
differed
significantly across the three experimental condi-
tions. As
predicted, fewer participants in the American
culture priming
condition than in the Chinese culture prim-
ing condition
generated explanations referring to the exter-
nal social
context (see Figure 4). The proportion of partic-
ipants who
generated external explanations in the control
condition fell
midway between the proportions of the two
culture priming
conditions, much as in the previous study.
A
Conceptual Replication
In our third
study, we checked that the priming effect is
replicated when
the task involves interpreting human ac-
tions. We asked
participants to make an attribution for a
character's
deviation from a diet-an action chosen be-
causeit has no
obvious connection to the cultural icons. We
randomly
assigned 234 Hong Kong Chinese high school
students to one
of three priming conditions. Participants in
the American
culture priming condition saw eight Ameri-
can icons and
wrote 10 sentences about American culture.
Participants in
the Chinese culture priming condition saw
eight Chinese
icons and wrote 10 sentences about Chinese
culture.
Participants in the control condition saw pictures of
natural
landscapes and wrote 10 sentences about the land-
scapes. This
priming manipulation lastedapproximately 15
minutes.
-~
Then
participants in all conditions read a story about
an overweight
boy who was advised by a physician not to
eat food with
high sugar content. One day, he and his
friends went to
a buffet dinner where a delicious-looking
cake was
offered. Despite its high sugar content, he ate it.
Afterreading
this briefdescription, participants were asked
to respond to
three sets of questions. Participants were
asked to
indicate the extent to which the boy's weight
problem was
caused by his dispositions. That is, they rated
factors such as
his personality dispositions (e.g., he lacks
the ability to
control himself, etc.) on a 10-point scale,
ranging from
1
(has very
little influence on his action)
to
10
(has a lot of
influence on his action).
In addition,
partici-
pants were asked
to indicate the extent to which the boy's
eating of the
cake was caused by pressures and constraints
of his external
social situation (situational reasons, friends'
pressure on him,
etc.) on the same 10-point scale.
As in the
previous two studies, participants in the
three priming
conditions differed on the weight accorded to
the external,
social situations as determinants of the boy's
behavior (see
Figure
5).
As predicted,
participants in the
American culture
priming condition accorded less weight
to external
social factors than did participants in the Chi-
nese culture
priming condition (see Figure 4). On this
measure,
participants in the control condition fell in be-
tween those in
the Chinese and American culture priming
conditions.
Participants in the three priming conditions,
however, did not
differ on the internal attribution measure.
This result is
consistent with the conclusions in Choi et
Control
Condition
July
2000
*
American
Psychologist
715
Figure
5
Results From
a Study That Demonstrated Cultural
Primiy
Effects in External Attributions About
a Boy s Diet
Deviation Among Hong Kong
Chinese
Bicultural Individuals
72
a
0
-
7.
0
.0
~
6.8
on
E
6.6
~
6.4-
6.2
-
6-
-4-
American
Priming
Condition
Control
Chinese
Condition
Priming
Condition
Note.
In this study,
participants were asked to rate the suggested external and
internal causes
of a boy's deviation from his diet on a scale of
I
(had
verylittle
influence on
isis action) to
10
(has a Jot
ofinfluence on his
action).
al.'s (1999)
review that cultural influences on attributions
for an
individual's behavior originate more from the dif-
ferential weight
placed on the external socialcontext (when
these factors
are salient) than from the differential weight
placed on the
actor's internal dispositions.
In sum, through
priming bicultural individuals, we
have replicated
the differences in attribution previously
identified in
quasi-experimental comparisons of groups in
different
countries. In so doing, we have experimentally
modeled the
phenomenon of frame switching in bicultural
individuals and
have demonstrated that multiple cultures
can direct
cognition within one individual's mind.
Extending the
Dynamic Constructivist
ApproacIi
We began by
analyzing the experience of frame switching
reported by
multicultural individuals in terms of a dynamic
constructivist
view of culture and cognition. We have ex-
perimentally
modeled the phenomenon through priming
experiments and
have found support for our predictions.
Culturally
conferred implicit theories became operative in
guiding the
interpretation of stimuli to the extent that their
accessibility
was high because of recent activation. Having
documented the
fruitfulness of a dynamic constructivist
approach to this
phenomenon in the experience of bicul-
tural
individuals, we now discuss its assumptions and im-
plications more
generally as a framework for analyzing the
role of culture
in psychology.
Our assumption
that cultural knowledge exists at the
level of
domain-specific categories and theories derives
from the
constructivist tradition that knowledge must be
specific enough
to constrain interpretations of stimulus
information
(Bruner, 1957; Heider, 1958). Bruner (1990)
and others have
explicated a constructivist view of cultural
knowledge as a
toolbox of discrete, specific constructs that
differs from the
dominant view in cross-cultural psychol-
ogy that
cultural knowledge exists as an integrated, do-
main-general
construct. Several contemporary anthropolo-
gists (Shore,
1996; Sperber, 1996) and sociologists (Di-
Maggio, 1997)
have staked out similar positions within
their
disciplines, challenging more general conceptions of
cultural
knowledge as foundational schemas or value oil-
entations.
However, our approach goes beyond these other
constructivist
approaches to culture in its emphasis on the
dynamics of
knowledge activation.
In describing
the dynamics of cultural knowledge, we
see great
potential in drawing on research concerning con-
struct
accessibility. Whereas the cross-cultural literature
generally
explains judgment and decision outcomes in
terms of whether
individuals in a given cultural group
possess agiven
knowledge construct, we see thepossession
of a construct
as a less critical variable than whether the
construct is
highly accessible (cf. Trafimow, Triandis, &
Goto, 1991). Our
guess is that the most important implicit
theories about
the social world are possessed by people
everywhere; the
variance across cultural groups probably
lies in the
relative accessibility of particular implicit theo-
ries, not in
whether the theories are possessed. In our
experiments
concerning frame switching in bicultural indi-
viduals, the
emphasis was on
temporary
accessibility
of
a
construct caused
by the priming of related constructs.
Equally useful
in theories of culture may be the related
notion that some
constructs attain
chronic
accessibility,
in
part because
accessibility is maintained by frequency of use
(Higgins, King,
& Mavin, 1982; for a review, see Higgins,
1996). Some
findings in the cross-cultural literature that
have been
interpreted in terms of whether participants
possess a
construct (i.e., a performance difference reflects
which
self-concepts individuals possess in Culture A vs.
Culture B) might
be fruitfully refrained in terms of chronic
accessibility
(i.e., a performance difference reflects which
self-concepts
are made chronically accessible in Culture A
vs. Culture B).
Another virtue of an account based on
accessibility is
that it points to how factors outside of the
individual
person-such as institutions, discourse, or rela-
tionships-might
prime cultural theories and keep these
theories
prominent in the minds of culture members.
Cross-cultural
researchers have been troubled at times
that the
influence of a given cultural construct does not
emerge
consistently when tasks are run under different
conditions.
Accessibility may provide an important clue to
understanding
this observation. Social cognition research-
ers have found
that some conditions create an episternic
motivation for
aquick reduction of ambiguity (the need for
cognitive
closure), and this increases the extent to which
perceivers work
top-down from accessible constructs, such
as cultural
theories, when constructing interpretations
(Kruglanski
& Webster, 1996). Consistent with the notion
-4-
716
July
2000
*
American
Psychologist
that the need
for closure amplifies cultural influence, in
recent research
it has been found that a high need for
closure fosters
the tendency to make attributions to indi-
vidual
dispositions among North Americans and the ten-
dency to make
attributions to the dispositional properties of
a group among
Chinese perceivers (Chiu, Morris, Hong, &
Menon, 2000).
More generally, cultural psychology may
benefit from the
incorporation of many of the insights in
social cognition
research about the moderating factors
(e.g., need for
cognition, availability of cognitive capacity)
that determine
when constructs become accessible and
when accessible
constructs have the most influence on
cognition. Many
of the processes and conditions that mod-
erate
perceivers' reliance on stereotypes and other knowl-
edge structures
may also affect their reliance on cultural
theories.
Stronger support may emerge for models of the
consequences of
culture once the moderating factors are
better
specified.
Implications
for Other Research
Areas
Methodology
The research
reviewed here shows that it is possible to
conduct
experimental studies on culture. In the same way
that
quasi-experimental cross-cultural studies added a new
tool for
cultural research with some advantages over eth-
nographic
observation, priming experiments offer a new
tool for
cultural research that has advantages over the
preexisting
methods. A first useof the priming method is to
explore the
content of cultural knowledge. This is usually
done by
analyzing the content of samples of conversation
and other
texts. An alternative method is to analyze the
content of
thoughts elicited by priming with cultural icons.
For example, by
priming North American perceivers with
pictures of the
American flag and querying their associa-
tions,
Kemmelmeier and Winter (1998) have been able to
analyze the
constellation of values associated with this
cultural icon.
Similarly, exposing Hong Kong Chinese to
pictures of
Chinese cultural icons leads to elevated en-
dorsement of
certain social values (Hong et al., 1997,
Experiment 1).
Thus, the culture priming technique creates
a new way to
uncover content of cultural knowledge.
A secondrole of
priming lies in establishing the causal
consequences of
cultural knowledge. Experiments with the
priming method
allow for true random assignment of par-
ticipants to
cultural conditions, thus providing tests of
culture's
consequences with greater internal validity than
that of tests
provided by the quasi-experimental method of
cross-national
studies. Hence, the priming method comple-
ments
cross-cultural comparisons in isolating the causal
role of
culture.
Language
as Prime
Aside from
cultural icons, language could also be an ef-
fective means
of activating cultural constructs. In fact,
considerable
research evidence shows language effects in
bilingual
individuals' responses to a wide range of psycho-
logical
inventories such as measures of personality (Earle,
1969; Ervin,
1964), values (Bond, 1983; Mann, Triandis,
Betancourt,
& Kashima, 1983), self-concept (Trafimow,
Silverman, Fan,
& Law, 1997), emotional expression (Mat-
sumoto &
Assar, 1992), or even other-person descriptions
(Hoffman, Lau,
& Johnson, 1986). A compelling explana-
tion for these
findings has been that for bilingual individ-
uals, the two
languages are often associated with two
different
cultural systems. In Bond's (1983) and Earle's
(1969) studies,
for instance, the responses of bilingual
Chinese were
more Western when they responded to the
original
(English) questionnaire than when they responded
to a Chinese
translation of it. Interestingly, Earle explained
these results
in dynamic constructionist terms. According
to him, these
bilingual individuals had learned Chinese at
home and
English at school and had, at the same time,
acquired two
distinct sets of cultural constructs reflecting
the two
languages' cultures. The Chinese version of the
questionnaire
activated the Chinese language culture, and
the English
version, the English language culture (see
Krauss &
Chiu, 1998). As such, the dynamic constructivist
approach could
help researchers to better understand the
research on
sociopersonality factors in bilingualism.
Moving
Beyond Cognition
Heretofore, we
have discussed the application of the dy-
namic approach
to culture solely in the study of cognition.
Clearly,
however, the priming method can be used in
analogous ways
to study emotions. This experimental tech-
nique can be
used to investigate the emotions triggered by
exposure to
cultural icons, and this may prove more inci-
sive than
trying to inferculture-emotion relationships from
cross-national
comparisons. Although research could com-
mence with the
study of a single culture, it would be
interesting to
see whether culturally distinct emotional
states could be
induced in bicultural individuals through
priming with
different icons.
It is also
interesting to explore the other side of this
question: What
emotions lead people to embrace cultural
icons and
cultural ideas more generally? Some evidence
that cultural
icons have more than a cold cognitive im-
pact comes from
work by Greenberg, Porteus, Simon, Py-
szczynski, and
Solomon
(1995),
in which they
demon-
strated that
individuals led to think abouttheir mortality are
subsequently
more respectful towardiconic cultural objects
(e.g., a flagor
crucifix). Central cultural symbols play akey
role in the
motivated identification of self with enduring
cultural
traditions.
At the same
time that the dynamic constructivist ap-
proach can be
extended more broadly, it is also important
to note that
this model of culturein terms of an individual's
knowledge
structures obviously does not capture all the
manifestations
of culture that matter. Culture exists in
many forms
other than knowledge in an individual's head
(see Kitayama
& Markus, 1994). Other carriers of culture,
such as
practices, have been identified by psychological
researchers
using the sociocultural approach (see Rogoff,
1990) and by
sociologists studying relationship patterns
July
2000
*
American
Psychologist
717
and
institutions (see Morris, Podolny, & Ariel, 1999).
Hence,
although the
activation of cultural
knowledge
may
have important
influenceson emotions andmotives as~ well
as judgments
and decisions, many interesting aspects of
culturemay not
be mediated by knowledge activation at all.
A complete
understanding of culture and psychology re-
quires that the
dynamic constructivist approach be comple-
mented by
analyses that are less knowledge-oriented.
Also, to a
large extent, cultures are shaped in relation
~o each other,
so the tension between cultures needs to be
part of a
comprehensive account of any single culture. This
is particularly
relevant in understanding the dynamics of a
multiply
acculturated individual. In our studies, we chose
individuals
identified with two cultures (North American
and Chinese)
that for the most part are not antagonistic to
each other. If
the two cultural groups an individual has
been
extensively exposed to involved intense political an-
tagonism (such
as Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia), present-
ing cultural
icons of one culture may elicit reactive iden-
tification with
the opposite culture (see Krauss & Chiu,
1998). Two
conclusions can be drawn from this point.
First, even
within studies of culture and cognition, re-
searchers need
to proceed with an awareness of the inter-
group and
political connotations of particular cultural
group
membership. Second, reaction against unwanted re-
minders of a
culture may be amenable to a dynamic con-
structivist
analysis. One possibility is that antagonism leads
to a
psychological linking of the two cultural networks, so
that activation
of the constructs from the antagonist culture
spreads to the
other culture. Another possibility is that
individuals
actively control the dynamics of construct ac-
cessibility
rather than being passively affected by them.
Then,
activating the antagonist culture may cause active
suppression and
thus would not yield any cultural priming
effect. These
possibilities can be explored in future
research.
The
Process of Acculturation
In addition to
creating an understanding of internalized
culture as an
antecedent variable, the dynamic constructiv-
ist approach
may lead to fresh insights about how culture
gets inside
minds in the first place, in other words, the
psychology of
acculturation. Theoretical models proposed
by Berry
(1988), Birman (1994), LaFromboise et al.
(1993), and
Phinney (1996) are useful in describing the
behavioral
(e.g., how active one is in ethnic organizations
and social
groups), motivational-attitudinal (e.g., how
much value is
given to assimilating into the mainstream
culture), or
phenomenological (e.g., how much conflict or
discrimination
is experienced in the new culture) aspects of
the
acculturation process. These models, however, focus on
the
outcome
of
acculturation more than on the process.
Individuals are
scored on the extent to which they have
absorbed the
new culture or retained the original one. The
dynamic
constructivist approach could supplement the tra-
ditional
approach by emphasizing the process of internal-
izing a new
culture, highlighting dynamics such as frame
switching that
many people experience in the process.
More important,
a dynamic constructivist approach
lends itself to
viewing acculturation as a more active pro-
cess. The end
result-thinking and behaving like a member
of the host
culture-is seen as a state, not a trait. This state
will occur when
interpretive frames from the host culture
are accessible.
We submit that individuals undergoing ac-
culturation, to
some extent, manage the process by control-
ling the
accessibility of cultural constructs. People desiring
to acculturate
quickly surround themselves with symbols
and situations
that prime the meaning system of the host
culture.
Conversely, expatriates desiring to maintain the
accessibility
of constructs from their home culture surround
themselves with
stimuli priming that culture. For example,
one of the
current authors, who is Spanish but has lived for
some years in
the United States, often surrounds herself
with Spanish
music, food, and paintings to keep alive her
Spanish ways of
thinking and feeling. Active processes of
priming oneself
may help multicultural individuals in their
ongoing effort
to negotiate and express their cultural iden-
tities. Future
research should investigate not only the out-
come of
acculturation but also the processes through which
individuals
navigate cultural transitions.
Conclusion
We have
proposed a dynamic constructivist approach to
culture and
cognition and have reported supportive evi-
dence. A
distinctive contribution of this approach is in
describing how
a given individual incorporates multiple
cultures and in
describing how and when particular pieces
of cultural
knowledge become operative in guiding an
individual's
construction of meaning. This less monolithic
view of culture
seems particularly appropriate at this time
of increasing
cultural interconnection. Across the world,
there is a
drift toward culturally polyglot, pluralistic soci-
eties. Yet, in
part because of the strain of negotiating
cultural
complexity, a countervailing resurgence of efforts
to separate
individuals into culturally "pure" groups also
exists. By
experimentally modeling frame switching
among
bicultural individuals, our model shows that re-
search on
"uncontaminated" cultural groups is not the only
viable way to
identify cultural effects on cognition. In sum,
a dynamic
constructivist approach may open new possibil-.
ities in
understanding culture and transcultural
experiences.
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Multicultural Minds
Multicultural
Minds
A Dynamic
Constructivist Approach to Culture and
Cognition
Ying-yi
Hong
Michael W.
Morris
Chi-yue
Chiu
Ver6nica
Benet-Martfnez
The authors
present a new approach to culture and cog-
nition, which
focuses on the dynamics through which spe-
cific pieces of
cultural knowledge (implicit theories) be-
come operative
in guiding the construction of meaning
from a
stimulus. Whether a construct comes to the fore in
a perceiver's
mind depends on the extent to which the
construct is
highly accessible (because of recentexposure).
In a series of
cognitive priming experiments, the authors
simulated the
experience of bicultural individuals (people
who have
internalized two cultures) of switching between
different
cultural frames in response to culturally laden
symbols. The
authors discuss how this dynamic. construc-
tivist approach
illuminates (a) when cultural constructsare
potent drivers
of behavior and (b) how bicultural individ-
uals may
control the cognitive effects of culture.
A
lthough the
multiplicity of cultural identities and
influences
is hardly a new
phenomenon, it is one
increasingly
discussed. In contemporary popular
discourse, it is
becoming increasingly rare to hear the word
cultural
without the
prefix
multi-.
Multicultural
experience,
however, has been
underinvestigated in psychological re-
search on culture,
particularly within the most prominent
research paradigm
of cross-culturalpsychology (see Segall,
Lonner, &
Berry, 1998). There are several reasons for this.
First, somewhat
obviously, methodological orientations in-
fluence a
researcher's choice of topics, and culture has been
assessed primarily
as an individual difference, with the
methods for its
evaluation developed by clinical and per-
sonality
researchers to distinguish types of persons. Insofar
as the
cross-cultural method relies on uncovering differ-
ences across
cultural groups (usually indexed by national-
ity), the
influence of multiple cultures on an individual
merely creates
error variance. Second, on a more subtle
level, the
theoretical assumptions predominant in cross-
cultural
scholarship have impeded an analysis of the dy-
namics of
multiple cultures in the same mind. The effort to
identify the
knowledge that varies between but not within
large cultural
groups has led to the conceptualization of
cultural
knowledge in terms of very general constructs,
Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology
Stanford
University
University of
Hong Kong
University of
Michigan
such as
individualistic as opposed to collectivist value
orientations,
which apply to all aspects of life (Segall et al.,
1998). With the
emphasis on domain-general constructs
has come the
assumption that the influence of culture on
cognition is
continual and constant. Cultural knowledge is
conceptualized to
be like a contact lens that affects the
individual's
perceptions of visual stimuli all of the time.
This conception
unfortunately leaves little room for a sec-
ond internalized
culture within an individual's psychology.
In sum, the
methods and assumptions of cross-cultural
psychology have
not fostered the analysis of how individ-
uals incorporate
more than one culture.
Our introduction
of an alternative approach to culture
takes as a point
of departure a commonly reported experi-
ence, which we
call
frame
switching,
among
bicultural
individuals.
While frame switching, the individual shifts
between
interpretive frames rooted in different cultures in
response to cues
in the social environment (LaFromboise,
Coleman, &
Gerton, 1993). To capture how bicultural
individuals
switch between cultural lenses, we adopt a
conceptualization
of internalized culture as a network of
discrete,
specificconstructs that guide cognition only when
they come to the
fore in an individual's mind. Fortunately,
theories and
methods have beendeveloped in cognitive and
socialpsychology,
such as the technique of cognitive prim-
Editor's
note.
Denise C. Park
served as action editor for this article.
Authors
note.
Ying-yi Hong,
Division of Social Science, Hong Kong
University of
Science and Technology. Hong Kong; Michael W. Morris,
Graduate School
of Business, Stanford University; Chi-yue Chiu, Depart-
ment of
Psychology. University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; Verdnica
Benet-Martfnez,
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan.
Preparation of
this article was supported by Research Grants
HKU7045/99H and
HKUST6lR2/98H from the Research Grants Council
of the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region, China. We thank
Robert
Gore,
Steven Heine,
Emiko Kashima, Hazel Markus, Richard
Nisbert, Barry
Sautman. Virgina Unkefer, and Robert Wyer for their
comments on an
earlier version of this article.
Correspondence
conceming this article should be addressed to
Ying-yi Hong,
Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University of
Science and
Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong. Electronic mail
709
July
2000
*
American
Psychologist
Copyright 2000
by
the
American
Poychologiool Arsoniation. joe. 5503-5hhX150/5550
Vol.
55.
No.
7.
709-720
001
l0l537/10003-O6hX.55.7759
Ying-yi
Hong
Photo by Imun
Poon
ing, to
manipulate through experiment which of the con-
structs in an
individual~s mind comes to the fore (for a
review, see
Higgins, 1996). We illustrate in this article how
this
conceptualization creates a set of new methods that
involves
bicultural participants testing the consequences of
culture. These
methods offer greater internal validity than
do the
quasi-experimental comparisons typically relied on
in
cross-cultural research. After reviewing studies of cul-
tural frame
switching, we then discuss how this approach
elucidates other
topics, such as the relation between cul-
tural beliefs
and action, the role of culture in emotions and
motivations, and
the process of acculturation. This ap-
proach
illuminates not only the experiences of bicultural
individuals but
also the more general roles that culture
plays in mental
and emotional life.
Frame
Switching
Bicultural
individuals are typically described as people
who have
internalized two cultures to the extent that both
cultures are
alive inside of them. Many bicultural individ-
uals report that
the two internalized cultures take turns in
guiding their
thoughts and feelings (LaFromboise et al.,
1993; Phinney
& Devich-Navarro, 1997). This is interest-
ing because it
suggests that (a) internalized cultures are not
necessarily
blended and (b) absorbing a second culture
does not always
involve replacing the original culture with
the new one.
Classical scholarship on African Americans,
for instance,
describes movement back and forth between
"two souls, two
thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two
warring ideals"
(DuBois, 1903/1989, p.
5).
Ethnographies
of Asian
Americans and Hispanic Americans, among other
groups, describe
switches between mindsets rooted in dif-
ferent cultures.
Consider, for example, the following expe-
rience of a
Mexican American individual:
At home with my
parents and grandparents the only acceptable
language was
Spanish; actually that's all they really understood.
Everything was
really Mexican, but at the same time they wanted
me to speak good
English.
...
But at school, I
felt really different
because everyone
was American, including me. Then I would go
home
in the afternoon
and be Mexican again. (quoted in Padilla,
1994, p.
30)
This example
illustrates that frame switching may occur in
response to cues
such as contexts (home or school) and
symbols
(language) that are psychologically associated
with one culture
or theother. Reports of frame switching at
work arecommon
in the literature on minority or expatriate
employees (e.g.,
Bell, 1991). Similar experiences are re-
ported by
ethnographers during fieldwork:
t found myself
constantly flip-flopping...
.
The longer
Ilived in
Samoa, the more
I wasable to use theSamoans' cultural resources
the flow of my
everyday experiences was increasingly filtered
through Samoan
models. (Shore, 1996, p. 6)
A Dynamic
Constructivist Analysis
To understand
frame switching in bicultural individuals,
we have adopted
an approach influenced by constructivist
approaches to
culture in several disciplines and by contem-
porary social
psychological research on the dynamics of
knowledge
activation. A first premise is that a culture is not
internalized in
the form of an integrated and highly general
structure, such
as an overall mentality, worldview, or value
orientation.
Rather, culture is internalized in the form of a
loose network of
domain-specific knowledge structures,
such as
categories and implicit theories (Bruner, 1990;
D'Andrade, 1984;
Shore, 1996; Strauss, 1992).
A
second
premise is that
individuals can acquire more than one such
cultural meaning
system, even if these systems contain
conflicting
theories. That is, contradictory or conflicting
constructs can
be simultaneously possessed by an individ-
ual; they simply
cannot simultaneously guide cognition.
The key to this
distinction is that possessing a particular
construct does
not entail relying on it continuously; only a
small subset of
an individual's knowledge comes to the
fore and guides
the interpretation of a stimulus. This dy-
namic
constructivist approach differs in its conception of
culture from
cross-cultural psychology, yet it is a comple-
mentary rather
than a rival approach in that it builds on
previous
insights and draws attention to novel research
questions and
novel accounts of phenomena, such as frame
switching.
A basic research
question relevant to frame switching
is how
particular pieces of cultural knowledge become
operative in
particular interpretive tasks. To investigate this
question, we
have drawn concepts and methods from social
psychological
research on how stereotypes, schemas, and
other constructs
move in and out of operation (Fiske,
1998). A key
concept is that the pieces of an individual's
knowledge vary
in
accessibility
(Higgins, 1996;
Wyer &
Srull, 1986).
The more accessible a construct, the more
710
July
2000
*
American
Psychologist
Michael
W.
Morris
Photo by S.
G!odfelter
likely it is to
come to the fore in the individual's mind and
guide
interpretation.
But what
determines whether a piece of knowledge is
highly
accessible? A long-standing hypothesis in cognitive
and social
psychology holds that a construct, such as a
category, is
accessible to the extent that it has been acti-
vated by recent
use (Bruner, 1957). Abundant evidence for
this comes from
experiments in which researchers manip-
ulate whether
participants are exposed to a word or image
related to
aconstruct (a
prime)
and then measure
the extent
to which the
participants' subsequent interpretations of a
stimulus are
influenced by the primed construct (for a
review, see
Higgins, 1996). For example, in one experi-
ment (Chiu et
al., 1998), participants were primed either
with pictures of
a masculine man and a feminine woman or
with
gender-unrelated (control) pictures. Later, in a pur-
portedly
unrelated task, they were asked to interpret an
ambiguous
behavior (e.g., "Donna's friend ordered a cof-
fee, and so did
Donna"). Participants primed with gender-
related pictures
constructed interpretations that showed an
influence of
gender stereotypes: For example, they judged
Donna to be
dependent on others in making decisions.
Participants in
the control condition did not make such
interpretations.
In this experiment, gender-related pictures
activated
stereotypes in the minds of participants, which
then made it
more likely that these stereotypes became
operative and
guided inferences when participants sought
to make sense of
the behavioral stimulus.
An important
design feature in many priming studies
is that the
priming is presented to participants as part of an
unrelated
experiment, and participants are not aware of its
influence in the
interpretive task. Some studies have primed
constructs that
are one step removed from the constructthat
applies to the
interpretive task. For example, priming with
words related to
African Americans led White participants
to interpret
hostility in stimulus behavior by race-unspeci-
fied actors
(Gaertner & McLaughlin, 1983); priming with
cues with
positive affective valence led participants to
subsequently
rely on person categories having the same
affective
valence (Niedenthal & Cantor, 1986). These
priming effects
rely on the spillover or spread of activation
from one
construct to other linked constructs within a
network of
constructs that are psychologically associated
for participants
(see Anderson, 1976).
In our research
on frame switching, we used the
concept of
accessibility and the technique of priming to
model the
phenomenon experimentally. We posited that
bicultural
individuals who have been socialized into two
cultures, A and
B, have, as a result, two cultural meaning
systems or
networks of cultural constructs, which can be
referred to as
A' and B'. Accordingly, priming bicultural
individuals with
images from Culture A would spread
activation
through Network A', elevating the accessibility
of the network's
categories and the implicit theories the
network
comprises. Likewise, priming with images from
Culture B would
spread activation through Network B',
elevating the
accessibility of the constructs that network
comprises. In
looking for the ideal primes to test this
account, we
searched for symbols that would activate con-
structs central
to specific cultural networks yet not so
directly related
to the interpretive task. Thus, participants
could not
consciously connect the prime with the stimulus.
We turned to
iconic cultural symbols.
Icons:
Triggers of Cultural Knowledge
Icons have been
called "magnets of meaning" in that they
connect many
diverse elements of cultural knowledge
(Betsky, 1997).
Like religious icons, cultural icons are
images created
or selected for their power to evoke in
observers a
particular frame of mind in a "powerful and
relatively
undifferentiated way" (Ortner, 1973, p. 1339).
The potency and
distinctiveness of icons make them ideal
candidates for
primes that would spread activation in a
network of
cultural constructs. Some examples of central
icons in the
mainstream American and Chinese cultural
traditions are
shown in Figure 1. Exposing Chinese Amer-
ican bicultural
individuals to American icons should acti-
vate
interpretive constructs in their American cultural
knowledge
network; exposing the same individuals to Chi-
nese icons
instead should activate constructs in their Chi-
nese cultural
knowledge network.
Interpreting
Behavior of Individual and
Group
Actors: A Litmus Test
Our research
also required an interpretive task that is in-
fluenced by
cultural knowledge in a well-understood man-
ner. Here the
legacy of cross-cultural psychology is invalu-
able in that we
can seek to replicate, by priming different
cultures within
the minds of bicultural individuals, the
patterns of
differences that have been discovered in previ-
ous
cross-national comparative studies. Many such
patterns
July
2000
*
American
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711
Chi-yue
Chiu
Photo by man
Poon
exist. For
example, in self-description tasks, North Amer-
icans are
consistently more likely than Japanese to make
self-enhancing
statements (Kitayama & Markus, 1994). An
important
consideration, however, is that many Japanese
American
biculturals are, no doubt, aware of this differ-
ence. Hence,
exposing bicultural individuals to cultural
icons could
affect this difference either through unobtru-
sive priming of
knowledge structures or through demand
characteristics.
We needed a stimulus task that participants
would not
consciously connect to cultural icons. In short,
the task could
not be transparently related to culture.
To develop a
test for cultural priming that would be
nontransparent
to participants, we turned to interpretations
of social
behavior. Social psychologists have long studied
how perceivers
attribute the behavior of others to causes,
noting
systematic biases, such as tracing an individual's
actions to
personality dispositions rather than other plausi-
ble factors such
as social context (Heider, 1958; Ross,
1977). Perhaps
the most famous evidence for this bias
came from
studies conducted by Heider and Simmel (1944)
in which
participants were presented with animatedfilms of
geometric
shapes, such as triangles and circles, that were
moving in
patterns suggestive of social interactions. Par-
ticipants tended
to interpret the films by ascribing motives
and
personalities to an individual shape. Heider (1958)
concludedthat
social information is interpreted by forming
units, primarily
the unit of an individual person. The person
unit then tends
to attract most of the perceiver's attention,
resulting
in
causal
attributions that overweigh internal per-
sonal factors
and underweigh factors in the surrounding
social
situation. Other researchers have studied
everyday
interactions in
which
this bias of
tracing an individual's
behavior to
dispositions leads to incorrectinterpretations of
the individual's
behavior and suboptimal ways of interact-
ing with him or
her (Jones & Harris, 1967; Morris, Larrick,
& Su, 1999).
Because of its pervasiveness and consequen-
tiality, this
dispositionist bias has been called the
funda-
mental
attribution error
(Ross,
1977).
Recent research
has allowed psychologists to identify
the role that
culture plays in shaping the dispositionist bias
in social
perception. Prompted by ethnographic accounts of
Chinese social
understanding (Hsu, 1953), Moms andPeng
(1994)
investigated the hypothesis that the tendency of
perceivers to
focus on individuals and interpret behavior in
terms of their
internal dispositions may be more marked in
North America
than in China. They reasoned that an im-
plicit theory
that individuals are autonomous relative to the
pressures of the
group is central to American culture,
whereas in
Chinese culture a more salient implicit theory
emphasizes that
individuals accommodate the greater au-
tonomy of groups
(So et al., 1999). In studies in which they
used several
methods, Morris and Peng showed that Amer-
ican
participants accorded more weight to an individual's
personal
dispositions, whereas Chinese participants ac-
corded more
weight to an individual's social context. Fur-
ther evidence
for the difference in implicit theories
emerged
from
studies directly
measuring generalized be-
liefs about
individuals versus social groups and institutions
(Chiu, Dweck,
Tong, & Fu, 1997). In a recent review of
studies
comparing NorthAmerican and East Asian perceiv-
ers, researchers
concluded that the sharpest differences in
Figure
1
Exampies of
Icanic Images in American and
Chinese
Cultures
American
Primes
********
~
**~*****
*
r
r*t
*-*
4
Chinese
Primes
U
A
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2000
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the weight
accorded to the contexts of constraints and
pressures imposed
by social groups (Choi, Nisbett, &
Norenzayan,
1999). Consistent with this indication that
East Asians
accord causal potency to social collectives, in
studies
of how
perceivers attribute actions by groups re-
searchers have
found that East Asians make attributions to
the dispositions
of groups more than Americans do (Me-
non, Morris,
Chiu, & Hong, 1999). In sum, cultural differ-
ences in the
attributional weight accorded to the disposi-
tions of
individuals versus groups are well documented.
An important
feature of attribution differences is that
they can be
studied with nontransparent methods. One of
the methods used
by Morris and Peng (1994) adapted
Heider' s
strategy of presenting animated films that partic-
ipants do not
consciously associate with social or cultural
topics. Morris
and Peng designed animated films of fish
featuring an
individual and a group in which it was am-
biguous whether
the individual's differing trajectory re-
flected internal
dispositions or the influence of thegroup. In
one type of
display, the individual fish swam outside of the
group, leaving
ambiguous whether the individual's separa-
tion reflected an
internal disposition (a leader leading other
fish) or pressure
from the group(an outcast being chased by
other fish). In
explaining the individual fish's behavior,
Chinese
participants attributed less to internal
disposition
of the fish in
front but more to the external (group) factors
than did American
participants (see Figure 2). This method
of measuring
cultural differences through the ways social
perceptions are
anthropomorphically projected onto ani-
mals has the
advantage that participants are unaware cul-
ture is relevant
to the task.
Cultural
Priming Studies
In a series of
studies, we experimentally
created
frame
switching among
bicultural individuals.
Next, we
review
three of the
studies. The first two studies used the priming
method to
replicate in bicultural individuals the cross-
national
attribution differences revealed by Morris and
Peng (1994). The
third study is a conceptual replication of
the first two
studies, but the dependent measures were
attributions for
a social event.
Bkultural
Participants
Who were the
bicultural individuals we recruited in the
studies? Our
initial studies involved Westernized Chinese
students in Hong
Kong. Although traditional Chinese val-
ues are
emphasized in the socialization processes in Hong
Kong (Ho, 1986),
contemporary university students in
Hong Kong are
acculturated with Western social beliefs
and values
(Bond, 1993). This is related to the fact that
Hong Kong was a
British-administrated territory for more
than a century.
Before 1997, English, not Chinese, was the
official
language of instruction in about 80% of the sec-
ondary schools
(Young, Giles, & Pierson, 1986). Further-
more, large
British and American expatriate communities
and the salient
presence of English-language television,
films, and so
forth means that Hong KongChinese students
Figure
2
A
DisplayAdapted From Morris, NisbeW
and Peng
(1995)
-H
INTERNAL
FORCE
fI
l~
I
2
3
4
I
S
EXTERNAL
FORCE
~
C
2
3
-
S
Note.
Paints A and C
mark the mean American and Chinese ratings, respec-
tively, on the
internal and external attribution scales. From `Causal Attribution
Across Domains
and Cultures," byM. W. Morris, R. E. Nisbett, and K.
Peng,
1995,
in D. Sperber,
D. Premack, and A. J. Premock, Cau.sa/
Cognition:
A
Multidisciplinary
Debate (pp. 577-612), Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
Copyright 1995
by Clarendon Press. Adapted with permission.
Veronica
Benet-
Martinez
attributions for
the cause of an individual's behavior lie in
July
2000
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American
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713
have been
exposed to Euro-American social constructs
extensively.
Yet, although HongKong Chinese students are
rather
Westernized in some aspects of their self-concept
and value system
(see Bond & Cheung, 1981; Fo, 1999;
Triandis, Leung,
& Hui, 1990), they maintain their primary
social identity
as Hong Kong Chinese (Hong, Yeung, Chiu,
& Tong,
1999) and subscribe to core Chinese values (Chi-
nese Culture
Connection, 1987). In sum, Hong Kong Chi-
nese students in
the late 1990s belong to a population of
biculturally
socialized individuals.
In our later
experiment (reported in Hong, Morris,
Chiu, &
Benet-Martfnez, 2000), we tested a different group
of bicultural
individuals. These were China-born Califor-
nian college
students who had lived at least five years in a
Chinese society
and at least five years in North America
before attending
college. Whereas the Hong Kong bicul-
tural group
represented bicultural identification resulting
from extensive
Westernization of a society, the Chinese
American
grouprepresented bicultural identification result-
ing from
immigration: These are two primary ways that
culture moves
across territories to create multicultural so-
cieties (Hermans
& Kempen, 1998). Although we do not
report in this
article the study with Chinese American
biculturals,
results revealed that these participants recog-
nized and were
influenced by American and Chinese cul-
tural icons in
similar ways as were the members of the
Hong Kong
bicultural group.
Priming
Materials
We presented
Hong Kong Chinese students with a set of
cultural icons
designed to activate the associated social
theories that
produce cultural biases in attribution. In our
research we used
several kinds of icons. Some involved
symbols (e.g.,
the American flag vs. a Chinese dragon),
legendary
figures from folklore or popular cartoons (e.g.,
Superman vs.
Stone Monkey), famous people (e.g., Mari-
lyn Monroe vs. a
Chinese opera singer), and landmarks
(e.g., the
Capitol Building vs. the Great Wall). Several
prior studies
have demonstrated that exposure to such icons
activates the
corresponding cultural meaning system. For
instance, Hong,
Chiu, and Kung (1997, Experiment 1)
found that
exposure to these Chinese icons led Hong Kong
Chinese students
to increase their endorsement of Chinese
values.
Recently, Kemmelmeier and Winter (1998) found
that Americans
showed an elevated endorsement of inde-
pendence values
after being exposed to the American flag.
Initial
Tests
In one study
(Hong et al., 1997, Experiment 2), 303 Hong
Kong Chinese
undergraduate students were randomly as-
signed to the
American culture priming condition, the
Chinese culture
priming condition, or the control condition.
Participants in
the American culture priming condition
were shown six
pictures of American icons and were asked
to answer short
questions about the pictures (e.g., "Which
country does
this picture symbolize?" "Usethree adjectives
to describe the
character of the legendary figure in this
picture").
Participants in the Chinese culture priming con-
dition were
shown six pictures of Chinese icons and were
asked to answer
the same short questions. These conditions
were designed to
inject activation into American and Chi-
nese construct
networks, respectively, leading to elevated
accessibility of
their respective implicit theories about the
causality of
social events. Participants in the control con-
dition were
shown six drawings of geometric figures and
asked to
indicate where they thought there should be a
shade or a
shadow. This condition was designed to inject
no activation
into cultural knowledge networks but to oth-
erwise resemble
the cultural prime conditions.
Then, in an
allegedly unrelated task, participants were
given an
attribution task adapted from Morris and Peng
(1994). In this
measure, participants were shown a realistic
picture of a
fish swimming in front of a group of fish (see
Figure 3) and
asked to indicate on a 12-point scale why one
fish was
swimming in front of the group. A score of 1 on
thescale
meant
very
confident that it is because the onefish
is leading
the otherfish
(an internal
cause), and a score of
12
meant
very
confident that it is because the onefish is
being chased
by the otherfish
(an external
cause). Consis-
tent with the
pattern identified in cross-national studies
(Morris &
Peng, 1994), we expected that participants
would be less
inclined to interpret the individual fish's
behavior in
terms of the external social pressure after
American priming
than after Chinese priming. Indeed, as
predicted,
participants who were exposed to American pic-
tures were
significantly less confident in the external (vs.
internal)
explanation than were those who were exposed to
Chinese pictures
(see Figure 4). Participants in the control
condition fell
midway between the two culture priming
conditions.
In a second
experiment, we replicated the cultural
priming effect
with a less constricted measure of causal
attributions
(Hong et al., 1997, Experiment 3). Participants
were 75 Hong
Kong Chinese undergraduate students who
were randomly
assigned to the American culture priming
condition, the
Chinese culture priming condition, or the
control
condition. In the American culture priming
condi-
Figure
3
Stimulus
Material Used as the Attributianal Stimulus
in the First
Two Studies
714
July
2000
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American
Psychologist
Figure
4
Results From
Two Studies That Demonstrated
Consistent
Cultural Priming Effects in External
Attributions
About Fish Behavior Among Hong
Kong Chinese
Bicultural Individuals
6.
~
5.8
.2
5.6
~g
5.4
5.2
~0<
5
~
4.8
4.6
~
4.4
4.2
4
American
Priming
Condition
50
~,
45
g
40
o
~
`~
35
~0
.0
5fl
o
c
30
g
25
20
0)
~
15
~
10
S
0
H-
American
Priming
Condition
Chinese
Priming
Condition
Control
Chinese
Condition
Priming
Condition
Note. Dato in
the top graph ore from Hongetal., 1997, Experiment 2, in which
participants
interpreted on a scale of 1
(veryconfident
thot
it
is becouse
the one
fish
is
leoding
the other
fish)
to 1 2
(very
confident
thot
it
is
becouse
the
one
fish
is being
chased by the other fish)
the social
behavior of
the
fish in figure
3. Data
in
the bottom graph
are from Hong et aI., 1997, Experiment 3, in which
participants
were asked
to
provide an
open.ended
response
about
the
social
behavior of the
fish in Figure 3. The explanations were coded on the basis of
Miller's (1984)
coding scheme.
tion,
participants were shown five pictures of American
icons and asked
to write 10 sentences to describe the
pictures in
terms of American culture. Participants in the
Chinese culture
priming condition were shown five pictures
of Chinese icons
and asked to write 10 sentences to de-
scribe the
pictures in terms of Chinese culture. In the
control
condition, participants were shown five pictures of
physical
landscapes and asked to write 10 sentences about
the landscapes.
This procedure lastedfor 10 minutes. Then,
in an ostensibly
unrelated task, participants were presented
with a picture
depicting a fish swimming in front of a
school of fish
and asked to write down what they thought
was the major
reason why the fish was swimming in front
of other fish.
This open-ended response format allowed
participants to
generate explanations that were not limited
-4
to the options
we provided. On the basis of Miller's (1984)
coding scheme,
the explanations were coded into infer-
ences of
internal properties or external properties. Again,
participants'
likelihood of generating external explanations
differed
significantly across the three experimental condi-
tions. As
predicted, fewer participants in the American
culture priming
condition than in the Chinese culture prim-
ing condition
generated explanations referring to the exter-
nal social
context (see Figure 4). The proportion of partic-
ipants who
generated external explanations in the control
condition fell
midway between the proportions of the two
culture priming
conditions, much as in the previous study.
A
Conceptual Replication
In our third
study, we checked that the priming effect is
replicated when
the task involves interpreting human ac-
tions. We asked
participants to make an attribution for a
character's
deviation from a diet-an action chosen be-
causeit has no
obvious connection to the cultural icons. We
randomly
assigned 234 Hong Kong Chinese high school
students to one
of three priming conditions. Participants in
the American
culture priming condition saw eight Ameri-
can icons and
wrote 10 sentences about American culture.
Participants in
the Chinese culture priming condition saw
eight Chinese
icons and wrote 10 sentences about Chinese
culture.
Participants in the control condition saw pictures of
natural
landscapes and wrote 10 sentences about the land-
scapes. This
priming manipulation lastedapproximately 15
minutes.
-~
Then
participants in all conditions read a story about
an overweight
boy who was advised by a physician not to
eat food with
high sugar content. One day, he and his
friends went to
a buffet dinner where a delicious-looking
cake was
offered. Despite its high sugar content, he ate it.
Afterreading
this briefdescription, participants were asked
to respond to
three sets of questions. Participants were
asked to
indicate the extent to which the boy's weight
problem was
caused by his dispositions. That is, they rated
factors such as
his personality dispositions (e.g., he lacks
the ability to
control himself, etc.) on a 10-point scale,
ranging from
1
(has very
little influence on his action)
to
10
(has a lot of
influence on his action).
In addition,
partici-
pants were asked
to indicate the extent to which the boy's
eating of the
cake was caused by pressures and constraints
of his external
social situation (situational reasons, friends'
pressure on him,
etc.) on the same 10-point scale.
As in the
previous two studies, participants in the
three priming
conditions differed on the weight accorded to
the external,
social situations as determinants of the boy's
behavior (see
Figure
5).
As predicted,
participants in the
American culture
priming condition accorded less weight
to external
social factors than did participants in the Chi-
nese culture
priming condition (see Figure 4). On this
measure,
participants in the control condition fell in be-
tween those in
the Chinese and American culture priming
conditions.
Participants in the three priming conditions,
however, did not
differ on the internal attribution measure.
This result is
consistent with the conclusions in Choi et
Control
Condition
July
2000
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American
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715
Figure
5
Results From
a Study That Demonstrated Cultural
Primiy
Effects in External Attributions About
a Boy s Diet
Deviation Among Hong Kong
Chinese
Bicultural Individuals
72
a
0
-
7.
0
.0
~
6.8
on
E
6.6
~
6.4-
6.2
-
6-
-4-
American
Priming
Condition
Control
Chinese
Condition
Priming
Condition
Note.
In this study,
participants were asked to rate the suggested external and
internal causes
of a boy's deviation from his diet on a scale of
I
(had
verylittle
influence on
isis action) to
10
(has a Jot
ofinfluence on his
action).
al.'s (1999)
review that cultural influences on attributions
for an
individual's behavior originate more from the dif-
ferential weight
placed on the external socialcontext (when
these factors
are salient) than from the differential weight
placed on the
actor's internal dispositions.
In sum, through
priming bicultural individuals, we
have replicated
the differences in attribution previously
identified in
quasi-experimental comparisons of groups in
different
countries. In so doing, we have experimentally
modeled the
phenomenon of frame switching in bicultural
individuals and
have demonstrated that multiple cultures
can direct
cognition within one individual's mind.
Extending the
Dynamic Constructivist
ApproacIi
We began by
analyzing the experience of frame switching
reported by
multicultural individuals in terms of a dynamic
constructivist
view of culture and cognition. We have ex-
perimentally
modeled the phenomenon through priming
experiments and
have found support for our predictions.
Culturally
conferred implicit theories became operative in
guiding the
interpretation of stimuli to the extent that their
accessibility
was high because of recent activation. Having
documented the
fruitfulness of a dynamic constructivist
approach to this
phenomenon in the experience of bicul-
tural
individuals, we now discuss its assumptions and im-
plications more
generally as a framework for analyzing the
role of culture
in psychology.
Our assumption
that cultural knowledge exists at the
level of
domain-specific categories and theories derives
from the
constructivist tradition that knowledge must be
specific enough
to constrain interpretations of stimulus
information
(Bruner, 1957; Heider, 1958). Bruner (1990)
and others have
explicated a constructivist view of cultural
knowledge as a
toolbox of discrete, specific constructs that
differs from the
dominant view in cross-cultural psychol-
ogy that
cultural knowledge exists as an integrated, do-
main-general
construct. Several contemporary anthropolo-
gists (Shore,
1996; Sperber, 1996) and sociologists (Di-
Maggio, 1997)
have staked out similar positions within
their
disciplines, challenging more general conceptions of
cultural
knowledge as foundational schemas or value oil-
entations.
However, our approach goes beyond these other
constructivist
approaches to culture in its emphasis on the
dynamics of
knowledge activation.
In describing
the dynamics of cultural knowledge, we
see great
potential in drawing on research concerning con-
struct
accessibility. Whereas the cross-cultural literature
generally
explains judgment and decision outcomes in
terms of whether
individuals in a given cultural group
possess agiven
knowledge construct, we see thepossession
of a construct
as a less critical variable than whether the
construct is
highly accessible (cf. Trafimow, Triandis, &
Goto, 1991). Our
guess is that the most important implicit
theories about
the social world are possessed by people
everywhere; the
variance across cultural groups probably
lies in the
relative accessibility of particular implicit theo-
ries, not in
whether the theories are possessed. In our
experiments
concerning frame switching in bicultural indi-
viduals, the
emphasis was on
temporary
accessibility
of
a
construct caused
by the priming of related constructs.
Equally useful
in theories of culture may be the related
notion that some
constructs attain
chronic
accessibility,
in
part because
accessibility is maintained by frequency of use
(Higgins, King,
& Mavin, 1982; for a review, see Higgins,
1996). Some
findings in the cross-cultural literature that
have been
interpreted in terms of whether participants
possess a
construct (i.e., a performance difference reflects
which
self-concepts individuals possess in Culture A vs.
Culture B) might
be fruitfully refrained in terms of chronic
accessibility
(i.e., a performance difference reflects which
self-concepts
are made chronically accessible in Culture A
vs. Culture B).
Another virtue of an account based on
accessibility is
that it points to how factors outside of the
individual
person-such as institutions, discourse, or rela-
tionships-might
prime cultural theories and keep these
theories
prominent in the minds of culture members.
Cross-cultural
researchers have been troubled at times
that the
influence of a given cultural construct does not
emerge
consistently when tasks are run under different
conditions.
Accessibility may provide an important clue to
understanding
this observation. Social cognition research-
ers have found
that some conditions create an episternic
motivation for
aquick reduction of ambiguity (the need for
cognitive
closure), and this increases the extent to which
perceivers work
top-down from accessible constructs, such
as cultural
theories, when constructing interpretations
(Kruglanski
& Webster, 1996). Consistent with the notion
-4-
716
July
2000
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American
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that the need
for closure amplifies cultural influence, in
recent research
it has been found that a high need for
closure fosters
the tendency to make attributions to indi-
vidual
dispositions among North Americans and the ten-
dency to make
attributions to the dispositional properties of
a group among
Chinese perceivers (Chiu, Morris, Hong, &
Menon, 2000).
More generally, cultural psychology may
benefit from the
incorporation of many of the insights in
social cognition
research about the moderating factors
(e.g., need for
cognition, availability of cognitive capacity)
that determine
when constructs become accessible and
when accessible
constructs have the most influence on
cognition. Many
of the processes and conditions that mod-
erate
perceivers' reliance on stereotypes and other knowl-
edge structures
may also affect their reliance on cultural
theories.
Stronger support may emerge for models of the
consequences of
culture once the moderating factors are
better
specified.
Implications
for Other Research
Areas
Methodology
The research
reviewed here shows that it is possible to
conduct
experimental studies on culture. In the same way
that
quasi-experimental cross-cultural studies added a new
tool for
cultural research with some advantages over eth-
nographic
observation, priming experiments offer a new
tool for
cultural research that has advantages over the
preexisting
methods. A first useof the priming method is to
explore the
content of cultural knowledge. This is usually
done by
analyzing the content of samples of conversation
and other
texts. An alternative method is to analyze the
content of
thoughts elicited by priming with cultural icons.
For example, by
priming North American perceivers with
pictures of the
American flag and querying their associa-
tions,
Kemmelmeier and Winter (1998) have been able to
analyze the
constellation of values associated with this
cultural icon.
Similarly, exposing Hong Kong Chinese to
pictures of
Chinese cultural icons leads to elevated en-
dorsement of
certain social values (Hong et al., 1997,
Experiment 1).
Thus, the culture priming technique creates
a new way to
uncover content of cultural knowledge.
A secondrole of
priming lies in establishing the causal
consequences of
cultural knowledge. Experiments with the
priming method
allow for true random assignment of par-
ticipants to
cultural conditions, thus providing tests of
culture's
consequences with greater internal validity than
that of tests
provided by the quasi-experimental method of
cross-national
studies. Hence, the priming method comple-
ments
cross-cultural comparisons in isolating the causal
role of
culture.
Language
as Prime
Aside from
cultural icons, language could also be an ef-
fective means
of activating cultural constructs. In fact,
considerable
research evidence shows language effects in
bilingual
individuals' responses to a wide range of psycho-
logical
inventories such as measures of personality (Earle,
1969; Ervin,
1964), values (Bond, 1983; Mann, Triandis,
Betancourt,
& Kashima, 1983), self-concept (Trafimow,
Silverman, Fan,
& Law, 1997), emotional expression (Mat-
sumoto &
Assar, 1992), or even other-person descriptions
(Hoffman, Lau,
& Johnson, 1986). A compelling explana-
tion for these
findings has been that for bilingual individ-
uals, the two
languages are often associated with two
different
cultural systems. In Bond's (1983) and Earle's
(1969) studies,
for instance, the responses of bilingual
Chinese were
more Western when they responded to the
original
(English) questionnaire than when they responded
to a Chinese
translation of it. Interestingly, Earle explained
these results
in dynamic constructionist terms. According
to him, these
bilingual individuals had learned Chinese at
home and
English at school and had, at the same time,
acquired two
distinct sets of cultural constructs reflecting
the two
languages' cultures. The Chinese version of the
questionnaire
activated the Chinese language culture, and
the English
version, the English language culture (see
Krauss &
Chiu, 1998). As such, the dynamic constructivist
approach could
help researchers to better understand the
research on
sociopersonality factors in bilingualism.
Moving
Beyond Cognition
Heretofore, we
have discussed the application of the dy-
namic approach
to culture solely in the study of cognition.
Clearly,
however, the priming method can be used in
analogous ways
to study emotions. This experimental tech-
nique can be
used to investigate the emotions triggered by
exposure to
cultural icons, and this may prove more inci-
sive than
trying to inferculture-emotion relationships from
cross-national
comparisons. Although research could com-
mence with the
study of a single culture, it would be
interesting to
see whether culturally distinct emotional
states could be
induced in bicultural individuals through
priming with
different icons.
It is also
interesting to explore the other side of this
question: What
emotions lead people to embrace cultural
icons and
cultural ideas more generally? Some evidence
that cultural
icons have more than a cold cognitive im-
pact comes from
work by Greenberg, Porteus, Simon, Py-
szczynski, and
Solomon
(1995),
in which they
demon-
strated that
individuals led to think abouttheir mortality are
subsequently
more respectful towardiconic cultural objects
(e.g., a flagor
crucifix). Central cultural symbols play akey
role in the
motivated identification of self with enduring
cultural
traditions.
At the same
time that the dynamic constructivist ap-
proach can be
extended more broadly, it is also important
to note that
this model of culturein terms of an individual's
knowledge
structures obviously does not capture all the
manifestations
of culture that matter. Culture exists in
many forms
other than knowledge in an individual's head
(see Kitayama
& Markus, 1994). Other carriers of culture,
such as
practices, have been identified by psychological
researchers
using the sociocultural approach (see Rogoff,
1990) and by
sociologists studying relationship patterns
July
2000
*
American
Psychologist
717
and
institutions (see Morris, Podolny, & Ariel, 1999).
Hence,
although the
activation of cultural
knowledge
may
have important
influenceson emotions andmotives as~ well
as judgments
and decisions, many interesting aspects of
culturemay not
be mediated by knowledge activation at all.
A complete
understanding of culture and psychology re-
quires that the
dynamic constructivist approach be comple-
mented by
analyses that are less knowledge-oriented.
Also, to a
large extent, cultures are shaped in relation
~o each other,
so the tension between cultures needs to be
part of a
comprehensive account of any single culture. This
is particularly
relevant in understanding the dynamics of a
multiply
acculturated individual. In our studies, we chose
individuals
identified with two cultures (North American
and Chinese)
that for the most part are not antagonistic to
each other. If
the two cultural groups an individual has
been
extensively exposed to involved intense political an-
tagonism (such
as Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia), present-
ing cultural
icons of one culture may elicit reactive iden-
tification with
the opposite culture (see Krauss & Chiu,
1998). Two
conclusions can be drawn from this point.
First, even
within studies of culture and cognition, re-
searchers need
to proceed with an awareness of the inter-
group and
political connotations of particular cultural
group
membership. Second, reaction against unwanted re-
minders of a
culture may be amenable to a dynamic con-
structivist
analysis. One possibility is that antagonism leads
to a
psychological linking of the two cultural networks, so
that activation
of the constructs from the antagonist culture
spreads to the
other culture. Another possibility is that
individuals
actively control the dynamics of construct ac-
cessibility
rather than being passively affected by them.
Then,
activating the antagonist culture may cause active
suppression and
thus would not yield any cultural priming
effect. These
possibilities can be explored in future
research.
The
Process of Acculturation
In addition to
creating an understanding of internalized
culture as an
antecedent variable, the dynamic constructiv-
ist approach
may lead to fresh insights about how culture
gets inside
minds in the first place, in other words, the
psychology of
acculturation. Theoretical models proposed
by Berry
(1988), Birman (1994), LaFromboise et al.
(1993), and
Phinney (1996) are useful in describing the
behavioral
(e.g., how active one is in ethnic organizations
and social
groups), motivational-attitudinal (e.g., how
much value is
given to assimilating into the mainstream
culture), or
phenomenological (e.g., how much conflict or
discrimination
is experienced in the new culture) aspects of
the
acculturation process. These models, however, focus on
the
outcome
of
acculturation more than on the process.
Individuals are
scored on the extent to which they have
absorbed the
new culture or retained the original one. The
dynamic
constructivist approach could supplement the tra-
ditional
approach by emphasizing the process of internal-
izing a new
culture, highlighting dynamics such as frame
switching that
many people experience in the process.
More important,
a dynamic constructivist approach
lends itself to
viewing acculturation as a more active pro-
cess. The end
result-thinking and behaving like a member
of the host
culture-is seen as a state, not a trait. This state
will occur when
interpretive frames from the host culture
are accessible.
We submit that individuals undergoing ac-
culturation, to
some extent, manage the process by control-
ling the
accessibility of cultural constructs. People desiring
to acculturate
quickly surround themselves with symbols
and situations
that prime the meaning system of the host
culture.
Conversely, expatriates desiring to maintain the
accessibility
of constructs from their home culture surround
themselves with
stimuli priming that culture. For example,
one of the
current authors, who is Spanish but has lived for
some years in
the United States, often surrounds herself
with Spanish
music, food, and paintings to keep alive her
Spanish ways of
thinking and feeling. Active processes of
priming oneself
may help multicultural individuals in their
ongoing effort
to negotiate and express their cultural iden-
tities. Future
research should investigate not only the out-
come of
acculturation but also the processes through which
individuals
navigate cultural transitions.
Conclusion
We have
proposed a dynamic constructivist approach to
culture and
cognition and have reported supportive evi-
dence. A
distinctive contribution of this approach is in
describing how
a given individual incorporates multiple
cultures and in
describing how and when particular pieces
of cultural
knowledge become operative in guiding an
individual's
construction of meaning. This less monolithic
view of culture
seems particularly appropriate at this time
of increasing
cultural interconnection. Across the world,
there is a
drift toward culturally polyglot, pluralistic soci-
eties. Yet, in
part because of the strain of negotiating
cultural
complexity, a countervailing resurgence of efforts
to separate
individuals into culturally "pure" groups also
exists. By
experimentally modeling frame switching
among
bicultural individuals, our model shows that re-
search on
"uncontaminated" cultural groups is not the only
viable way to
identify cultural effects on cognition. In sum,
a dynamic
constructivist approach may open new possibil-.
ities in
understanding culture and transcultural
experiences.
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