[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4, 112 115.Takano, Y.(1989).Methodological problems in cross-cultural studies of linguistic relativity.Cog-nition, 31, 141 162.Thomas, D.R., & DeCapito, A.(1966).Role of stimulus labeling in stimulus generalization.Journalof Experimental Psychology, 71, 913 915.Tong, Y., Chiu, C., & Fu, H.(2001).Linguistic gender is related to psychological gender: The caseof  Chinese characters. Journal of Psychology in Chinese Societies, 2, 107 117.Triandis, H.C.(1990).Cross-cultural studies of individualism and collectivism.In J.Berman (Ed.),Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1989 (pp.41 133).Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Webster s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.(1987).Markham, Ontario: Thomas Allen & Son.Whorf, B.L.(1956).Language, thought, and reality: Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf.NewYork: Wiley.Wilkes-Gibbs, D., & Kim, P.H.(1991, November).Discourse influences on memory for visual forms.Paper presented at the 1991 meeting of the Psychonomic Society, San Francisco, CA.Woll, S.B., & Martinez, J.M.(1982).The effects of biasing labels on recognition of facial expres-sions of emotion.Social Cognition, 1, 70 82.Yeung, W.L.(2000).The importance of consensus assessment in speech act comprehension.Unpub-lished master s thesis, Department of Psychology, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.Zhang, J.J., Zhang, H.C., & Peng, D.L.(1990).The recovery of the meaning of Chinese charactersin the classifying process.Acta Psychologica Sinica, 22, 397 405.TLFeBOOKC H A P T E R5Motivated Closed Mindednessand the Emergence of CultureLinda RichterColumbia UniversityArie W.KruglanskiUniversity of MarylandIn recent years, there has been growing interest in the link between cultureand human cognition.For the most part, this research has focused on thevarious ways in which culture, or specific aspects of cultural knowledge, af-fects cognition and the different meanings one may draw from surroundingphysical and social stimuli depending on one s cultural perspective (Hong,Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martinez, 2000; Miller, 1999; Tomasello, 2000).Whathas received less attention, however, is the ways in which human cognition,and motivational effects on cognition in particular, influence the formationof cultures and the perpetuation of particular cultural norms or patterns.Merriam-Webster s Collegiate Dictionary (1998) defines culture as  the cus-tomary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or so-cial group. Similarly, culture can be defined as  the shared beliefs, values,traditions, and behavior patterns of particular groups (Berry, Poortinga,Segall, & Dasen, 1992).In many cases, the group is reciprocally defined bythe culture such that it is characterized by the shared knowledge, sharedset of assumptions, and fundamental beliefs that the members of the grouphold in common.There exists a fundamental connection between culture and the humanneed to know, or to possess a set of valid opinions, attitudes, or beliefs.Ac-cording to Leon Festinger (1954), physical reality rarely affords objectivestandards for validating one s personal opinions, beliefs, and attitudes.Therefore, people attempt to obtain validation by comparing and adjustingtheir personal opinions, beliefs, and attitudes to those of others.This ad-101TLFeBOOK102 RICHTER AND KRUGLANSKIjustment often can be seen among recent immigrants who try to fit in andmake sense of their new environment by absorbing or adopting, at least tosome extent, the norms and values of the new land.This quest for a  socialreality (Festinger, 1950) promotes a general uniformity, or interpersonalconsistency, in the basic beliefs and norms among members of a particularcommunity.Indeed, human beings are social in their very essence and, therefore, allhuman knowledge is essentially shared, or socially constructed, knowledge.The values, attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral norms shared by members of acultural group derive from basic social processes, such as social comparison,attempts to influence others, or, in some cases, the readiness to be influ-enced by others.As the Asch (1956) conformity experiments demonstrate,when faced with disagreement from others, an individual s own judgmentsabout what appears to be obvious can often be shaken.Similarly, anecdotalevidence suggests that in totalitarian states (like the former Soviet Union orNazi Germany) that engulf the populace with propagandist messages, manycitizens soon begin to question their once deeply ingrained notions and be-gin to espouse the beliefs and values that the state makes so accessible andcompelling.Thus, fundamental socio-psychological processes such as socialinfluence, social comparison, or the pressures toward opinion uniformitymay drive the development of shared beliefs, values, and traditions that cul-ture consists of.The extent of their impact and the rate at which a homoge-neous culture may develop would depend on the cognitive needs of mem-bers of a particular collectivity at a given time.NEED FOR COGNITIVE CLOSUREA motivational construct of potential relevance to the psychological proc-ess underlying the development of culture is the need for cognitive closure(Kruglanski, 1989; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; Webster & Kruglanski, 1998).This particular need has been defined as a desire for  an answer to a ques-tion on a given topic, any answer,.compared to confusion and ambigu-ity (Kruglanski, 1990, p.337) [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]