Psychological processes influence culture. Culture influences psychological processes. Individual thoughts and actions influence cultural norms and practices as they evolve over time, and these cultural norms and practices influence the thoughts and actions of individuals. Large bodies of literature support these conclusions within the context of research on evolutionary processes, epistemic needs, interpersonal communication, attention, perception, attributional thinking, self-regulation, human agency, self-worth, and contextual activation of cultural paradigms. Cross-cultural research has greatly enriched psychology, and key issues for continued growth and maturation of the field of cultural psychology are articulated.

Psychology and Culture

The four experiments presented support Boyer’ s theory that counterintuitive concepts have transmission advantages that account for the commonness and ease of communicating many non-natural cultural concepts. In Experiment 1, 48 American college students recalled expectation-violating items from culturally unfamiliar folk stories better than more mundane items in the stories. In Experiment 2, 52 American college students in a modie ed serial reproduction task transmitted expectation-violating items in a written narrative more successfully than bizarre or common items. In Experiments 3 and 4, these e ndings were replicated with orally presented and transmitted stimuli, and found to persist even after three months. To sum, concepts with single expectation-violating features were more successfully transmitted than concepts that were entirely congruent with category-level expectations, even if they were highly unusual or bizarre. This transmission advantage for counterintuitive concepts may explain, in part, why such concepts are so prevalent across cultures and so readily spread.

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/43711/10881_2004_Article_brill_15677095_v1n1_s4.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Spreading Non-natural Concepts: The Role of Intuitive Conceptual Structures in Memory and Transmission of Cultural Materials ¤

sentences. In two related experiments, Wippich found integration effects that strongly favored concrete over abstract sentences in results from recognition, reconstruction, and inference tasks that tapped various aspects of text processing. His conclusions strongly support the dual coding view of qualitative differences in the integration of concrete and abstract sentences and texts. Paivio (in press) provides further explanation of and evidence for qualitative differences in the integration of concrete and abstract texts that are consistent with dual

A critique of schema theory in reading and a dual coding alternative

https://www3.nd.edu/~dlapsle1/Lab/Articles%20&%20Chapters_files/Moral%20chronicity.pdf

Moral chronicity and social information processing: Tests of a social cognitive approach to the moral personality

An Analysis of Methods for Intercultural Training

This study examines some of the effects of culturally based knowledge on memory for stories about people performing common activities. Monocultural college students in (a) the United States and (b) Mexico read three brief stories about people going on a date, going home from the office for lunch, and starting a new semester of school. There were two versions of each story, consistent with either a U.S. or a Mexican cultural script. A modified recognition memory test for information in the stories occurred at one of three different delay intervals (immediately after reading the stories, 1/24 hour later, or 1 week later). Results showed that, after 1 week, both groups of subjects misremembered the stories from the other culture as being more like their own culture than they in fact were. The findings were consistent with previous monocultural research and argue that any theory of the effects of script-based knowledge on memory must consider the cultural origin of that knowledge. Problems associated with use...

A Cross-Cultural Study of Story Memory

Two studies examined the effect of culturally based scripts and associated knowledge on memory for stories about people performing common activities. North American subjects read four stories about people riding a city bus, purchasing a record album, eating breakfast, and buying travel tickets. There were two versions of each story, one consistent with a North American cultural script and one with some foreign script unfamiliar to the subjects. Memory for the stories was tested at varying intervals, from immediately after reading the story to one week later. Results showed that the foreign stories were mis‐remembered to have been more like the American stories than they in fact were and that this effect was most strongly observed after one week. Such findings argue that any theory of the effects of script‐based knowledge on memory must examine different intervals of delay and consider the cultural origin of that knowledge.

Deana L. Hensley

Papers

A Cross-Cultural Study of Story Memory

The effect of cultural script knowledge on memory for stories over time