[Paleopsych] Hong, Morris, and Chiu: Multicultural Minds A Dynamic Constructivist Approach to Culture and Cognition

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Multicultural Minds A Dynamic Constructivist Approach to Culture and Cognition

Hong, Ying-yi; Morris, Michael W. Chiu, Chi-yue Benet-Martínez, Verónica

American Psychologist July 2000 Vol. 55, No. 7, 709-720

Although 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 research on culture, particularly 
within the most prominent research paradigm of cross-cultural psychology 
(see Segall, Lonner, & Berry, 1998). There are several reasons for this. 
First, somewhat obviously, methodological orientations influence 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 personality researchers to distinguish types of persons. 
Insofar as the cross-cultural method relies on uncovering differences 
across cultural groups (usually indexed by nationality), 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 dynamics 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, 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 second internalized 
culture within an individual's psychology. In sum, the methods and 
assumptions of cross-cultural psychology have not fostered the analysis of 
how individuals incorporate more than one culture.

Our introduction of an alternative approach to culture takes as a point of 
departure a commonly reported experience, 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, specific constructs that guide cognition only when they come to 
the fore in an individual's mind. Fortunately, theories and methods have 
been developed in cognitive and social psychology, such as the technique 
of cognitive priming, to manipulate through experiment which of the 
constructs 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 cultural frame 
switching, we then discuss how this approach elucidates other topics, such 
as the relation between cultural beliefs and action, the role of culture 
in emotions and motivations, and the process of acculturation. This 
approach 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 individuals report that the two 
internalized cultures take turns in guiding their thoughts and feelings 
(LaFromboise et al., 1993; Phinney & Devich-Navarro, 1997). This is 
interesting 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 different cultures. Consider, for example, the 
following experience 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 the other. Reports of frame 
switching at work are common in the literature on minority or expatriate 
employees (e.g., Bell, 1991). Similar experiences are reported by 
ethnographers during fieldwork:

I found myself constantly flip-flopping
 . The longer I lived in Samoa, 
the more I was able to use the Samoans' 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 contemporary 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 
individual; 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 dynamic constructivist approach differs in its conception of culture 
from cross-cultural psychology, yet it is a complementary 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 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 activated by recent use (Bruner, 1957). Abundant evidence for this 
comes from experiments in which researchers manipulate whether 
participants are exposed to a word or image related to a construct (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 experiment (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 purportedly unrelated task, they were asked to interpret an ambiguous 
behavior (e.g., "Donna's friend ordered a coffee, 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 
construct that 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-unspecified 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 constructs 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 American bicultural individuals to 
American icons should activate interpretive constructs in their American 
cultural knowledge network; exposing the same individuals to Chinese icons 
instead should activate constructs in their Chinese cultural knowledge 
network.

Interpreting Behavior of Individual and Group Actors: A Litmus Test

Our research also required an interpretive task that is influenced by 
cultural knowledge in a well-understood manner. Here the legacy of 
cross-cultural psychology is invaluable 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 previous 
cross-national comparative studies. Many such patterns exist. For example, 
in self-description tasks, North Americans 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 difference. Hence, exposing 
bicultural individuals to cultural icons could affect this difference 
either through unobtrusive 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 
plausible 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 
animated films of geometric shapes, such as triangles and circles, that 
were moving in patterns suggestive of social interactions. Participants 
tended to interpret the films by ascribing motives and personalities to an 
individual shape. Heider (1958) concluded that 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 personal 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 incorrect 
interpretations of the individual's behavior and suboptimal ways of 
interacting with him or her (Jones & Harris, 1967; Morris, Larrick, & Su, 
1999). Because of its pervasiveness and consequentiality, this 
dispositionist bias has been called the fundamental 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), Morris and Peng (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 implicit 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 autonomy of groups (Su 
et al., 1999). In studies in which they used several methods, Morris and 
Peng showed that American participants accorded more weight to an 
individual's personal dispositions, whereas Chinese participants accorded 
more weight to an individual's social context. Further evidence for the 
difference in implicit theories emerged from studies directly measuring 
generalized beliefs about individuals versus social groups and 
institutions (Chiu, Dweck, Tong, & Fu, 1997). In a recent review of 
studies comparing North American and East Asian perceivers, researchers 
concluded that the sharpest differences in attributions for the cause of 
an individual's behavior lie in 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 researchers have found that East Asians make 
attributions to the dispositions of groups more than Americans do (Menon, 
Morris, Chiu, & Hong, 1999). In sum, cultural differences in the 
attributional weight accorded to the dispositions 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 
participants 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 ambiguous whether the individual's differing 
trajectory reflected internal dispositions or the influence of the group. 
In one type of display, the individual fish swam outside of the group, 
leaving ambiguous whether the individual's separation 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 animals has the advantage that 
participants are unaware culture 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.

Bicultural Participants

Who were the bicultural individuals we recruited in the studies? Our 
initial studies involved Westernized Chinese students in Hong Kong. 
Although traditional Chinese values 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 secondary schools (Young, Giles, & Pierson, 1986). Furthermore, 
large British and American expatriate communities and the salient presence 
of English-language television, films, and so forth means that Hong Kong 
Chinese students have been exposed to Euro-American social constructs 
extensively. Yet, although Hong Kong Chinese students are rather 
Westernized in some aspects of their self-concept and value system (see 
Bond & Cheung, 1981; Fu, 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 (Chinese Culture 
Connection, 1987). In sum, Hong Kong Chinese students in the late 1990s 
belong to a population of biculturally socialized individuals.

In our later experiment (reported in Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martínez, 
2000), we tested a different group of bicultural individuals. These were 
China-born Californian 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 bicultural group represented 
bicultural identification resulting from extensive Westernization of a 
society, the Chinese American group represented bicultural identification 
resulting from immigration: These are two primary ways that culture moves 
across territories to create multicultural societies (Hermans & Kempen, 
1998). Although we do not report in this article the study with Chinese 
American biculturals, results revealed that these participants recognized 
and were influenced by American and Chinese cultural 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., Marilyn 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 independence 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 assigned 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?" "Use three adjectives to describe the character of the 
legendary figure in this picture"). Participants in the Chinese culture 
priming condition 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 Chinese construct networks, 
respectively, leading to elevated accessibility of their respective 
implicit theories about the causality of social events. Participants in 
the control condition 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 otherwise 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 the scale 
meant very confident that it is because the one fish is leading the other 
fish (an internal cause), and a score of 12 meant very confident that it 
is because the one fish is being chased by the other fish (an external 
cause). Consistent 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 
pictures 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 condition, 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 describe 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 lasted for 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 to the options we provided. On 
the basis of Miller's (1984) coding scheme, the explanations were coded 
into inferences of internal properties or external properties. Again, 
participants' likelihood of generating external explanations differed 
significantly across the three experimental conditions. As predicted, 
fewer participants in the American culture priming condition than in the 
Chinese culture priming condition generated explanations referring to the 
external social context (see Figure 4). The proportion of participants 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 actions. We asked participants to 
make an attribution for a character's deviation from a diet--an action 
chosen because it 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 American 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 landscapes. This priming manipulation lasted 
approximately 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. After reading this brief description, 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, participants 
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 
Chinese culture priming condition (see Figure 4). On this measure, 
participants in the control condition fell in between 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 al.'s (1999) 
review that cultural influences on attributions for an individual's 
behavior originate more from the differential weight placed on the 
external social context (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 Approach 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 
experimentally 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 bicultural individuals, we now discuss its 
assumptions and implications 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 psychology that cultural knowledge 
exists as an integrated, domain-general construct. Several contemporary 
anthropologists (Shore, 1996; Sperber, 1996) and sociologists (DiMaggio, 
1997) have staked out similar positions within their disciplines, 
challenging more general conceptions of cultural knowledge as foundational 
schemas or value orientations. 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 construct accessibility. Whereas the 
cross-cultural literature generally explains judgment and decision 
outcomes in terms of whether individuals in a given cultural group possess 
a given knowledge construct, we see the possession 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 theories, not in whether the 
theories are possessed. In our experiments concerning frame switching in 
bicultural individuals, 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 reframed 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 relationships--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 researchers have 
found that some conditions create an epistemic motivation for a quick 
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 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 
individual dispositions among North Americans and the tendency 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 moderate 
perceivers' reliance on stereotypes and other knowledge 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 ethnographic observation, priming experiments offer a new 
tool for cultural research that has advantages over the preexisting 
methods. A first use of 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 associations, 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 endorsement 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 second role of priming lies in establishing the causal consequences of 
cultural knowledge. Experiments with the priming method allow for true 
random assignment of participants 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 complements cross-cultural comparisons 
in isolating the causal role of culture.

Language as Prime

Aside from cultural icons, language could also be an effective means of 
activating cultural constructs. In fact, considerable research evidence 
shows language effects in bilingual individuals' responses to a wide range 
of psychological inventories such as measures of personality (Earle, 1969; 
Ervin, 1964), values (Bond, 1983; Marín, Triandis, Betancourt, & Kashima, 
1983), self-concept (Trafimow, Silverman, Fan, & Law, 1997), emotional 
expression (Matsumoto & Assar, 1992), or even other-person descriptions 
(Hoffman, Lau, & Johnson, 1986). A compelling explanation for these 
findings has been that for bilingual individuals, 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 dynamic 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 
technique can be used to investigate the emotions triggered by exposure to 
cultural icons, and this may prove more incisive than trying to infer 
culture-emotion relationships from cross-national comparisons. Although 
research could commence 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 impact comes from work by Greenberg, Porteus, Simon, 
Pyszczynski, and Solomon (1995), in which they demonstrated that 
individuals led to think about their mortality are subsequently more 
respectful toward iconic cultural objects (e.g., a flag or crucifix). 
Central cultural symbols play a key role in the motivated identification 
of self with enduring cultural traditions.

At the same time that the dynamic constructivist approach can be extended 
more broadly, it is also important to note that this model of culture in 
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 and institutions 
(see Morris, Podolny, & Ariel, 1999). Hence, although the activation of 
cultural knowledge may have important influences on emotions and motives 
as well as judgments and decisions, many interesting aspects of culture 
may not be mediated by knowledge activation at all. A complete 
understanding of culture and psychology requires that the dynamic 
constructivist approach be complemented by analyses that are less 
knowledge-oriented.

Also, to a large extent, cultures are shaped in relation to 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 antagonism (such as Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia), presenting 
cultural icons of one culture may elicit reactive identification with the 
opposite culture (see Krauss & Chiu, 1998). Two conclusions can be drawn 
from this point. First, even within studies of culture and cognition, 
researchers need to proceed with an awareness of the intergroup and 
political connotations of particular cultural group membership. Second, 
reaction against unwanted reminders of a culture may be amenable to a 
dynamic constructivist 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 accessibility 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 constructivist 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 traditional approach by emphasizing the process of 
internalizing 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 process. 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 
acculturation, to some extent, manage the process by controlling 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 identities. Future research should 
investigate not only the outcome 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 evidence. 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 societies. 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 research 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 possibilities in 
understanding culture and transcultural experiences.

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