Language and Culture

Language pervades social life. It is a primary means by which we gain access to the contents of others\u27 minds and establish shared understanding of the reality. Meanwhile, there is an enormous amount of linguistic diversity among human populations. Depending on what counts as a language, there are 3,000 to 10,000 living languages in the world, although a quarter of the world’s languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers and half have fewer than 10,000 (Crystal, 1997). Not surprisingly, a key question in culture and psychology research concerns the role of language in cultural processes. The present chapter focuses on two issues that have received by far the greatest amount of research attention from cultural researchers. First, how does language and human cultures co-evolve? Second, what are the non-linguistic cognitive effects of using a certain language? Does speaking different languages orient individuals to see and experience the external reality differently? The scope of the present chapter does not permit a comprehensive review of all pertinent research; only a selected sample of studies will be used to illustrate the main ideas in the present chapter

Cognitive Load, Need For Closure, and Socially Desirable Responding: Cognitively Constrained Versus Motivated Response Biases in Cross-Cultural Consumer Research

Recent research reveals cultural differences in consumers' tendency to engage in socially desirable responding. Specifically, individualist consumers are shown to be prone to self-deceptive enhancement (SDE), the tendency to hold exaggerated views of one's skills and abilities, whereas collectivist consumers are shown to be prone to impression management (IM), the tendency to distort responses to appear normatively appropriate. We examine the divergent moderating effects of cognitive and motivational factors on these relationships. Across six studies, we find that depleting collectivists' cognitive resources impairs their ability to engage in IM but does not influence individualists' tendency to engage in SDE. In contrast, collectivists' tendency to engage in IM and individualists' tendency to engage in SDE are both seen to increase with high (vs. low) need for cognitive closure (NFC). Implications of these findings on theoretical and methodological research on SDR are highlighted

Lay Theories and Intergroup Relations

Lay theory research on intergroup relations has rapidly grown over the past two decades. Drawing on articles in this Special Issue, we showcase the latest developments. First, we define lay theories, addressing the extent of overlap with scientific theories and differences among lay theories in terms of type of representation, level of articulation, frequency of activation and use, range of applicability, and degree of universality. Second, we describe advances in the understanding of the functions of lay theories. Third, we review the far-reaching implications of lay theories for group and intergroup processes. Fourth, we discuss the movement toward comparing and contrasting related lay theories. Taken together, these articles suggest the study of lay theories provides a fuller understanding of intergroup relations

Attention to context during evaluative learning and context-dependent automatic evaluation: A cross-cultural analysis

Previous research has shown that changes in automatic evaluations can be limited to the context in which counterattitudinal information was acquired. This effect has been attributed to enhanced attention to context cues during the encoding of expectancy-violating counterattitudinal information. Drawing on previous evidence for cultural differences in attention to context and tolerance for inconsistency, the present research examined cultural differences in responses to conflicting evaluative information and the resulting context-effects on automatic evaluation. Study 1 revealed that both Canadian and Singaporean participants showed enhanced attention to context during exposure to counterattitudinal information. In a reanalysis of studies with Singaporean participants, Study 2 replicated the pattern of contextualized changes of automatic evaluations previously obtained in Western participants. The results suggest that contextualized change of automatic evaluations might be a general phenomenon that replicates across cultures. Implications for East-West similarities in basic attentional processes and automatic evaluation are discussed

Language Use as Carrier of Social Identity

In the present study, we examined the relationship of social identity (Hongkonger or Chinese) and rite attitudes toward bilingual code switching in a conversation between a Hong Kong person and a Chinese Mainlander. Students from a local university in Hong Kong (N = 159) listened to a four-turn conversation between a Hong Kong person and a Mainlander in a wedding party. As expected, when the speaker converged to rite Putonghua (the Mainland official language), those who claimed a Hongkonger identity judged the Hong Kong speaker less favourably; than did those who claimed a Chinese identity. In addition, participants who claimed a Chinese identity judged the Hong Kong speaker more favourably when he converged to Putonghua than when he maintained Cantonese (a Chinese dialect most commonly used in Hong Kong). Finally, social identity was unrelated to language attitudes when the Mainland speaker converged to Cantonese first. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved