Culture as situated cognition: Cultural mindsets,cultural fluency,and meaning making

Culture is a human universal, a “good enough” solution to universal needs. It is also a specific meaning-making framework, a “mindset” that influences what feels fluent, what is attended to, which goals or mental procedures are salient. Cross-national comparisons demonstrate both universality and between-group difference (specificity) but cannot address underlying process or distinguish fixed from context-dependent effects. I use a situated cognition framework and experimental methods to address these gaps, demonstrating that salient cultural mindsets have causal downstream consequences for meaning making, self-processes, willingness to invest in relationships, and complex mental procedures. Moreover, individualistic and collectivistic mindsets are accessible cross-culturally so both can be primed. Between-group differences arise in part from momentary cues that make either individualistic or collectivistic mindset accessible.     

Cultural Embeddedness of Health,Illness and Healing: Prospects for Integrating Indigenous and Western Healing Practices

Culture influences conceptualizations about illness, health and healthcare. In this article we argue that Western-oriented health care models have limited success when applied to health conditions of people of non-Western cultures and contend that culture is an important factor in health, illness and healing. We present two cultural modes of illness and healing to illustrate that many health conditions are meaningful and can be effectively managed with consideration of the cultural contexts of the communities concerned. We illustrate, by case examples, how these cultural conceptualisations influence the treatment of illness in three different cultural settings. In addition, we identify some of the key challenges to integrating traditional healing into counselling and psychotherapy. Integration of different cultural healthcare models is a best practice in comprehensive context sensitive delivery of healthcare.     

Central Role of Relatedness in Alaska Native Youth Resilience: Preliminary Themes from One Site of the Circumpolar Indigenous Pathways to Adulthood (CIPA) Study

This qualitative study of youth resilience takes place in an Alaska Native community, which has undergone rapid, imposed social change over the last three generations. Elders, and successive generations have grown up in strikingly different social, economic and political contexts. Youth narratives of relationships in the context of adolescent growth and development offer insights to better understand culturally-patterned experience, continuity and change. Local youth and adults shaped the design, implementation and analysis phases of this participatory study. Multiple interviews, totaling 20 older (ages 15–18) and younger (11–14) boys and girls provide accounts of everyday lives and life histories. Although losing close relationships was the most common stressor, many of the participants’ resilience strategies centered on their connections to others. Participants cultivated ‘relatedness’, nurturing relationships that took on kinship qualities. Within these relationships, youth participants acted more responsibly and/or developed a sense of competency and self-worth because of others’ reliance on them.     

Choice and dissonance in a European cultural context: The case of Western and Eastern Europeans

Prior research demonstrates that members of collectivistic cultures are less likely to reduce cognitive dissonance after making a choice, compared to members of individualistic cultures. This difference has been attributed to different conceptualizations of choice that derive from different self‐construals across cultures. In individualistic cultures, choice leads to stronger commitment to the chosen option compared to collectivistic cultures, because it implicates core aspects of the independent self, such as personal preferences. However, this cultural variation in postchoice dissonance has thus far been studied exclusively by comparing East Asians and North Americans. Building on the assumption that this difference is due to different construals of the self, we conducted an experiment with movie choices using the classic free‐choice paradigm to examine differences in dissonance reduction between Western and Eastern Europeans, two populations known to differ with respect to interdependence. The results show that Eastern Europeans are less likely than Western Europeans to reduce postchoice dissonance by spreading their alternatives. Our findings speak to the generalizability of the hypothesis that in cultures differing in independence or interdependence people also differ in the way they construe choice, as well as in the way the act of choosing affects their self‐concept.     

Mental Health,Culture and Spirituality: Implications for the Effective Psychotherapeutic Care of Australia's Ageing Migrant Populations

SUMMARY

In this essay, attention is given to discussing the notions of and influences of culture, mental health and spirituality. Research shows that people who came to Australia either as immigrants or refugees are at risk of suffering a disproportionate incidence of mental problems relative to the rest of the Australian population. Older male immigrants are particularly at risk. A key variable influencing the mental health of immigrants/refugees in Australia is the social conditions in which they live. Another largely unrecognised variable influencing mental health is spirituality. The extent to which the expression of spirituality promotes mental health and healing, however, will depend on cross-cultural perceptions of what spirituality is, and how it influences mental health, illness and recovery. Whatever the perceptions of spirituality, it is important to understand that its roots are cultural, and its influence is on meaning construction. Meaning construction, in turn, is itself culturally mediated and framed. Given this, it is crucial that culture-what it is and how it influences human experience-is understood by health professionals if they are to be able to provide meaningful and therapeutically effective care to culturally diverse people and their mental health problems. A central aim of this essay is to facilitate this understanding.     

The role of sociocultural context for culture competence and depressive symptoms among ethnic minority youths in junior high school

The aim of the study was to examine whether school sociocultural context affects culture competence and its relationship to depressive symptoms. As part of the Youth, Culture and Competence study conducted in the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, questionnaire data was collected from 373 immigrant students in two junior high schools within Oslo. The school contexts were represented in terms of proportion of ethnic minority students, 90% versus 60% referred to as the concentrated and balanced context, respectively. Results showed a relatively low level of depressive symptoms and high level of ethnic and host culture competence regardless of context. Ethnic culture competence showed an inverse relationship to depression in both contexts. Host culture competence was also negatively correlated with depression, but only in the balanced context. In the concentrated context this correlation was unsubstantial. Thus, the sociocultural context was found to moderate this correlation.     

Exploring temperamental differences in infants from the USA and the Netherlands

This longitudinal study employed the Infant Behaviour Questionnaire-Revised in assessing temperamental differences between infants at 6 months (n = 114 US, 184 Dutch) and 12 months (n = 92 US, 172 Dutch) from the USA and the Netherlands. Main effects indicated that Dutch infants were rated higher on the Orienting/Regulatory Capacity (ORC) factor and fine-grained dimensions of smiling and laughter, falling reactivity, cuddliness, low-intensity pleasure, and soothability, whereas US infants received higher ratings on the Negative Affectivity factor and on dimensions of activity level, vocal reactivity, fear, frustration, and sadness. Cultural differences for ORC were more pronounced in early infancy, cultural differences for Fear were stronger in late infancy, and US infants demonstrated higher duration of orienting at 12 months only. Culture also appeared to impact the pace of consolidation of temperamental characteristics, with greater stability exhibited by US than Dutch infants in smiling and laughter and vocal reactivity.     

DSM-5: The intersectionality of spirituality,culture, and aging

Counselors practice with older adults whose religion and spirituality may be factors in assessment and treatment. The DSM-5 includes religion and spirituality as part of pathology or culture. This approach is supported in counselor education. Religion as a cultural derivative only reflects the human aspect of religion, not including a client’s perception of divine actions possibly beyond the human experience, i.e., a miracle. How does the clinician discern if a client’s experience reflects pathology or the possibility of some sort of miracle? This article includes strengths and limitations of a cultural definition of religious and spiritual experience with case applications.     

Early words that work: When and how virtual linguistic mimicry facilitates negotiation outcomes

We hypothesized that in online, virtual formats, negotiators receive better outcomes when mimicking their counterpart's language; furthermore, we predicted that this strategy would be more effective when occurring early in the negotiation rather than at the end, and should also be effective across both independent and interdependent cultures. Results from two experiments supported these hypotheses. Experiment 1 was conducted in Thailand and demonstrated that negotiators who actively mimicked their counterpart's language in the first 10 min of the negotiation obtained higher individual gain compared to those mimicking during the last 10 min, as well as compared to control participants. Experiment 2 replicated this effect in the United States (with Dutch and American negotiators) and also showed that trust mediated the effect of virtual linguistic mimicry on individual negotiation outcomes. Implications for virtual communication, strategic mimicry, and negotiations are discussed.