Cultural cognition
Encyclopedia
The Cultural cognition of risk, sometimes called simply cultural cognition, refers to the hypothesized tendency of persons to form perceptions of risk and related facts that cohere with their self-defining values. Research examining this phenomenon draws on a variety of social science disciplines including psychology
, anthropology
, political science
, sociology
, and communications. The stated objectives of this research are both to understand how values shape political conflict over facts (like whether climate change
exists, whether gun control increases crime, whether vaccination of school girls for HPV threatens their health) and to promote effective deliberative strategies for resolving such conflicts consistent with sound empirical data.
Scholars have furnished two types of evidence to support the cultural cognition hypothesis. The first consists of general survey data that suggest that individuals’ values more strongly predict their risk perceptions than do other characteristics such as race, gender, economic status, and political orientations.
The second type of evidence consists in experiments that identify discrete psychological processes that connect individuals’ values to their beliefs about risk and related facts. Such experiments suggest, for example, that individuals selectively credit or dismiss information in a manner that reinforces beliefs congenial to their values. They also show that individuals tend to be more persuaded by policy experts perceived to hold values similar to theirs than by ones perceived to hold values different from theirs. Such processes, the experiments suggest, often result in divisive forms of cultural conflict over facts, but can also be managed in fashions that reduce such disagreement.
risks and benefits. Combining survey and experimental methods, the studies present evidence that individuals culturally predisposed to be skeptical of environmental risks are both more likely to seek out information on nanotechnology and more likely to infer from that information that nanotechnology’s benefits will outweigh its risks. Individuals culturally predisposed to credit environmental risks construe that same information, when exposed to it in the lab, as implying that nanotechnology’s risks will predominate. The studies also present evidence that individuals tend to credit expert information on nanotechnology—regardless of its content—based on whether they share the perceived cultural values of the expert communicator. The studies were issued by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies
at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
, one of the research sponsors.
," cultural cognition researchers have concluded. In an experimental study, the researchers found that subjects were substantially more likely to count a scientist (of elite credentials) as an "expert" in his field of study when the scientist was depicted as taking a position consistent with the one associated with the subjects’ cultural predispositions than when that scientist took a contrary position. A related survey showed that members of opposed cultural groups hold highly divergent impressions of what most scientific experts believe on various matters, a finding consistent with the ubiquity of culturally biased recognition of who counts as an "expert." Across a range of diverse risks (including climate change, nuclear waste disposal, and private handgun possession), members of no particular cultural group, the study found, were more likely than any other to hold perceptions of scientific consensus that consistently matched those adopted in "expert consensus reports" issued by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
, the U.S. Supreme Court (by a vote of 8-1) had held that “no reasonable jury” could view the tape and fail to find that the driver posed a lethal risk to the public large enough to justify deadly force by the police (namely, ramming the fleeing driver’s vehicle, causing it to crash). The majority of study subjects agreed with the Court, but there were significant divisions along cultural lines. Other studies have found that individuals’ cultural worldviews influence their perceptions of consent in an acquaintance or date rape
scenario, and of the imminence of violence and other facts in self-defense cases involving either battered women or interracial confrontations.
. The first is the cultural theory of risk
associated with anthropologist Mary Douglas
and political scientist Aaron Wildavsky
. The cultural cognition hypothesis is derived from Douglas and Wildavsky's claim, advanced most notably in their controversial book Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers (1982), that individuals selectively attend to risks in a manner that expresses and reinforces their preferred way of life.
Cultural cognition researchers, along with other scholars who have investigated Douglas and Wildavsky’s theory empirically, use attitudinal scales that reflect Douglas’s worldview typology. That typology characterizes worldviews, or preferences about how society should be organized, along two cross-cutting dimensions: “group,” which refers to how individualistic or group-oriented a society should be; and “grid,” which refers to how hierarchical or egalitarian a society should be.
The second theory is the “psychometric paradigm,” to which Paul Slovic
, a member of the Cultural Cognition Project, has made significant contributions. The psychometric paradigm links risk perceptions to various cognitive and social mechanisms that generally evade simpler, rational choice models associated with economics. Cultural cognition theory posits that these mechanisms mediate between, or connect, individuals’ cultural values to their perceptions of risk and other policy-relevant beliefs.
Combing the cultural theory of risk and the psychometric paradigm, cultural cognition, its exponents claim, remedies difficulties with each. The mechanisms featured in the psychometric paradigm (and in social psychology generally) furnish a cogent explanation of why individuals adopt states of mind that fit and promote the aims of groups, including ones featured in Douglas’s culture theory. They do so, moreover, in a manner that avoids “functionalism
,” a criticized form of analysis that identifies group interests, rather than individual ones, as a cause for human action. At the same time cultural theory, by asserting the orienting role of values, explains how the mechanisms featured in the psychometric paradigm can result in differences in risk perception among persons who hold different values. The interrelationship between individual values and perceptions of risk also calls into doubt the depiction of risk perceptions deriving from these mechanisms as products of irrationality or cognitive defect.
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, and communications. The stated objectives of this research are both to understand how values shape political conflict over facts (like whether climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
exists, whether gun control increases crime, whether vaccination of school girls for HPV threatens their health) and to promote effective deliberative strategies for resolving such conflicts consistent with sound empirical data.
Theory and evidence
The cultural cognition hypothesis holds that individuals are motivated by a variety of psychological processes to form beliefs about putatively dangerous activities that match their cultural evaluations of them. Persons who subscribe to relatively individualistic values, for example, tend to value commerce and industry and are inclined to disbelieve that such activities pose serious environmental risks. Persons who subscribe to relatively egalitarian and communitarian values, in contrast, readily credit claims of environmental risks, consistent with their moral suspicion of commerce and industry as sources of inequality and symbols of excessive self-seeking.Scholars have furnished two types of evidence to support the cultural cognition hypothesis. The first consists of general survey data that suggest that individuals’ values more strongly predict their risk perceptions than do other characteristics such as race, gender, economic status, and political orientations.
The second type of evidence consists in experiments that identify discrete psychological processes that connect individuals’ values to their beliefs about risk and related facts. Such experiments suggest, for example, that individuals selectively credit or dismiss information in a manner that reinforces beliefs congenial to their values. They also show that individuals tend to be more persuaded by policy experts perceived to hold values similar to theirs than by ones perceived to hold values different from theirs. Such processes, the experiments suggest, often result in divisive forms of cultural conflict over facts, but can also be managed in fashions that reduce such disagreement.
Cultural cognition project at Yale Law School
Funded by governmental and private foundation grants, much of the work on cultural cognition has been performed by an interdisciplinary group of scholars affiliated with the Cultural Cognition Project http://www.culturalcognition.net. There are currently over a dozen project members, from a variety of universities. Two members of the project—Dan Kahan and Douglas Kysar—are Yale Law School faculty, although other members (such as Donald Braman of George Washington University Law School and Geoffrey Cohen of the University of Colorado) were previously affiliated with Yale Law School or Yale University."White male effect"
Risk-perception researchers have documented that white males are less concerned with a wide variety of risks than are minorities and females, a phenomenon known as the "white male effect" in the risk-perception literature. An article by Kahan, Braman, Gastil, Slovic and Mertz presented evidence that the white male effect is an outgrowth of cultural cognition. The article reports data showing that race and gender differences in risk perception are conditional on cultural values: White males in general appear to be less concerned about risks only because a discrete group of white males who subscribe to hierarchical and individualistic values are extremely skeptical that activities important to their cultural roles (commerce, gun ownership) impose harm on society generally. This finding does not imply, however, that white males or white hierarchical and individualistic males are uniquely prone to form risk perceptions that are congenial to their social values and roles.Nanotechnology
The Cultural Cognition Project has conducted a series of studies on public perceptions of nanotechnologyNanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...
risks and benefits. Combining survey and experimental methods, the studies present evidence that individuals culturally predisposed to be skeptical of environmental risks are both more likely to seek out information on nanotechnology and more likely to infer from that information that nanotechnology’s benefits will outweigh its risks. Individuals culturally predisposed to credit environmental risks construe that same information, when exposed to it in the lab, as implying that nanotechnology’s risks will predominate. The studies also present evidence that individuals tend to credit expert information on nanotechnology—regardless of its content—based on whether they share the perceived cultural values of the expert communicator. The studies were issued by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies
Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies
The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies was established in 2005 as a partnership between the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Project is intended to address the social, political, and public safety aspects of nanotechnology...
at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars , located in Washington, D.C., is a United States Presidential Memorial that was established as part of the Smithsonian Institution by an act of Congress in 1968...
, one of the research sponsors.
"Scientific Consensus"
The same dynamics that motivate individuals of diverse cultural outlooks to form competing perceptions of risks are likely to cause them to form opposing perceptions of "scientific consensusScientific consensus
Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus implies general agreement, though not necessarily unanimity. Scientific consensus is not by itself a scientific argument, and it is not part of the...
," cultural cognition researchers have concluded. In an experimental study, the researchers found that subjects were substantially more likely to count a scientist (of elite credentials) as an "expert" in his field of study when the scientist was depicted as taking a position consistent with the one associated with the subjects’ cultural predispositions than when that scientist took a contrary position. A related survey showed that members of opposed cultural groups hold highly divergent impressions of what most scientific experts believe on various matters, a finding consistent with the ubiquity of culturally biased recognition of who counts as an "expert." Across a range of diverse risks (including climate change, nuclear waste disposal, and private handgun possession), members of no particular cultural group, the study found, were more likely than any other to hold perceptions of scientific consensus that consistently matched those adopted in "expert consensus reports" issued by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Law
Scholars have also applied the cultural cognition of risk to legal issues. One such study examined how individuals reacted to a videotape of a high-speed police chase. In Scott v. HarrisScott v. Harris
Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372 was a decision by the United States Supreme Court involving a lawsuit against a sheriff's deputy brought by a motorist who was paralyzed after the officer ran his eluding vehicle off the road during a high-speed car chase. The driver contended that this action was an...
, the U.S. Supreme Court (by a vote of 8-1) had held that “no reasonable jury” could view the tape and fail to find that the driver posed a lethal risk to the public large enough to justify deadly force by the police (namely, ramming the fleeing driver’s vehicle, causing it to crash). The majority of study subjects agreed with the Court, but there were significant divisions along cultural lines. Other studies have found that individuals’ cultural worldviews influence their perceptions of consent in an acquaintance or date rape
Date rape
"Date rape", often referred to as acquaintance rape, is an assault or attempted assault usually committed by a new acquaintance involving sexual intercourse without mutual consent....
scenario, and of the imminence of violence and other facts in self-defense cases involving either battered women or interracial confrontations.
Relationship to other risk perception theories
Cultural cognition is a descendant of two other theories of risk perceptionRisk perception
Risk perception is the subjective judgment that people make about the characteristics and severity of a risk. The phrase is most commonly used in reference to natural hazards and threats to the environment or health, such as nuclear power. Several theories have been proposed to explain why...
. The first is the cultural theory of risk
Cultural Theory of risk
The Cultural Theory of risk, often referred to simply as Cultural Theory , consists of a conceptual framework and an associated body of empirical studies that seek to explain societal conflict over risk...
associated with anthropologist Mary Douglas
Mary Douglas
Dame Mary Douglas, DBE, FBA was a British anthropologist, known for her writings on human culture and symbolism....
and political scientist Aaron Wildavsky
Aaron Wildavsky
Aaron Wildavsky was an American political scientist known for his pioneering work in public policy, government budgeting, and risk management....
. The cultural cognition hypothesis is derived from Douglas and Wildavsky's claim, advanced most notably in their controversial book Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers (1982), that individuals selectively attend to risks in a manner that expresses and reinforces their preferred way of life.
Cultural cognition researchers, along with other scholars who have investigated Douglas and Wildavsky’s theory empirically, use attitudinal scales that reflect Douglas’s worldview typology. That typology characterizes worldviews, or preferences about how society should be organized, along two cross-cutting dimensions: “group,” which refers to how individualistic or group-oriented a society should be; and “grid,” which refers to how hierarchical or egalitarian a society should be.
The second theory is the “psychometric paradigm,” to which Paul Slovic
Paul Slovic
Paul Slovic is a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and the president of the Decision Research group. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Michigan in 1964....
, a member of the Cultural Cognition Project, has made significant contributions. The psychometric paradigm links risk perceptions to various cognitive and social mechanisms that generally evade simpler, rational choice models associated with economics. Cultural cognition theory posits that these mechanisms mediate between, or connect, individuals’ cultural values to their perceptions of risk and other policy-relevant beliefs.
Combing the cultural theory of risk and the psychometric paradigm, cultural cognition, its exponents claim, remedies difficulties with each. The mechanisms featured in the psychometric paradigm (and in social psychology generally) furnish a cogent explanation of why individuals adopt states of mind that fit and promote the aims of groups, including ones featured in Douglas’s culture theory. They do so, moreover, in a manner that avoids “functionalism
Functional psychology
Functional psychology or functionalism refers to a general psychological philosophy that considers mental life and behavior in terms of active adaptation to the person's environment. As such, it provides the general basis for developing psychological theories not readily testable by controlled...
,” a criticized form of analysis that identifies group interests, rather than individual ones, as a cause for human action. At the same time cultural theory, by asserting the orienting role of values, explains how the mechanisms featured in the psychometric paradigm can result in differences in risk perception among persons who hold different values. The interrelationship between individual values and perceptions of risk also calls into doubt the depiction of risk perceptions deriving from these mechanisms as products of irrationality or cognitive defect.
Criticisms
Cultural cognition has been subjected to criticisms from a variety of sources. Some rational choice economists as well as some psychologists have suggested that the theory (and ones based on the cultural theory of risk generally) explain only a small fraction of the variation in popular risk perceptions. Some adherents to the cultural theory of risk, including Mary Douglas herself, have criticized cultural cognition for a conception of values that is too tightly modeled on American political disputes and that implicitly disparages the “hierarchical” worldview. Finally, some scholars who emphasize elements of the psychometric paradigm suggest that the influence of cultural values on risk perceptions is best understood as simply an additional source of interference with the rational processing of information.Further reading
- Bailey, R. The Culture War on Facts: Are You Entitled to Your Own Truth? Reasonline, Oct. 9, 2007.
- Bailey, R. Everyone Who Knows What They're Talking About Agrees with Me Reasonline, Feb. 23, 2010.
- Bond, M. How to Keep Your Head in Scary Situations. New Scientist, Aug. 27, 2008.
- Jones, R. Fearing the Fear of Nanotechnology. Nature News, Dec. 9, 2008.
- Joyce, C. Belief In Climate Change Hinges On Worldview. NPR: All Things Considered, Feb. 23, 2010.
- National Science Foundation. New Studies Reveal Differing Perceptions of Nature-Altering Science, Dec. 11, 2008.
- National Science Foundation. Who's Afraid of the HPV Vaccine? Study Says People's Values Shape Perceptions of HPV Vaccine Risk, Jan. 13, 2010.
- National Science Foundation. Why "Scientific Consensus" Fails to Persuade, Sept. 13, 2010.
- Ropeik, David. Trains, nukes, marriage, and vaccines (and anything else): Why the facts don't matter. Scientific American, Apr. 22, 2011
- Shea, Christopher. The Ninth Annual Year in Ideas: Cognitive Illiberalism. N.Y. Times Sunday Magazine, Dec. 10, 2009.
- Vedantam, Shankar. Why Voters Play Follow-the-Leader. Washington Post, Feb. 4, 2008, A3.
- Weber, Bruce. The Deciders: Umpires v. Judges, New York Times, July 12, 2009, WK1.