Effects of Culture on Reasoning
By: Brittany Combs
Learning is inherently cultural.
-A person's experiences in a culture affect biological processes that support:
· Learning
· Perception
· Cognition
Researchers explored 3 basic domains of life (in the area of reasoning):
1. Physical events (naïve physics)
2. Biological events (naïve biology)
3. Social or Psychological events (naïve psychology)
Each reflects a set of intuitive principles & inferences (each domain is defined by entities having the same kind of causal properties).
Might be marked by the way they move:
-Physical entities are set into motion by external forces
-Biological entities that may propel themselves
The importance of understanding cognition:
-The perception of physical causality is universal, whereas causal reasoning in biological and psychological domains is culturally variable.
Studies:
Morris and Peng (1994):
-presented two types of animated displays to American and Chinese participants
-one set of displays depicted physical interactions (of geometrical shapes), whereas the other set depicted social interactions (among fish). The participants' answers to questions about what they had seen suggested differences in attention to internal and external causes across the groups, but those differences depended on the domain (social or physical).
-conclusion: attribution of causality in the social domain is susceptible to cultural influences but causality in the physical domain is not.
Beller and colleagues (2009):
-asked German, Chinese, and Tongan participants to indicate which entity they regarded as causally most relevant for statements such as: "The fact that wood floats on water is basically due to..."
-ratings varied by cultural background of respondents and also by the phenomena participants were considering.
-conclusion: in general, the German and Chinese participants, but not the Tongan participants, considered a carrier's capability for buoyancy only when the floater was a solid object such as wood, but not when it was a fluid, such as oil.
***this area of research has barely been explored but suggests that the perception of physical causality may in fact not be universal and may be learned in culturally mediated ways.***