Cultural cognition

What is cultural cognition?

Cultural cognition is an account of how cultural commitments can shape perceptions of risk and the assessment of information. It proposes that people may find claims more credible when those claims fit values important to them.

Cultural cognition and scientific consensus

Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, and Braman studied beliefs about scientific consensus on contested risks. Their work included both associations with cultural outlooks and experiments on how people assessed information.

The study measured two outlook dimensions.

• Hierarchy–egalitarianism concerned acceptance of ranked social roles versus a preference for greater equality.
• Individualism–communitarianism concerned individual responsibility and freedom from interference versus collective responsibility for welfare.

These were questionnaire scores, not complete descriptions of people or fixed groups into which everyone fits.

In the experimental part of an online study of 1,500 U.S. adults, participants evaluated fictional book authors with strong academic credentials. Researchers varied whether an excerpt described a disputed risk as high or low. On climate change, participants with more hierarchical and individualistic outlooks were more likely to regard the author as an expert when the excerpt presented the low-risk position; more egalitarian and communitarian participants showed the opposite pattern. The measured outcome was a judgment of the author’s expertise and trustworthiness, not the scientific truth of the claim. This supports the proposed explanation of credibility judgments in that sample.

Scope

The account concerns patterns of information evaluation. It does not mean that culture completely determines every conclusion, that all disagreement is irrational, or that people are incapable of learning from evidence.

Example: interpreting a risk claim

Two people could hear the same claim about nuclear power and differ in how much they trust the source or what consequences they consider important. Cultural cognition suggests questions about those differences; the disagreement alone does not tell you that culture caused them.

Limits of cultural labels

A particular person’s view cannot be inferred from a broad cultural label. Research on climate change, gun risks, or science literacy must identify the measured belief and the population. One result cannot stand in for every contested topic.