Cognitive perspectives of different self-construals

By Indranil Enkhtuvshin

Do people from different cultures perceive the same things with different viewpoints depending on their self-construals? In this short academic essay, I would present my interview results and academic evidence on the matter of how culture shapes our way of thinking and perceptions.

It took only about 6 million years for modern human’s cognitive ability to reach its today’s point of sophistication. Explaining human cognitive development from a biological revolution perspective is an insufficient argument for the development of the human. Many theorists believe that biological evolution was not the sole reason for the development of human cognition capability. We differ from our primates with our capability to speak languages and adapt to cultural practices because of the social and cultural environment we daily engage in. Therefore, cultural cognitive development is one of the biggest factors that led humans to acquire unique cognitive capacities. Cognitive adaptation allows humans to learn from and with others through cultural transmission (Tomasello, 1999).

Michael Tomasello is one of the most influential scholars that explained the connection between culture and cognition. He views that the ability to learn through cultural transmission is what distinguishes humans from other primates and contributes to human cognition development. Cognition denotes the acquisition of knowledge and comprehension from experience, thoughts, and senses. Cognition gives us the ability to learn through cultural transmission. The cultural transmission itself is the process of cultural practices, ideology, beliefs, and values being passed down to one generation from another generation. Cultural transmission is possible because of cultural learning. Cultural learning is the undertaking of gaining cultural knowledge and practices. ‘Ratchet effect’ occurs when cultural learning is taking place.

The ratchet effect simply refers to the manner in which, through modifications and enhancements, humans constantly add to existing information. It also denotes the human’s ability to collectively build knowledge. The ratchet effect allows people of one culture to collaboratively build knowledge together and collectively invent and improve new sets of practices. It draws on established awareness and makes mutual advancements among the people. The human brain’s development is shaped by the cultural setting and cultural environment. This is only possible because people build knowledge cumulatively. Tomasello used the ratchet effect to explain the culture’s cumulative trait. If a certain innovation has been made, it can leap (by imitation) from one mind to another, and thus a whole population can develop a new characteristic from that innovation (Tomasello, 2000).

According to Nalini Ambady, one of the most fundamental ways in which culture influences psychological processes is through the cognitive schema or self-construal of the individuals (Ambady, 2011). There are two types of main self-construal: 1) Independent (or individualistic) and 2) Interdependent (or collectivistic). These two self-construals differ depending on the country’s cultures. For instance, the interviewees of mine, those from independent cultures, pointed out that when they get to Japan (interdependent culture) the student and teacher relationship was much more restricted in Japan. Asian countries tend to have more interdependent cultures than of Western countries. One of my interviewees who is from China answered that college students and professors in China are not close and rarely communicate after class, however, her friend who is from America has a relationship with her professor as friends and freely communicates with his teacher. My interviewee was born and raised in a much more collectivistic country and the ideology of collectivism prizes social harmony and adherence to group norms. Whereas, her friend who is from America has grown up as a more self-expressive and autonomous person who can freely speak with his professor without any fear of breaking the group norm and conformity.

Culture also has an impact on our preferences because every culture has its own beliefs and values. My interviewee who is from America thinks that his country’s culture influences his perspective when it comes to his interaction with people. He thinks that Americans prefer to be more direct in conversations while some other cultures prefer indirect methods of communication.

For my interview, I have interviewed 6 people who were all aged 18–25 university students. 66.7% of my interviewees were female, on the other hand, 33,3% of them were male. The interviewees were from Costa Rica, China, Japan, Mauritius, Singapore, and the USA. 100% of my interviewees agreed that people perceive the same thing with different outlooks and perceptions.

50% of my interviewees agreed with the point that Western people tend to have an analytic perception than East Asian people.

My interviewee from Costa Rica sees her culture as both individualistic and collectivistic. She sees that people tend to collaborate in matters of work and such, and in terms of religion there can be a collectivistic mindset, however, individualism is prevalent in the sense that people don’t feel the pressure to fit into a certain category or label. When I showed her this picture and asked about what was the dominant emotion each group showed she replied that the focal individuals’ emotions were the group’s expression. Thus, she was susceptible to the focal individual’s expression. From the result, it can be seen that she has a more individualistic view because the researchers who also interviewed the American and Japanese observers had the same result as mine. The people from more individualistic countries were susceptible to the focal individual’s emotions, on the other hand, the interviewees from more collectivistic societies such as Japan, were more susceptible to the group’s expressions.

Human beings have evolved in such a way that our cognition depends on a certain kind of cultural environment and culture influences human thinking patterns and understandings. The human brain deliberately absorbs the regularities of our cultural settings. The way in which the brain is wired and activated is influenced by culture, but the brain is malleable. In this sense, the brain can be seen as a type of cultural sponge,” absorbing the regularities of our physical and social environments around us’’ (Ambady, 2011). Therefore, the human brain deliberately absorbs the regularities of cultural settings. In turn, self-construal that is generated by the culture affects how we interact with others and how we shape our own worlds.