Culture and Human Inference: Perspectives from Three Traditions

Kaiping Peng Daniel R. Ames Eric D. Knowles

University of California, Berkeley

To appear in David Matsumoto (Ed). Handbook of Cross-cultural Psychology. Oxford

University Press, 2000.
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Two decades ago, American social psychologists Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross published
their now classic book, Human Inference, a broad survey of how judgments, particularly about
the social world, unfold from evidence and reasoning (Nisbett & Ross, 1980). Roy D’Andrade, a
notable cognitive anthropologist, read the book and pronounced it a “good ethnography.” The
authors were dismayed: they thought they had written a universal of account of inference and
cognition, describing social judgment processes in a relatively timeless and culture-free way.
Most of their colleagues at the time agreed. However, in the ensuing twenty years, cultural
psychology has blossomed, some of it pursued by Nisbett and Ross themselves. The
accumulating evidence on cultural differences in inference is clear and Nisbett and Ross now
agree that their original work amounts to a something of an ethnographic study of inference in a
single culture, the United States (see Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, in press).
What has happened in the past two decades that changed the minds of these and other
psychologists studying human judgment, leading them to believe previous efforts on human
inference are useful, but culturally-bound? What has cultural psychology revealed about the role
of culture in human inference? In this chapter, we review an on-going revolution that examines
the cultural nature of judgment and thinking. Evidence suggests that so-called “basic” processes
such as attribution and categorization do not play out in the same ways among all human
groups—and the differences go beyond superficial variety in content. A variety of empirical
studies on culture and inference, mostly our and our colleagues works completed in the past
decade, are utilized to illustrate the cultural characteristics of human inference. But before
reviewing this evidence, we examine three prominent psychological approaches to studying
culture: the well-established value and self traditions and the emerging theory tradition. Each of
these has a distinct way of conceiving culture and makes different kinds of claims about the
relationship between culture and inference. Our brief introduction of these traditions lays the
groundwork for an overview of psychological research findings. After recounting the findings,
we return to the traditions and propose an integrated way for thinking about the rich and wide-
ranging connections culture and human inference.
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Perspectives on Culture and Human Inference

It is no great exaggeration to suggest that the biggest challenge to culture-oriented

scholars of human inference is the issue of the independent variable: what is culture? Wide-
ranging answers are available from a host of disciplines, variously including shared meaning
systems, cultural personality or ethos, practices and habits, institutions and social structures,
artifacts and tools, and everything that takes place in human psychological life and interaction
beyond what is dictated by our genes. However, for psychological researchers to get traction on
the issue of human inference, they must “unpack” culture and adopt a position on how to define
and reflect culture in their work (Ames & Peng, 1999, Betancourt & Lopez, 1993; Rohner, 1984;
Whiting, 1976).
There is likely no one single best definition of culture or way of studying culture’s effects.
Rather, research psychologists highlight various aspects of culture, adopting inevitably imperfect
but workable assumptions about what culture is. In psychological work related to human
inference, there have been two dominant traditions over the last twenty years: one that arranges
cultures by their distinct value systems and one that contrasts cultures in terms of their
conceptions of selfhood. More recently, another tradition has emerged which describes cultures
in terms of a variety of widely-shared implicit folk theories. We review each of these
perspectives in turn, but note that they have many assumptions and techniques in common;
individual scholars—and even individual studies—may draw on several or all of these
approaches.
The Value Tradition
Many people who have traveled or lived outside of their home country have a sense that
people in other cultures possess different values from their own. In some way, these values could
be taken as defining culture itself and systematic differences in values–especially in a small
collection of “core” values–could be seen as providing some structure for thinking about cultural
differences. This, broadly, is the approach advocated by a large number of cultural psychologists
(e.g., Smith & Bond, 1999, p. 69).
A pioneering figure from these ranks is Hofstede who, some twenty years ago, compiled
an almost unparalleled set: he administered a survey of values to nearly 120,000 International
Business Machines (IBM) employees in 40 countries. Hofstede factor analyzed the data at the
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country level (as a proxy for culture) and found four dimensions, which he labeled power
distance (willingness to tolerate differences in power and authority), individualism (versus
collectivism; orientation toward indiviudal or group), masculinity (versus femininity; the former
stressing achievement and material success, the latter, harmony and caring), and uncertainty
avoidance (willingness to tolerate ambiguity). Hofstede’s approach has been pursued by a
number of other scholars, including Schwartz (Schwartz, 1991; Schwartz and Sagiv, 1995) who
argues that ten important values (such as tradition, security, power, and stimulation) form a
universal structure across two dimensions: openness to change/conservation and self-
transcendence/self-enhancement. According to Schwartz, any given culture has an identifiable
position in this value space which allows it to be compared with other cultures.
A number of scholars have examined cross-cultural differences in inference and judgment
by focusing on particular value dimensions. Shweder (1995), for instance, has explored the value
of spiritual purity among Hindu Indians. Meanwhile, Leung (1997) has examined how East
Asian harmony values affect justice perceptions and decisions, such as reward allocation.
However, the most widespread research program in the value tradition has focused on one of the
dimensions identified by Hofstede: individualism-collectivism. This dimension reflects an
orientation towards one’s own needs and impulses (individualism) or towards the needs and
dictates of one’s social groups such as families and communities (collectivism). Individualism-
collectivism has drawn a great deal of attention from cross-cultural researchers and some
observers see it as the most overarching theory of cultural psychology (Triandis, 1995). Scholars
have operationalized this dimension at both the country level (assigning “individualism scores”
to countries) and at the individual level (with studies gauging individual participants’ values).
Most often, East Asians are seen as more collectivist while North Americans and Europeans are
viewed as individualist.
How does the value tradition prepare us to think about cultural differences in inference?
Three main points emerge. First, in frequently highlighting individualism-collectivism as central
dimension, the value approach draws our attention to inferences that concern judgments about
groups and about how individuals relate to groups. If a main source of cultural differences
occurs in their members’ attitudes about groups and group relations, we would expect to find
considerable accompanying cultural variance in inferences related to groups and membership.
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Second, and more broadly, the value tradition underscores the importance of prescriptive
stances in construal and judgment. Scholars in this tradition don’t simply make causal claims
about values affecting others values and choices (such as claims about a general stance of
individualism affecting a narrow attitude toward wanting to take credit for some good outcomes).
Rather, claims are made connecting values to inferences and resulting beliefs (e.g., between
individualism and the belief that a single person is the cause for a good performance). What is
the connection between these prescriptive and descriptive stances? How do norms shape
inferences from evidence? The value tradition draws attention to such questions.
A third, and related, consideration prompted by the values approach is a pragmatic or
functionalist one: what are the consequences of certain inferences in, for example, a collectivist
culture? If collectivism describes a system of norms, those norms comprise an important part of
the environment in which inferences must be “lived out.” Thus, the value approach prompts
consideration of how inferences are shaped by the consequences they might entail in particular
cultural contexts. We return to this issue of consequences, as well as the issue of prescription-
description, in our concluding analysis of the three traditions.
The Self Tradition
Beginning a century ago with William James (1890), the construct of “self” has been
widely regarded by scholars as playing a key role in much psychological functioning (see Markus
& Cross, 1990 for a review). Although James and many of his Western intellectual heirs have
voiced the caveat that the self may be experienced differently in various cultural systems, there
has been little psychological research on this issue until recently. Is self a cultural concept? A
chorus of researchers answer “yes”—and suggest it is perhaps the most important cultural
concept.
Markus and Kitayama (1991) have been at the forefront of contemporary thinking about
culture and self, suggesting not only that the psychology of self varies across cultures but that self
conceptions may be at the very heart of what culture is. Markus, Kitayama and others have
described culturally-driven ways of “being” a self, focusing specifically on two types:
independent and interdependent selves. An independent construal of self, prevalent in the West,
is characterized by a sense of autonomy, of being relatively distinct from others. In contrast, the
interdependent construal of self, prevalent in Asia, is characterized by an emphasis on the inter-
relatedness of the individual to others; self identity is more socially-diffused across important
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others rather than strictly bounded with the individual. There is an obvious similarity between
these self concepts and individualism-collectivism. However, it’s worth noting the descriptive, as
well as than prescriptive, nature of these positions. We might crudely characterize the slogan of
collectivism as “my in-group is important” while an interdependent self might be described as
“my in-group is who I am.”
A host of research by Markus and Kitayama (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991), Heine and
Lehman (e.g., Heine & Lehman, 1995; 1997), Singelis (e.g., Singelis, 1994), and others have
explored this cultural dimension of selfhood. Other culture and self scholarship has emerged as
well, including Shweder’s (1995) description of divinity in selfhood among Hindu Indians; in
this case, self is not so much distributed socially across other persons (as with an interdependent
self) but distributed spiritually across reincarnations and all living things.
What guidance does the self tradition provide regarding cultural differences in human
inference? Two major considerations emerge. First, understanding the social network that could
potentially be implicated in a perceiver’s self concept becomes critical. A perceiver’s attention
to others in this network may be driven by his or her self concept; the self concept would likely
also affect how others in this network are treated in judgments. Second, highlighting the self
concept encourages us to expand our view of the domains of inference in which self construal
matters. In other words, the impact of self concept can be found in domains beyond self
judgment. Cognitive dissonance, for instance, might seem unrelated to the self, but Heine and
Lehman (1997) argue that Japanese experience less dissonance than Canadians because of how
they understand social contexts and the self.
The Theory Tradition
The value and self traditions have attracted many cultural psychologists over the last
twenty years. These perspectives have revealed many insights and continue to do so. However,
an increasing amount of cultural scholarship is not based on person’s notions of self or value
systems but on various folk theories and beliefs shared by a culture’s members. There is no
single theme of content (like “individualism”) that unifies this emerging tradition but rather an
inclination to identify and measure implicit folk theories at a rather specific level—a level,
moreover, that ties directly into inference and judgment. Work in this tradition doesn’t attempt
to measure culture in its entirety but rather selects particular domains and attempts to describe
judgments by culturally-driven beliefs.
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Members of a culture share a variety of widespread stances which scholars have described
in terms of cultural models (Holland & Quinn, 1987), cosmologies (Douglas, 1982), social
representations (Moscovici, 1984; Wagner, 1997), cultural representations (Sperber, 1990,
Boyer, 1993), naïve ontologies and epistemologies (Ames & Peng, 1999; Peng & Nisbett, 1999),
and folk psychologies, biologies, sociologies, and physics (e.g., Ames, 1999; Atran, 1990; Fiske,
1992; Lillard, 1998; Peng, Nisbett, & Knowles, 1999; Vosniadou, 1994). One way of describing
these stances is to consider them implicit theories (Vallacher & Wegner, 1987; Dweck, Chiu, &
Hong, 1995) about the world which persons in particular communities have in common to
varying degrees. The particular theories studied varies widely. Chiu, Hong and Dweck (1997),
for instance, have examined implicit theories about personality change: Americans tend to
assume considerable constancy in personality while Hong Kong Chinese often expect
malleability. Elsewhere, Ames & Peng (1999) have shown that, compared to Americans,
Chinese are guided by more holistic theories of impression evidence in getting to know a target
person. Menon, Morris, Chiu, and Hong (1999) research suggests that Americans’ theories of
groups lead them to assign less causality and responsibility at the group-level while Chinese, led
by different theories, are more willing to make such attributions.
Given this variety in topic, the theory approach to culture is identifiable by a common set
of assumptions and methodologies—stances largely shared with the emerging implicit theories
perspective in psychology in general (Wagner & Vallacher, 1977; Dweck, 1996). Some of these
assumptions are shared with scholarship in the self and value traditions, but the theory tradition
seems distinct in its specificity of constructs and variety of domains.
What distinct insights does the theory tradition offer regarding culture and the psychology
of inference? Two novel points emerge. First, the implicit theory approach offers compelling
ways for describing variance across persons and groups and change across time. Personality
psychologists are increasingly using implicit theories to capture the differences between
individuals (e.g., Dweck, 1996); some developmental psychologists, meanwhile, describe the
course of cognitive development in terms of theory adoption and use (e.g., Gopnik & Meltzoff,
1997). At the culture-level, the theory approach offers dynamic models for describing how
widespread beliefs are transmitted, flourish, and fade—and also for what kinds of beliefs might
be likely to prosper (Strauss & Quinn, 1997; Sperber, 1990; Boyer, 1993; Moscovici, 1984). The
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implicit theory approach also lends itself readily to cultural differences within a given geographic
region, such as within a country.
A second contribution is that the theory approach points toward comparatively precise
models of culturally-influenced psychological process. Culture is operationalized at a
representational level as a knowledge structure (a folk theory) which supports and guides
inference. As Ames & Peng (1999) note, implicit theories can play a direct role in inferences,
with perceivers invoking a theory to go beyond the information given (e.g., use of a stereotype in
which a target’s gender yields an inference about their aggressive tendencies). Theories can also
play a management role in inference, guiding how evidence and other theories are recruited and
used (Ames & Peng, 1999). For instance, an epistemological theory about the value of
contextual evidence does not itself yield a conclusion, but can guide a perceiver’s attention
toward certain aspects of the environment. The effect of culture can no doubt be seen working at
both these levels.

Cultural Research on Human Inference

These three traditions take different approaches to studying culture and human inference.
What does each reveal about cultural differences in inference? Can they be integrated into some
overarching framework? Are they somehow at odds with one another—and is one more
preferable than the others? Before we answer these last questions, we proceed with the first by
reviewing evidence for cultural differences. We organize our review around two major domains
of inference: induction and deduction. Here, we are concerned with findings rather than
traditions and we include as much relevant empirical work as possible. After this review of
findings, we return to the issue of the three traditions and, based on the evidence, search for an
overarching framework.
Inductive Reasoning
As a working definition, we take induction to be the human ability to reach useful
generalizations based on limited experience and information. These generalizations come in
multiple forms, ranging from the apprehension of correlations between phenomena in the
environment to the attribution of causes for physical and social events and from the inference of a
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target person’s personality traits and mental states to the formation and use of categories. In this
section, we argue that culture plays a role in each of these types of inductive inference.
Covariation judgment
Since the birth of behaviorism, psychologists have viewed the ability to accurately
perceive covariations between environmental stimuli as a fundamental type of human inference
(Alloy & Tabachnik, 1984). Perhaps because the processes that rely on covariation judgment
(e.g., classical conditioning) are seen as so basic to human cognition, psychologists have only
recently begun investigating the influence of culture on people’s ability to detect and evaluate
associations. In one of the few studies to address this issue, Ji, Peng, and Nisbett (1999)
examined covariation judgment among Chinese and Americans. Reasoning that Asians’
dialectical epistemology would make them especially sensitive to relations between stimuli, these
researchers predicted that Asians would exceed Americans in their ability to evaluate the
magnitude of associations between stimuli. Chinese and American participants were shown pairs
of arbitrary figures on a computer screen; particular stimuli were correlated to varying degrees,
and participants were asked to judge the degree of association.
The results provide preliminary evidence for the influence of culture on covariation
detection. Chinese were more confident than Americans about their covariation judgments, and
their confidence judgments were better calibrated with the actual degree of covariation between
figures. In addition, American participants showed a strong primacy effect, making predictions
about future covariations that were more influenced by the first pairings they had seen than by the
overall degree of covariation they had been exposed to. In contrast, Chinese participants showed
no primacy effect at all, making predictions about future covariation that were based on the
covariation they had actually seen.
Causal Attribution
Covariation judgment is undeniably important to human survival; very often, however,
people are not satisfied merely estimating the magnitude of associations between evironmental
phenomena. People typically go further, assigning phenomena to their presumed causes. Lay
causal analysis—or causal attribution—has been one of the most thoroughly studied areas within
psychology. Below, we review evidence that, in both the social and physical domains, people’s
attributions are influenced by culture.
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Social domain. The last two decades have seen a growing acknowledgement that culture
guides people’s attributions for social phenomena (i.e., others’ social behavior). Prior to this
recognition, however, psychologists often assumed that the findings of studies conducted in
Western settings would generalize across cultures. One of most widely reported findings in
(Western) attribution research is that people tend to see behavior as a product of the actor’s
dispositions while ignoring important situational causes of behavior. In an early demonstration
of dispositional bias, Jones and Harris (1967) asked perceivers to infer a target’s attitude on a
controversial political topic based on an essay written by the target. Participants were also given
information about situational determinants of the target’s behavior which suggested against the
usefulness of the speech in ascertaining the target’s true attitude—specifically, that the target had
been required to write the essay by an authority figure. Despite having information about the
power of the situation, most participants were willing to infer a behavior-correspondent attitude.
After this and other classic demonstrations, confidence in the universality of dispositional bias
ran high—so high, in fact, that psychologists dubbed the bias the “fundamental attribution error”
(Ross, 1977). The assumption of universality is reflected in theoretical accounts of attribution,
which portray dispositional inference as the product of Gestalt (Heider, 1958; Jones, 1990) or
ecological (Baron & Misovich, 1993) perceptual processes presumed to be similar across
cultures.
Work by Joan Miller (1984) first suggested that the fundamental attribution error might
not be so fundamental after all. She found that, whereas Americans explained others’ behavior
predominantly in terms of traits (e.g., recklessness or kindness), Hindu Indians explained
comparable behaviors in terms of social roles, obligations, the physical environment, and other
contextual factors. This finding calls into question the universality of dispositional bias, and by
extension attribution theories linking dispositional inference to universal perceptual mechanisms.
Miller’s work instead suggested that attributions for social events are largely the product of
culturally instilled belief systems stressing the importance of either dispositional or situational
factors in producing social behavior. Numerous researchers have extended Miller’s (1984) basic
finding—in which Asians focus more on situational factors in explaining behavior than do
Westerners—to a wide range of cultures and social phenomena. While we cannot present an
exhaustive review of cross-cultural attribution research (see Choi, Nisbett, & Norenzayan, 1999
for a more extensive treatment), we survey some representative studies below.
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Morris and Peng (1994; see also Morris, Nisbett & Peng, 1995) showed that Americans’
explanations for events such as mass murders focused almost entirely on the presumed mental
instability and other negative dispositions of the murderers, whereas Chinese accounts of the
same events referred more to situational and societal factors. The researchers then replicated this
cultural difference using visual stimuli depicting animal movements. Participants were presented
with cartoon displays of a target fish moving relative to the school in a variety of ways. Each
pattern of movement was ambiguous in that the target fish’s movement could be attributed to
dispositional causes (e.g., the fish is a leader) or situational causes (e.g., the fish is being chases
by the school). As expected, Chinese participants were more likely to see the behavior of the
individual fish as being produced by situational factors than were Americans.
Other researchers have documented cultural diversity in attributions for more mundane,
everyday events. Lee, Hallahan and Herzog (1996), for instance, found that sports editorial
writers in Hong Kong focused on situational explanations of sports events whereas American
sports writers were more likely to prefer explanations involving the dispositions of individual
team members. Cha and Nam (1985) found that Korean participants, unlike American
participants, did not underutilize consensus information (i.e., information about the behavior of
other people) when making attributions—information which should logically be used to gauge
the power of situational factors. Likewise, Norenzayan, Choi, and Nisbett (1999) found that
Korean participants were more responsive to contextual factors when making predictions about
how people in general would behave in a given situation and, much more than American
participants, made use of their beliefs about situational power when predicting the behavior of a
particular individual.
Choi and Nisbett (1998) duplicated the basic conditions of the Jones and Harris (1967)
study, adding a condition in which, before making judgments about the target's attitude,
participants were required to write an essay themselves and allowed no choice about which side
to take. It was made clear to participants that the target had been through the same procedure
they themselves had. Participants were then asked to judge the target’s true attitude. The
American participants in this condition made inferences about the target’s attitude that were as
strong as those made by participants in the standard no choice condition. Korean participants, in
contrast, made much less extreme inferences. Thus, Korean participants, presumably by virtue of
seeing the role that the situation played in their own behavior, recognized the power of the
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context and made attributions about others accordingly. Similar results were obtained by Masuda
and Kitayama (1996) in Japan. These researchers duplicated Gilbert and Jones’s (1986)
procedure, in which participants were paired with a confederate and told one of them would be
randomly assigned to read an essay written by a third person. After the confederate was chosen
to read the essay, American observers assumed that the target individual actually held the
position advocated in the speech. Although Masuda and Kitayama found strong attitude
inferences in line with the speech for Japanese subjects in the standard no choice condition, they
found none at all when it was made clear that the target individual was simply reading an essay
written by someone else.
Physical domain. Unlike attributions for social phenomena, relatively little research has
examined the influence of culture on lay explanations for physical events. Nonetheless, there is
reason to believe that folk theories of physical causality differ between Western and Asian
cultures, and that these differences may lead to culturally divergent interpretations of physical
phenomena. Many scholars have argued that Asian folk physics is relational and dialectical,
stressing conceptions of “field” and “force over distance” (Needham, 1962; Zukav, 1980; Capra,
1975). On the other hand, Western folk physics is seen as preferring internal and dispositional
causes, explaining physical phenomena in terms of “the naure of the object concerned” rather
than the relation of objects to the environment (Lewin, 1935, p. 28). Peng, Nisbett, and Knowles
(1999) present evidence that this difference in intellectual tradition may affect everyday
interpretations of physical events. These researchers presented Chinese and American
individuals with physical interactions involving “force-over-distance” causality resembling
hydrodynamic, aerodynamic, or magnetic phenomena. In explaining these events, Chinese
participants were more likely to refer to the field, whereas Americans were more likely to refer
solely to factors internal to the object. The researchers conclude that development within Asian
cultures instilled individuals with a relational, field-oriented folk physics, while Western cultures
instill their members with a more dispositional, analytic folk physics (also see Peng & Nisbett,
1996).
Person perception
Our inferences about other persons are crucial to our everyday lives. We frequently and
fluidly make judgments about those around us: what they’re like, how they’re feeling, what they
want. These judgments are certainly related to attribution, but differ in an important way:
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whereas attribution concerns assigning cause and responsibility to events, person perception
concerns assigning qualities to persons. For instance, if a Beth’s new assistant Andrew acts
aggressively toward her, Beth might consider attributing the behavior to Andrew’s dispositional
aggression or to some other event which made Andrew angry—a case of both attribution and
person perception. However, if Beth is deciding whether or not to ask Charles to be her new
assistant and gets letters of recommendation from Charles’ teachers and former employers and
also interviews Charles, integrating this information to form a judgment is more a case of person
perception (“solving for a person”) than attribution (“solving for an event”).
Not surprisingly, person perception inferences take on different forms in different
cultures. Here, we only briefly review selected findings in two areas of person perception:
impression formation and the inference of mental states.
Impression formation. What kinds of impressions do we form about persons? One theme
that emerges is the willingness to see personal qualities as fixed and enduring or malleable and
changing (Dweck, 1996). This difference seems to map well onto the cultural dimension of
independent and interdependent selves: the former notion features a more fixed self, the later
describes a changeable, context-based self. This connection was pursued by Chiu, Hong and
Dweck (1997) in their comparison of dispositional judgments by American and Hong Kong
perceivers. As the self literature would predict, these researchers found a main effect of culture:
American perceivers were more willing than Hong Kong perceivers to ascribe fixed, enduring
traits to targets. Dweck, Chiu, and Hong also measured perceivers’ individual theories about the
nature of dispositions: a high score on their dispositionalism scale indicated a belief in fixed,
unchanging traits. There was a culture difference in dispositionalism, with Americans scoring
higher. Following in the theory tradition, Dweck and colleagues demonstrated that this implicit
theory of dispositionalism mediated the effect of culture on perceivers’ trait judgments.
It appears that perceivers in the East may be less oriented toward making ascriptions of
dispositions to targets. Are there also differences in what kinds of evidence are sought out and
used in forming impressions? Research by Ames and Peng (in preparation) suggests there are.
Following from cultural research on self, dispositionalism, and dialecticism, Ames and Peng
proposed that Americans would be more focused on evidence directly from or about a target
(e.g., a self description) while Chinese would be more focused on contextual evidence (e.g., a
description of the target by a friend, a description of the target’s friend ). Across a variety of
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studies, just such a pattern emerged. Americans expressed greater preference for target-focused
evidence and made greater use of target self-descriptions in their evaluations of targets.
Inference of mental states. How is it that we know what others are thinking, feeling, and
wanting? Recent work suggests that mental state epistemologies may differ by culture. Knowles
and Ames (1999) suggest that Western cultures stress a “norm of authenticity” such that a
person’s external actions and displays should be consistent with their internal attitudes. “Saying
what’s on your mind” and “straight talk” are sought after qualities in the West. Eastern cultures,
meanwhile, may view such displays as impolite and potentially bizarre. The role of hosts in
many Asian countries, for instance, is to intuit a guest’s unspoken needs while guests are often
expected to defer and not betray self-centered desires.
Knowles and Ames (1999) have collected initial evidence documenting such an epistemic
difference in the US and China. When asked how important various pieces of evidence are in
determining what someone is thinking, Americans, on average, rate “what they say” as more
important than “what they do not say” while Chinese show the reverse preference. The same
pattern holds for determining what someone is feeling or wanting. Mental state epistemology in
the West may be as simple as listening: it’s not uncommon to wish targets disclosed less about
their beliefs, desires, intentions, and so forth. Reading minds in the East, however, may take
other routes, such as nonverbal behavior.
Categorization
Categorization is one of the most ubiquitous and important human mental activities,
providing efficiency in memory and enabling communication. Moreover, categories aid survival
by allowing us to make educated guesses about the unseen properties of categorized objects
(“That rustling behind the bush must be Johnny’s new pit bull. I bet it has a bad temper”).
Categorization is one of the most well-studied areas of psychology, as well as the closely allied
field of cognitive anthropology. Researchers have distinguished between three related questions.
First, where do categories get their structure (the question of category coherence)? Second, how
and when to people use categories to make inductions about objects’ unseen properties (the
question of category use)? Finally, how do individuals acquire new categories (the questions of
category learning)? There is growing evidence that culture is part of the answer to each of these
questions.
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Category coherence. Of all the infinitely many ways one could divide the world, why do
people show a decided preference for some categories (e.g., “dog”) and not others (e.g., “apple-
or-prime-number”)? In other words, what makes some categories hang together or cohere? In
her recent review of category coherence research, Barbara Malt (1995) notes a shift in
psychologists’ thinking concerning the source of category coherence. Early psychological work
tended to suppose that structure inherent in the environment determines which categories people
will form. Most notably, Rosch and colleagues (Rosch and Mervis, 1975; Rosch, Mervis, Gray,
Johnson, & Boyes-Braem, 1976) argued that perceptible features in the world are not randomly
distributed across entities, but rather occur in clusters—for instance, “fur,” “four-legged,” and
“barks” tend to occur together. People take advantage of this environmental structure by
grouping entities that share clusters of features into categories; for instances, entities in which
“fur,” “four-legged,” and “barks” co-occur are grouped into the category dog. While it is true
that the human perceptual system must place constraints on which feature correlations people
notice (Murphy & Medin, 1985), the work of Rosch and colleagues emphasizes the role of
environmental structure in determining category coherence. A corollary of this view is that, to
the extent the human perceptual system is the same everywhere, classification systems will be
relatively impervious to the influence of higher-level cognitive structures—such as those instilled
by culture.
More recent work, while not denying the role of environmental structure in lending
coherence to taxonomic categories like “dog” and “fern,” points to the contribution of high-level
cognitive structures in determining coherence of non-taxonomic categories. Barsalou (1983,
1985) draws attention to a class of categories that could not exist simply by virtue of their
mapping onto environmental structures such as correlations between perceptible features.
Specifically, “goal-based” categories are coherent because their members serve a common goal;
for example, pencils and calculators, despite sharing few features, could both be grouped into the
category “things to take to a math exam.” Goal-based categories are highly susceptible to
cultural influence, since cultures undeniably shape the goals adopted by their members. To
illustrate, “things to take to a math exam” is a coherent category for Western youths, but not for
members of preliterate societies whose members lack the goal of taking math exams.
Work in cognitive anthropology and cross-cultural psychology suggests that culture even
plays a role in the coherence of taxonomic categories. Malt (1995) reviews a number of
 16

ethnobiological studies indicating that the degree to which a society subcategorizes a plant or
animal domain corresponds in part to the cultural importance of that domain. Folk categorizers
direct their attention disproportionately to domains of the most practical importance to their
culture (e.g., edible plants and domesticated or dangerous animals) and as a result create
narrower subordinate categories within those domains. This finding parallels psychological
evidence that individuals with a history of allocating a disproportionate amount of attention to a
particular domain—for instance, birdwatchers or dog aficionados—may develop “expertise” in
that domain. Experts create more subdivisions within their domain of expertise than do non-
experts, and categorize within the domain more quickly (Tanaka & Taylor, 1991). In sum,
culture may affect the deployment of attention to different taxonomic domains, lending
coherence to increasingly subordinate categories.
Other anthropological and psychological research suggests that culture influences
category coherence, not only by directing attention, but also by changing the kinds of features
used to bind categories together. López, Atran, Coley, Medin, and Smith (1997) found that,
while Americans tended to categorize animals on the basis of size and ferocity, Itzaj-Mayan
animal categories were based largely on relational—specifically, ecological—features, such as
habitat and food consumption. Likewise, Atran and Medin (1997) found that Itzaj-Mayan
informants grouped arboreal mammals partly according to the nature of their interactions with
plants.
Experimental research suggests that such a relational style of categorization plays an
important role in Chinese culture. Chiu (1972) showed Chinese and American children sets of
three pictures drawn from various domains and asked them to pick the two that went together.
The dominant style of categorization for Chinese children was “relational-contextual.” For
instance, shown a picture of a man, a woman, and a child, Chinese children were likely to group
the woman and child together because “the mother takes care of the baby.” In contrast,
American children were more likely to group objects on the basis on isolable properties, such as
age (e.g., grouping the man and woman together because “they are both grown-ups”).
Category-based induction. In addition to organizing the world for purposes of memory
and communication, categories serve the vital function of allowing people to go “beyond the
information given.” Once an object has been categorized, category membership may be used as
the basis for inferences about the object’s unseen or invisible properties; this process is referred
 17

to as “category-based induction.” For instance, knowing that an animal is a mammal allows one
to infer that it probably bears live young and regulates its own body temperature.
Work by Choi, Nisbett and Smith (1998) suggests that category representations are less
chronically-accessible for Koreans than for Americans, and thus less readily-used in category-
based induction. In keeping with previous category-based induction research (e.g., Osherson,
Smith, Wilkie, López, and Safer, 1990), Choi and colleagues operationalized category-based
induction using a premise-conclusion format. For instance, individuals might be presented with
the following argument:

Hippos have ulnar arteries.

Hamsters have ulnar arteries.
–––––––––––––––––––––––
Dogs have ulnar arteries.

Participants are then asked to what extent they believe the conclusion, given the premises. In the
above example, participants might use the premises to infer that mammals have ulnar arteries,
and thus place great confidence in the conclusion. The researchers increased category salience by
mentioning the category in the conclusion (that is, participants made an inference about
"mammals" rather than rabbits). This manipulation had no effect on Americans but increased the
degree to which Koreans performed category-based induction. This suggests that categories are
have a lower chronic accessibility for Koreans and are thus more susceptible to priming.
Category learning. There is evidence that culture may influence the processes through
which people acquire new categories. Norenzayan, Nisbett and Smith (1998), adopting a
procedure used by Allen and Brooks (1991), presented East Asians and Americans with cartoon
extraterrestrial creatures, some of which were from Venus and some were from Saturn. One
group of participants were asked to examine a series of creatures and make guesses, with
feedback, about the category each belonged to. Other participants went through a more formal,
rule-based category learning procedure. In this condition, participants were told to pay attention
to five different properties of the animals and told that if the animal had any three of these
properties it was from Venus, otherwise from Saturn. Although Asian and American participants
performed equally well at the exemplar-based categorization task, Asian participants response
 18

times were slower in the rule based condition. Most telling, when presented with an animal that
met the formal criteria for a certain category but more closely resembled animals in the other
category—thus placing rule-based and exemplar-based criteria in conflict—Asians made more
classification errors than did Americans.
The category of self. The idea of “self” being a category like “mammal” or “hammer”
may seem peculiar at first glance, but after considering cultural differences, seeing “self” as a
culturally-varying category becomes something of an obligation. Considerable research attention
has been directed at how perceivers in the West and East describe themselves. The results reveal
several themes, most notably that perceivers in the West see the “self” as more bounded and
concrete while perceivers in the East see the “self” as more socially-diffused, changeable, and
context-bound. Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, and Nisbett (1998) review much of the relevant
research and show that Americans are more likely to describe themselves in abstract, fixed ways
(e.g., using trait terms such as “friendly”) while Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese are more likely
to refer to social roles and other people (e.g., “I am Jane’s friend”). Elsewhere, Shweder has
explored the Hindu Indian self-concept. Whereas Americans appear to possess an independent
view of self and Southeast Asians seem to see the self as more socially-distributed, Shweder
argues that the Indian notion of self invokes notions of divinity. With beliefs in reincarnation,
karma, and the interconnectedness of all living things, the category of self comes to include
multiple lifetimes and life forms.
Deduction and Formal Reasoning
In this section, we review findings about the role of culture in deduction and formal
reasoning. Deduction has a rather well-accepted meaning: moving from information that is
given to information that follows with certainty or necessity (e.g., given that all donuts have
holes, if X is a donut, it must have a hole). By formal reasoning, we mean to broaden our scope
somewhat to include a variety of judgments based on propositions or highly-distilled arguments.
Here, we will note selected cultural research on syllogistic reasoning and dialectical reasoning,
particularly in the domain of thinking about contradiction. Historically, it was often assumed
that such abilities were universal—or at least took on a single form such that cultural differences
could be ascribed to performance or intellectual differences (see Cole, 1996). However, a host of
scholars have revealed culture-specific concepts and approaches, differences which seem much
 19

more reflective of fundamental epistemologies and cultural assumptions than individual

competence.
Syllogistic reasoning
Russian psychologist Luria was an early explorer of syllogistic reasoning and culture. In
his studies in remote areas of Russia, participants were given what most Western scholars would
view as a straightforward task of deduction. Participants were told that all bears in the North are
white and that a particular village was in the North. Participants were then asked the color of the
bears in the village. Most failed to answer the question—and many questioned the basic
premises of the task, suggesting, for instance, that the researcher go to the village and find out
firsthand.
Cole (1996) replicated part of Luria’s work in Africa and similarly found that many
participants didn’t engage the question at the theoretical level. Participants were given premises
such as “If Juan and Jose drink a lot of beer, the mayor of the town gets angry” and “Juan and
Jose are drinking a lot of beer now.” In this case, participants were asked to judge if the mayor
was angry with Juan and Jose. Some participants treated the question theoretically, but many
others saw it as an empirical issue, giving answers such as “No—so many men drink beer, why
should the major get angry?”
A century ago, such supposed “deficits” of reasoning might have been seen as evidence of
lack of intelligence and cultural development. Now, most scholars would agree that such
performance isn’t a deficit, but rather highlights distinct cultural models for reasoning
(D’Andrade, 1995). Indeed, Luria and Cole came to stress practical everyday activity and
cultural artifacts as central to culture-specific reasoning: it may be useless, and perhaps harmful,
to presume that abstract Western tasks such as syllogistic reasoning are the gold standard of
reasoning and deductive ability.
D’Andrade (1995) suggests that reasoning relies on learned cultural models (such as
inference rules) and may also incorporate physical cultural artifacts (like an abacus). Using the
Wason task, a widely-employed puzzle which putatively tests logical reasoning, D’Andrade has
shown that successful performance depends overwhelmingly on how the puzzle is framed in
terms of everyday knowledge and ordinary domains. Framed as an abstract issue in a “label
factory,” participants do poorly; framed as a question about the drinking age, participants excel.
 20

Such real world grounding has similar effects across a variety of syllogistic and other kinds of
reasoning tasks (D’Andrade, 1995).
Dialectical reasoning
While few people share the logician’s ability and enthusiasm for formal reasoning, it is
tempting to characterize most everyday thinkers as broadly adhering to some core tenets of
argument that have been mobilized since Aristotle’s time—for instance, the “law of non-
contradiction” which implies that no statement can be both true and false. However, Peng and
Nisbett (Peng, 1997, Peng & Nisbett, 1999) have shown that such a characterization might best
be limited to Western thinkers; East Asians, they argue, subscribe to a different epistemology
with different rules for constructing arguments and making judgments. This work highlights the
fact that deductive and other kinds of reasoning hinge on underlying epistemological assumptions
about what knowledge and truth are and how one can know them—assumptions which can vary
by culture.
Peng and Nisbett (1999) describe Western reasoning as embracing three core laws. The
law of identity (A = A) denotes that everything must be identical with itself. The law of the
excluded middle (A is either B or not-B) implies that any statement is either true or false; there
are no half-truths. The law of non-contradiction (A is not equal to not-A) proposes that no
statement can be both true and false. On their face, such notions seem to fit with a variety of
Western psychological phenomena, such as naïve realism (e.g., Ross & Ward, 1996) and
essentialism (e.g., Gelman & Medin, 1993), as well as a seeming abhorrence of vacillation and
falsehood.
Following various philosophers and historians of East and West (Liu, 1974; Lloyd, 1990;
Needham, 1962/1978; Zhang & Chen, 1991), Peng & Nisbett (1999) have argued that a different
approach obtains in Eastern folk thinking: a dialectical epistemology. This folk dialecticism
differs from the rarified (“dialectical”) philosophies of Hegel and Marx in that these approaches
often assume or insist upon some original contradiction or opposition which is then resolved; the
Eastern folk dialectical epistemology Peng and Nisbett describe accepts and even embraces
contradiction rather than attempting to “fix” or resolve it.
Peng & Nisbett (1999) describe three assumptions which underpin the Eastern dialectical
epistemology. First, the principle of change suggests that reality is a dynamic process; something
need not be identical with itself because reality is fluid and changing. Second, the principle of
 21

contradiction notes that, since change is constant, contradiction is constant; the very nature of the
world is such that old and new, good and bad exist at the same time in the same object or event.
Third, the principle of holism holds that, since change and contradiction are constant, nothing in
human life or nature is isolated and independent; rather, all things are related and attempting to
isolate element of a larger whole can only be misleading.
Peng and Nisbett claim that these sets of assumptions form two kinds of folk
epistemologies: a dialectical epistemology which is more widespread in the East and a more
linear/logical epistemology which is more widespread in the West. Of course, elements from
each epistemology are shared by many or all cultures, but the comparative prevalence of these
implicit theories suggests cross-cultural studies might reveal how culture-specific epistemologies
affect inference. We turn now to evidence on culture and dialectical thinking.
Folk wisdom on dialectical thinking. Peng and Nisbett (1999) have examined folk
knowledge as embodied in books of proverbs. They found that dialectical proverbs posing a
contradiction or assertion of instability (e.g., “Too humble is half proud”) were more common
among Chinese proverbs than among English ones. When nondialectical (e.g., “Half a loaf is
better than none”) and dialectical proverbs were selected from among Chinese and English
proverbs equally and given to Chinese and American undergraduates to evaluate, Chinese
participants had a greater preference for the dialectical proverbs than did American participants.
The same pattern of preference emerged with Yiddish proverbs, stimuli equally unfamiliar to
both Chinese and Americans.
Dialectical resolution of social contradictions. Peng and Nisbett (1999) presented Chinese
and American students with a variety of contradictions drawn from everyday life. For example,
participants were asked to analyze conflicts between mothers and their daughters and between
having fun and going to school. American responses tended to come down clearly in favor of
one side or the other (e.g., mothers should respect their daughters’ independence). Chinese
responses were more likely to find a middle way which attributed fault to both sides and
attempted to reconcile the contradiction (e.g., both the mothers and the daughters have failed to
understand each other).
Dialecticism and preferred argument form. In a study examining argument preferences,
Peng gave Chinese and American participants two different types of arguments—a logical based
on refuting contradiction and a dialectical one—for several issues. In one case, participants read
 22

arguments against Aristotle’s proposition that a heavier object falls to the ground first. The
logical argument summarized Galileo’s famous thought experiment: if a heavy object is joined
to a lighter one, they now have a weight greater than the lighter object alone and hence should
fall faster; on the other hand, extending Aristotle’s view, the lighter object should act as a brake
and therefore the combined object should fall more slowly. Since these entailments form a
contradiction, it is possible to reject the original proposal that objects of a different weight fall at
different speeds. The dialectical argument, meanwhile, was based on a holistic approach to the
problem: since Aristotle isolated objects from possible surrounding factors (e.g., wind, weather,
and height), the proposition must be wrong. For several such issues, Chinese expressed a greater
preference for the dialectical arguments while Americans were drawn to the linear, logical
arguments.
Tolerance of apparent contradiction. One of the strongest implications of the notion that
Westerners adhere to a logical analysis of problems is that, when presented with contradictory
propositions, they should be inclined to reject one in favor of the other. Easterners, on the other
hand, might be inclined to embrace both propositions, finding them each to have merit. In one
study, Peng and Nisbett presented participants either with one proposition or with two
propositions which were seemingly contradictory. For instance, one proposition used was, “A
developmental psychologist studied adolescent children and asserted that those children who
were less dependent on their parents and had weaker family ties were generally more mature.” In
some cases, this was paired with a second, apparently contradictory statement: “A social
psychologist studied young adults and asserted that those who feel close to their families have
more satisfying social relationships.” Participants read one or the other of these or both and then
rated the plausibility of the statements they read.
Across five issues, Chinese and American participants agreed on which of the two
statements offered was more plausible (i.e., a main effect of statement). However, when reading
the statements in pairs, Americans found the predominantly plausible statement even more
plausible than when reading it alone: they bolstered their belief in the plausible statement which
it was presented along with a contradiction (cf. Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979). In contrast,
Chinese participants expressed lower plausibility ratings for the predominant statement when it
was paired with a contradiction, seemingly compromising between the two perspectives.
 23

Conclusions

Two decades ago, cognitive anthropologist Edwin Hutchins, like Nisbett and Ross,
published a book. His was titled Culture and Inference and contained a careful ethnography of
reasoning among the Trobriand Islanders (Hutchins, 1980). Hutchins was working against
arguments that the Trobrianders and other such cultures lacked concepts of causality and logic
(Lee, 1940, 1949). Thus, Hutchins, ironically enough, was making something of a universalist
argument: that sophisticated inferences aren’t the kind of thing that only members of “civilized”
cultures can do. However, in the process of showing that complex reasoning, such as modus
tollens and plausible inference, existed among the Trobrianders, Hutchins also delivered
important conclusions about the ways in which inferences differ across cultures: reasoning, he
concluded, is inseparably intertwined with cultural models. What is universal is our capacity to
infer and judge, but this is always and only done in light of cultural models (see D’Andrade,
1995).
Over the last twenty years, cultural psychologists have done much to qualify, interpret,
and expand on both Nisbett and Ross’ and Hutchins’ ideas. Cultural psychology knows much
now about how inference unfolds in different ways in various cultures—and it’s poised to learn
even more. The differences reviewed in this chapter defy simple summation, but the highlights
deserve to be briefly recounted. After doing so, we consider cultural differences in inference in
light of the value, self, and theory traditions.
Lessons on Cultural Differences
Findings on cultural differences in inference can be grouped into two broad categories:
induction and deduction.
Induction
Covariation detection is a basic form of induction: given evidence of the co-occurrence
of various events and features, how and when do perceivers infer a connection? Research
focusing on the holistic, dialectical epistemology associated with Chinese culture shows that
Chinese may be more attuned to relations among stimuli in a field: they show fewer primacy
effects than Americans and, compared to Americans, their confidence in judging covariation
tracks better with their actual accuracy.
 24

Attribution has enjoyed considerable attention from cultural researchers in part because of
the compelling differences that emerge. In the domain of social attribution, scholars have
repeatedly shown that Americans tend to isolate single individuals as causes while Asians and
other collectivists comparatively stress situations and groups as causes. Similarly, in the physical
domain, Chinese are more likely to highlight the role of the field in explanations whereas
Americans tend to focus on the internal properties of objects.
Cultural differences emerge in judgments about persons as well, including inferences
about their personalities and their mental states. Americans appear to share a dispositionalist
folk theory, such that they see individuals as having stable, internal, enduring dispositions
whereas Asians are more likely to see persons as changeable and context-bound. Likewise, in
forming impressions of a target person, Americans tend to prefer information directly from that
person while Chinese are comparatively more interested in others’ views of the target and
information about the target’s context. Further, Americans seem to expect that mental states are
more readily inferred by a person’s own statements; Chinese seem to base inferences of mental
states more heavily on other, unspoken cues.
In the realm of categorization, culture shapes category coherence by directing attention to
culturally-important phenomena; as cultures’ priorities differ, so do their categories. Further,
Asians seem more likely than Americans to categorize things by their relations, such as social
obligations, rather than isolable features. Compared to Americans, Asians may also less attuned
to categories in their inferences and category learning. These findings are perhaps more
intriguing in light of cultural research on the category of “self.” Considerable scholarship shows
that Asian self concepts are more socially-diffused and context- and relationship-bound while
American self concepts are more concrete and abstract.
Deduction
Given premises in some logical relation, do people in all cultures draw the same
inference? Studies of culture and syllogistic reasoning suggest that this question itself needs to
be reconsidered. Namely, what counts as premises and logical relations depends on the culture-
specific models. Within a culture, framing logical questions with ordinary knowledge rather than
abstractions has a massive difference on performance. It seems safe to conclude that people in
all cultures are capable of making complex inferences, but each culture does so within its own
models.
 25

Cultural studies have also highlighted diversity in basic epistemologies of what counts as
evidence and the nature of truth—and differences in epistemology gives rise to different styles of
reasoning and deduction. Chinese appear to share a dialectical epistemology which stresses the
changing nature of reality and the enduring presence of contradiction. This stands in contrast to a
Western linear epistemology built on notions of truth, identity, and noncontradiction. As a result,
some scholars argue, Chinese prefer to seek a compromise in the face of contradiction whereas
Americans pursue more exclusionary forms of truth and resolution.
The Three Traditions: Culture and Inference
In the beginning of this chapter, we reviewed three perspectives for approaching culture:
the value tradition, the self tradition, and the theory tradition. The value tradition, for instance,
has shown that individualists tend to isolate single persons as causes. The self tradition, for
example, has revealed that the category of “self” differs substantially across cultures. And the
theory tradition can be seen in work on the role of culturally-bound epistemologies in reasoning.
Each tradition, then, has shed light on the question of culture and inference, but is there some
way of integrating these perspectives? Do scholars and concerned readers have to place their
loyalty in one tradition to the exclusion of the others? We suggest that a synthesis is both
possible and preferable, at least at the level of describing how the phenomena targeted by each
tradition might relate. The result is a rich way for thinking about how culture and inference
relate.
A starting point for building the synthesis is to consider what folk theories do and where
they come from. Virtually by definition, theories (whether implicit folk ones or scientific ones)
support inferences: they guide how evidence is collected and interpreted and support judgments
that go beyond immediate data. Indeed, it would be nearly impossible to describe everyday
inference in a psychologically-rich way without resorting to some folk knowledge structures like
implicit theories. Thus, to understand cultural effects on inference in a proximal sense implies
understanding how cultural theories are at work in ordinary judgment.
But from where do theories come? It seems quite clear that cultural values must be an
important source for theories: values guide our attention to what is good and important. Our
views of what the world is like are shaped by what we think the would should be like. Asian
norms about the importance of groups and social relations, for instance, no doubt yield rich folk
theories about those entities. The dynamic seems to be at work within the self tradition as well,
 26

where norms about how to be a “good” self are seen as yielding beliefs about what the self “is.”
And, as James notes, self concepts have a wide-ranging role in psychological processes, so self
concepts are likely intertwined with a host of other beliefs, such as beliefs about others.
In short, implicit theories may play something of a mediating role between values and self
concept on the one hand and inferences on the other. Values and self concepts may have a more
removed, distal effect on inferences, but a more proximal impact on beliefs. This mediating
model may seem complete, but it fails to address a final important question: what are inferences
for? As Fiske (1992) and others have observed, thinking is always for something; we would add
that what thinking is for differs across cultures. Why is it, for instance, that people judge causes?
On occasion, it might be a private act, meant to be shared with no one. More often, though, such
inferences are shared and put to use in some kind of action. Take the example of a transgression:
we seek an explanation in order to act—to prevent, to punish, to forgive, and so on. Our implicit
theories may guide an attribution inference, but the inference is not alone in shaping action.
Action is also shaped by cultural values and self concepts. In the case of transgressions, Western
theories may isolate a single person as a cause and Western values may imply some form of
person-directed retributive justice. East Asian theories, meanwhile, might identify a group or
situation as a cause and East Asian harmony values might prescribe collective responsibility as
an outcome.
Values and self concepts thus play a dual role: first, they shape the theories that, in turn,
drive inferences and second, they shape the contexts in which the resulting inferences are turned
into action (see Figure 1). In this scheme, it makes no sense to ask which of the three traditions
is the “best” approach to studying culture and inference. Rather, these three traditions target
different parts of a system of culture’s influence on inference. Isolating one set of relationships
at a time (for instance, between theories and inferences or between values and theories) is a
practical and perhaps necessary research strategy, but scholars are well-served to acknowledge
the broader system of culture’s relationship with inference. A full story of how culture affects
inference must address each of these components.i

i
Note that this system resembles what philosophers and developmental psychologists have called belief-desire
psychology (see, e.g., Searle, 1983, Dennett, 1987, Wellman, 1990). This view holds that the keys to understanding
everyday human action (e.g., Carl eats celery) are desires (e.g., Carl wants to lose weight) and beliefs (Carl believes
that celery aids weight loss). Similarly, this system suggests that cultural values, like desires, shape action goals
while cultural theory-driven inferences yield beliefs relevant to actions.
 27

Figure 1 A model of cultural influence on human inference

Cultural values and

selfhood create a
context for action

Values
Self Action

Inferences lead to
Cultural values and
actions, actions
selfhood
shape inferences
affect theories

Inference
Theories

Cultural theories
shape inferences

Looking ahead
What’s next for the cultural psychology of human inference? Several challenges emerge
from our review of findings. The value and self traditions each contain differing perspectives,
but each has also been dominated by a central construct, individualism-collectivism in the case of
values and independent-interdependent selves in the self tradition. One challenge for these
traditions will be to expand these dimensions. Nisbett and Cohen’s (1996) recent work on the
“culture of honor,” for instance, suggests an important value and self construct.
For its part, the theory tradition continues to grow. As it does, it may face the danger of
becoming fragmented. While it holds the promise of being psychologically precise and rich in
terms of describing cultural effects on inference, it runs the risk of targeting an ad hoc collection
of representations detached from broader cultural patterns. Scholars in this tradition are
challenged to describe connections, both among the implicit theories they are studying and
between those theories and other cultural constructs (such as values).
 28

All these traditions are challenged to study inference with new populations. Most work to
date has been done in the U.S. and Asia. More work needs to explore inference in other parts of
the world, such as Africa. As Nisbett and Cohen (1996) have shown, research on values and
judgments can also fruitfully examine cultural differences within countries. As globalization and
immigration continues, cultural clashes in inferences deserve increased attention, as does the
issue of acculturation.
Perhaps the most important challenge for the study of culture and human judgment is one
shared with other areas of cultural psychological work: the need for methodologies that are
meaningful at both the psychological and cultural levels. This general challenge requires
approaches that are tractable and precise and, at the same time, nuanced and sensitive. Current
approaches vary in their strengths and weaknesses and it seems clear there is no single superior
perspective. Postmodern approaches stress the uniqueness of cultures but sometimes eschew
opportunities for fruitful cross-cultural comparisons. Cultural systems approaches focus on the
important everyday ecology of practices and institutions but may omit descriptions of the
mediating psychology of cultural members. Dimensional or typological approaches stress
important factors for arraying cultures but run the risk of glossing over rich systems of
sensemaking that have psychological reality. Many theory and value approaches helpfully focus
on psychologically-important aspects of culture but may leave the broader picture undescribed.
As psychological research moves to embrace the role of culture, it will do well to retain
its guiding methodological principles. Among others, these include objectivity (attempting to
observe and describe with a minimal influence of personal bias), validity (a consistent concern
with measures and operationalizations), generalization (attempting to go beyond single cases to
reveal law-like mechanisms and processes of psychology), and causal explanation (a focus on the
causal relationships between factors).Yet perhaps new principles will need to be integrated as
well, including a holism (seeing the important connections between cultural components of
sensemaking), supra-personal levels of analysis (moving beyond the individual), and qualitative
approaches (reflecting the richness of culture). It may be that a combination of approaches is
required to satisfy all these principles—and so flexibility may itself become the most important
principle of all.
Looking back, an impressive amount of compelling scholarship has emerged on the topic
of culture and inference in the past few decades. The topic and some basic tenets have come into
 29

focus, yet there is much more to do. We hope and expect that twenty years hence our current
understanding will look well-intentioned but naïve in the face of accumulating insights on how
culture shapes human inference.
 30

Authors’ note

This project is supported by the Regents’ Junior Faculty Research Fellow Award by the
University of California to the first author. We thank Sanjay Srivastava, Michael Shin, Coline
McConnel and other members of the Culture and Cognition Lab for their comments and
suggestions. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kaiping Peng,
Department of Psychology, University of California, 3210 Tolman Hall, Berkely, CA 94720.
Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected].
 31

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