Self-construal priming does not shift self-descriptions, value endorsement, or social obligation judgment: A preregistered replication and extension of Gardner, Gabriel, & Lee (1999)

Humans from different cultures define the self differently, but how cultures influence self-construal—beliefs about the self—remains elusive. Do cultures mold our way of perceiving, thinking, feeling, and acting, much into a habit through cultural practices and daily routines (habit mechanism)? Or do cultures merely modify the accessibility of a certain way of perceiving, thinking, feeling, and acting, just as one’s thoughts constantly change on a daily basis based on the current motive and situation (access mechanism)? A highly influential line of work in cultural priming—self-construal priming—suggests that reading different story primes (reflecting either independent or interdependent thought processes) or circling different types of pronouns in word-search primes (either independent [e.g., I, mine] or interdependent [e.g., we, ours] pronouns) can shift self-descriptions, value endorsement, and social obligation judgment (Gardner, Gabriel, & Lee, 1999). In this preregistered replication and extension study, despite efforts to maximize priming and to identify moderators, we found that self-construal priming, either through story primes or word-search primes, did not change the relative independence or interdependence of one’s self-construal in Chinese participants. Priming was also not modulated by gender, experience living aboard, rice vs. wheat farming legacy, or self-reported earnestness in answering the questions. Thus, the predominant access afforded by cultures is much less malleable than previously assumed, consistent with the habit but not access mechanism of cultural influences. To build a cumulative and reproducible cultural psychology, we call for direct replications of key findings in cultural priming and related literature.

Selection and Characterization of Cultural Priming Stimuli for the Activation of Spanish and English Cultural Mindsets Among Hispanic/Latino Bilinguals in the United States

Cultural priming studies frequently employ non-validated, stereotypical images. Here, we empirically select images to separately evoke two cultural mindsets: Hispanic and US-American. Spanish-English bilinguals identifying as Hispanic/Latino ( N = 149) rated 50 images online for their cultural and emotional evocation. Based on relative cultural identification, cultural “delegate” (strongly US-American, strongly Hispanic, balanced bicultural) subsamples’ ratings were averaged to isolate particularly salient images. Image ratings were compared across respondents’ national origins. Ratings of seven selected pairs of content-matched Hispanic and US-American primes were compared across the full sample. High discrimination across cultural mindsets and positive emotion ratings were maintained regardless of various demographic factors. Thus, we provide empirical justification for incorporating these stimuli, individually or as sets, within cultural priming studies among Hispanic/Latino samples.

An Interdependence Approach to Empathic Concern for Disability and Accessibility: Effects of Gender, Culture, and Priming Self-Construal in Japan and New Zealand

An interdependence approach to empathic concern could transform the current societal environment for people with disability into a more accessible and equitable one. To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate two possible factors influencing empathic concern, gender and ethnic culture, in specific helping scenarios. We first examined whether the female gender and collectivist culture of Japan were associated with higher levels of interdependence and empathic concern for disability than were the male gender and individualist culture of New Zealand. Empathic concern for people with impairment was assessed in accessible and inaccessible environments. Neither gender nor culture significantly influenced the level of interdependence, whereas gender and culture differentially moderated empathic concern. We also explored the possibility of altering self-construal and thus promoting prosocial behaviour by examining the correlation between self-construal and prosocial intention, and the effect of cultural priming on self-construal. The correlation was significant under inaccessible conditions in the Japanese sample, and the effect of interdependent priming was not significant on interdependent self-construal in both countries. Discussion centres on theoretical implications of the observed conditional support for the female-gender and collectivist-culture hypotheses, and on ways to promote prosocial behaviour, taking into account gender and cultural differences.

Cultural priming on cognition and underlying brain activity

Chapter 6 examines the effects of cultural priming on cognition and brain activity by reviewing brain imaging evidence that temporary shifts of cultural knowledge systems toward independence or interdependence can significantly modulated brain activities involved in pain-related sensory processing, visual perception, self-face recognition and self-reflection, monetary reward, empathy, and a resting state. These findings provide evidence for a causal relationship between cultural belief/value and functional organization of the human brain. The findings further suggest that functional brain activity is constrained by both the sustained cultural frameworks formulated during long-term cultural experiences and the transient cultural frameworks induced by short-term exposure to cultural values.