How Do People Become W.E.I.R.D.? Migration Reveals the Cultural Transmission Mechanisms Underlying Variation in Psychological Processes.
How Do People Become W.E.I.R.D.? Migration Reveals the Cultural Transmission Mechanisms Underlying Variation in Psychological Processes.
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人们如何成为W.E.I.R.D.？迁移揭示了心理过程中的文化传播机制。
DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0147162
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发表时间：
2016
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Hussain D
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Mesoudi A;Magid K;Hussain D
文化心理学家表明，来自西方、受过教育、工业化、富裕、民主（WEIRD）国家的人，与来自不那么WEIRD的国家的人，往往表现出不同的心理过程。与非西方人相比，前者表现出更多的个人主义而较少的集体主义的社会取向，更多的分析性认知而较少的整体性认知。然而，维持这种文化差异的机制尚不清楚。移民是揭示这种机制的理想“自然实验”。我们使用了一系列先前显示的跨文化差异的心理测量来比较来自三种文化背景的286名东伦敦居民的社会取向和认知风格：(i)第一代英国孟加拉国移民；（ii）在英国长大，父母在孟加拉国长大的第二代英国孟加拉国人；（iii）父母在英国出生和长大的非移民。模型比较发现，西方社会典型的个人主义和性格归因主要受横向文化传播（如大众传媒）驱动，父母和其他家庭成员的影响很小或没有影响；而集体主义、社会亲密和情境归因主要受纵向/斜向文化传播（如家庭接触）和横向文化传播的混合驱动。这些个人层面的传播动态可以解释迄今为止令人困惑的人口层面现象，例如第二代移民对集体主义等措施的部分文化适应（由于垂直和水平文化传播的混合），或者在一些国家观察到，尽管集体主义几乎没有相应的变化（部分是垂直传播的，因此更慢），个人主义（它是水平传播的，因此很快）却在增加。进一步考虑文化传播机制，结合对移民社区的研究和模型比较统计，可以揭示文化可变心理过程的持续和变化。
Cultural psychologists have shown that people from Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD) countries often exhibit different psychological processing to people from less-WEIRD countries. The former exhibit more individualistic and less collectivistic social orientation, and more analytic and less holistic cognition, than non-Westerners. Yet the mechanisms responsible for maintaining this cultural variation are unclear. Immigration is an ideal ‘natural experiment’ for uncovering such mechanisms. We used a battery of psychological measures previously shown to vary cross-culturally to compare the social orientation and cognitive style of 286 residents of East London from three cultural backgrounds: (i) 1st-generation British Bangladeshi immigrants; (ii) 2nd-generation British Bangladeshis raised in the UK to Bangladeshi-raised parents; and (iii) non-migrants whose parents were born and raised in the UK. Model comparison revealed that individualism and dispositional attribution, typical of Western societies, are driven primarily by horizontal cultural transmission (e.g. via mass media), with parents and other family members having little or no effect, while collectivism, social closeness and situational attribution were driven by a mix of vertical/oblique cultural transmission (e.g. via family contact) and horizontal cultural transmission. These individual-level transmission dynamics can explain hitherto puzzling population-level phenomena, such as the partial acculturation of 2nd-generation immigrants on measures such as collectivism (due to the mix of vertical and horizontal cultural transmission), or the observation in several countries of increasing individualism (which is transmitted horizontally and therefore rapidly) despite little corresponding change in collectivism (which is transmitted partly vertically and therefore more slowly). Further consideration of cultural transmission mechanisms, in conjunction with the study of migrant communities and model comparison statistics, can shed light on the persistence of, and changes in, culturally-variable psychological processes.