Ulterior Motives

How goals, both seen and unseen, drive behavior

Art Markman is a cognitive scientist at the University of Texas whose research spans a range of topics in the way people think. See full bio

July 13, 2008, Personality

Comments on "Thinking about cultural differences II: Why bother?"

Thinking about cultural differences II: Why bother?

By Art Markman, Ph.D. on July 13, 2008 in Ulterior Motives

In the first post in this series, I talked about some basic cultural differences in thinking that have been uncovered over the past 20 years. Before we start a discussion about why these differences might occur, there is another why question to ask. Why bother studying cultural differences in the first place? After all, this work is hard to do, and it is often expensive as well. Besides, we're still learning a lot just by doing research with Western University students. Read More

In this series of

Submitted by Anonymous on July 13, 2008 - 11:10pm.

In this series of discussions, I certainly hope you bring up the literally decades of work done by anthropologists on culture and "cultural differences".

Why don't you start by defining "culture" or at least recognizing among the 100 and more definitions of culture your favorite and explain why it is your favorite?

It might be worthwhile also recognizing the relationship between language and/or dialect and culture among humans. Speaking of which there are dialectical differences between animals of the same species and as there are dialectical differences in animal sounds there are also subtle regional differences in their behavior.