integrating system approaches to culture and …...chapter 7 integrating system approaches to...

CHAPTER 7

Integrating System Approachesto Culture and PersonalityThe Cultural Cognitive–Affective

Processing System

RODOLFO MENDOZA-DENTONWALTER MISCHEL

O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,Are you the leaf, the blossom, or the bole?O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,How can we know the dancer from the dance?

—W. B. YEATS, Among School Children

As the chapters in this volume attest, the foun-dational premise that culture and person co-constitute one another, perhaps more than anyother, characterizes contemporary cultural psy-chology (Cole, 1996; Kitayama, 2002; Miller,1997; 1999; Piker, 1998; Shweder, 1990).Ironically, however, this very premise is mostchallenging for a cultural psychological view ofpersonality, for “personality” has historicallybeen, and in much cross-cultural research con-tinues to be, conceptualized as the qualities ofthe individual that are separable from context

(Kitayama & Markus, 1999; Pervin, 1999;Poortinga & Hemert, 2001; Shweder, 1991).

The challenge for a cultural-psychologicalapproach to personality remains to specify thenature of, and the mechanisms underlying, theco-constitution of person and culture. Thischapter brings together insights from varioustheoretical and empirical lines of research (e.g.,Hong & Chiu, 2001; Hong, Morris, Chiu, &Benet-Martinez, 2000; Kashima, 2001, 2004;Markus & Kitayama, 1998; Mendoza-Denton,Shoda, Ayduk, & Mischel, 1999; Cohen, 1997)

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that together are rising to this challenge andbringing into focus a new paradigm for thestudy of culture and personality. At the core ofthis emerging consensus are discoveries overthe past 20 years in personality science and so-cial cognition that are remarkably consistentwith the premise of cultural psychology. Thesefindings allow us to revise the long-standing as-sumption that situations, context, and cultureare somehow “noise” or “error” that obscuresthe consistency of personality and obstructs thesearch for universals. Rather than searching forfundamental human qualities that describepeople in spite of cultural differences, this ap-proach focuses on the cultural differencesthemselves. Cultural differences in socialbehavior, in this view, are meaningful manifes-tations of a dynamic, culturally constitutedpersonality system, the structure and governingprinciples of which may, indeed, be universal.

THE CULTURE AND PERSONALITY PARADOX

From its inception, a bedrock assumption inpersonality science has been that people havediscernible qualities that supercede contextsand situations (Mischel, 2004; Mischel, Shoda,& Mendoza-Denton, 2002). Within this ap-proach, a person who is high in conscientious-ness should be more conscientious than mostpeople in many different kinds of situations,and would do the appropriately conscientiousthing as required by his or her culture. By the1960s, however, it became increasingly clearthat the data did not bear out this assumption,with converging data from independent investi-gators (Hartshorne & May, 1928; Mischel,1968; Newcomb, 1929; Peterson, 1968;Vernon, 1964) consistently finding only modestevidence for cross-situational consistency ofbehavior (Mischel, 2003; Shweder, 1991; B. B.Whiting & Whiting, 1975). Bem and Allen(1974) coined the term “personality paradox”to refer to the discrepancy between the lack ofstrong empirical support for cross-situationalconsistency and our intuition that stable quali-ties in fact exist.

Cultural psychologists interested in the rela-tionship between culture and personality aretoday faced with an analogous dilemma. Onthe one hand, it has been shown that for manyclasses of behavior, within-culture variability isgreater than between-culture variability

(Barnouw, 1985; Bock, 2000; Inkeles, 1996;Kaplan, 1954; Wallace, 1961; Triandis, 1997;J. W. M. Whiting & Child, 1953; B. B. Whiting& Whiting, 1975). On the other hand, and de-spite the data, as perceivers and researchers wecontinue to have a strong intuition that sometype of commonality unites the French or theJapanese, and makes them different from Ar-gentines or the Senegalese. How does one rec-oncile these seemingly opposing positions? Theresponse to the 1960s personality paradoxspeaks directly to the issues and alternativesfaced when dealing with this “culture and per-sonality paradox.”

ONE RESPONSE: UNCOVER TRAITSTHROUGH METHODOLOGICAL REFINEMENT

One reaction to the 1960s personality paradoxwas to assert that the findings on the variabilityof behavior across diverse situations simply re-flect noise and error from inadequate sampling.In this view, the emergence and identificationof cross-situational consistency is a matter ofmethodological improvement, primarily re-quiring better reliability through denser datasampling (Epstein, 1979), or more precise spec-ification of the people or situations to whichtraits apply (Bem & Allen, 1974; Epstein &O’Brien, 1985; see Mischel & Peake, 1982,1983; Snyder & Ickes, 1984; and Shweder,1991, for lengthier discussions on this topic).Accordingly, no personality paradox in fact ex-ists: One can continue to eliminate the role ofsituations by aggregating people’s behavioracross diverse situations, and by using globalassessments that exclude context. At its core,then, this approach remains committed totreating situational variability as measurementerror.

This response, though greeted with great en-thusiasm, has paved the road for a resurgenceof culture and personality research that, inspite of its methodological rigor, has not ad-dressed the basic challenges to the paradigm’sfundamental assumptions (e.g., Mischel,1968). The consequence has been to reinforcefurther the metaphor shared by traditional per-sonality and attribution theories “that con-strues skin as a special boundary that separatesone set of ‘causal forces’ from another. On thesunny side of the epidermis are the external orsituational forces that press inward on the per-

176 II. THEORY AND METHODS

son, and on the meaty side are the internal orpersonal forces that exert pressure outward”(Gilbert & Malone, 1995, p. 21).

Today, a principal impetus in research onculture and personality is devoted to establish-ing the universality of a personality trait struc-ture, reducible to a discrete number of dimen-sions. This approach has largely focused onreplicating the “Five-Factor Model”—open-mindedness, conscientiousness, extraversion,agreeableness, and neuroticism—across cul-tures (e.g., McCrae & Allik, 2002), with recentefforts aimed at “mapping” the world acrossthe five dimensions (Allik & McCrae, 2004;McCrae, 2004). The goal of this approach isnot so much in finding that the French, for ex-ample, are lower on agreeableness than Ameri-cans (McCrae, 2004), but rather that bothFrenchmen and Americans can be described interms of the five factors. Proponents of this ap-proach cite evidence from animal studies (e.g.,Gosling & John, 1999; Gosling, Kwan, &John, 2003) and heritability studies (Bouchard& Loehlin, 2001; Loehlin, McCrae, Costa, &John, 1998) as evidence for the likely biologicalbasis of trait structure (see Triandis & Suh,2002). It has been proposed that biologicalsubstrates underlie differences in the Big Fiveand, more recently, that such biological differ-ences cause cultural differences (McCrae,2004).

The growing literature on global traits andculture has been both ably reviewed (e.g.,Triandis & Suh, 2002), and ably critiqued (e.g.,Bock, 2000; Kitayama, 2002; Pervin, 1994;Shweder 1991; see also Peng, Nisbett, &Wong, 1997) elsewhere, and is not the focus ofthis chapter. Nonetheless, we note three impor-tant points: (1) Efforts to describe cultures interms of a common metric assume a context-free psychic unity that cultural-psychologicalresearch is finding evidence against (e.g.,Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999;Iyengar & Lepper, 1999; Norenzayan, Choi, &Peng, Chapter 23, this volume); (b) personalityassessments that rely on generalized traits—including indigenously derived ones (e.g.,Cheung & Leung, 1998; Church, Katigbak, &Reyes, 1996, 1998)—tacitly accept a definitionof “personality” in terms of consistency acrossboth time and situations; and (3) convergentevidence from self- and peer-ratings, or fromanimal studies, tell us a lot about peoples’ cate-gorization processes (Bock, 2000; Church,

2000; Morris, Nisbett, & Peng, 1995), butonly a partial story about the behavioral ex-pressions of the personality system (Borkenau,Riemann, Spinath & Angleitner, 2006;Cervone, 2004; Shoda, 1999). Our focus belowis on giving a voice to the rest of that story.

A SECOND RESPONSE:TAKING VARIABILITY SERIOUSLY

To reiterate, the data over the course of a cen-tury have shown that cross-situational variabil-ity is as at least as impressive as cross-situational consistency (Mischel et al., 2002).Whereas such variability is considered error ornoise within traditional approaches, researchover the past 20 years has harnessed this vari-ability, with the hunch that a new locus of per-sonality is to be found within this variability.But how can information about behavioralvariability across situations, rather than behav-ioral stability across situations, possibly yieldinformation about dispositions? An analogyfrom automobiles is helpful (Epstein, 1994).The analogy begins with the recognition thatautomobiles, like people, are readily groupedin terms of their area of origin. Peugeot, for ex-ample, is different from Mitsubishi, which isdifferent from Chrysler. It is helpful to be ableto compare these different makes of car accord-ing to certain dimensions. Are they gas guzzlersor economical? Are they clunky or speedy? Si-lent or noisy? Such generalizations are, ofcourse, useful in orienting buyers toward a par-ticular brand, yet only provide distal cuesabout the mechanisms that lead to thesedifferences—about what is going on under thehood (Cervone, 2005).

As beleaguered car owners can attest, whenexperts ask diagnostic questions about cars,their questions focus on the conditions underwhich certain events occur. The types of ques-tions asked of car owners—When does the carmake that particular screeching sound? Doesthe car stall only when it’s going uphill?—cangive clues to the expert about identifying thesource of the surface characteristics (e.g., noisi-ness) and why the car does what it does. Theconclusions drawn about the source of theproblem, for example, will be different if thecar seems to make noise when trying to acceler-ate (loose fan belt) as opposed to when tryingto shift gears (transmission issue). In a fascinat-

7. Integrating System Approaches to Culture and Personality 177

ing way, then, information about how the carbehaves in relation to different driving situa-tions can be quite diagnostic about the car it-self.

Similarly, identifying the conditions underwhich an individual displays a given behaviorcan be critical in understanding personaldispositions—in revealing, as it were, the en-gine driving the person. That is, even if two in-dividuals display the same overall average levelof behavior, depending on the pattern of whereit is displayed, one may draw drastically differ-ent inferences about the person (Kammrath,Mendoza-Denton, & Mischel, 2005;Mendoza-Denton, 1999; Plaks, Shafer, &Shoda, 2003; Shoda & Mischel, l993). Supposefor example, that Jack so consistently putswork above all else that his friends and familyknow they cannot count on him for social orfamily obligations. Jacques, on the other hand,is extremely dependable when it comes to inter-personal obligations, but is consistently lateand sloppy when it comes to his nine-to-fivejob. Even though, on average, both Jack andJacques might be seen or rated as equally de-pendable, their distinct patterns—if observedrepeatedly and across multiple samples ofsituations—may be highly informative aboutdifferences in their motivations, goals, values—and importantly, their cultural background(Hong & Mallorie, 2004; Mendoza-Denton,Ayduk, Shoda, & Mischel, 1997). More thancollections of ever more specific but disjointedbehavior-in-context descriptions (see Shweder,1991), these if . . . Then . . . (if situation A,then s/he does X, but if situation B, then he orshe does Y) profiles—if stable—can yield im-portant clues about the underlying system thatgenerates them.

Evidence for the Stabilityof If . . . Then . . . Profiles

To test for the stability and meaningfulness of if. . . then . . . profiles, Shoda, Mischel, andWright (1994) analyzed the behavior of chil-dren over the course of a summer as it unfoldedin vivo within a summer camp. The children’ssocial behavior (e.g., verbal aggression, with-drawal, prosocial behavior) was unobtrusivelyobserved and recorded as it occurred in rela-tion to various interpersonal situations, withan average of 167 hours of observation perchild over the course of the 6-week camp.

Nominal versus Psychological Situations

How did the researchers classify the camp situ-ations into meaningful categories? Situationscan be classified at different levels. At one level,one can describe situations nominally; in otherwords, according to their surface features (e.g.,study hall, cabin meeting; see B. B. Whiting &Whiting, 1975). Unfortunately, nominal situa-tions often contain a wide array of interper-sonal psychological events for different peopleand different cultural groups. As an example,for one group, being “at the market” may in-volve quickly finding one’s groceries, getting onthe shortest checkout line, and leaving out ofthe store as soon as possible. For anothergroup, being “at the market” might involvehaggling with one’s favorite vendor over tea,and socializing with neighbors while choosingfruit. As such, then, situations can also bemeaningfully grouped according to their im-portant psychological features, which may cutacross nominal situations and settings. Suchclusters have been referred to as “psychologicalsituations” (Shoda et al., 1994).

To be able to group the situations in terms ofthe psychological features that seemed impor-tant to the children at the summer camp,Wright and Mischel (1988) asked those whoknew the children—the camp counselors aswell as the children’s peers—to describe themin detail. Specifically, they were asked to imag-ine that the interviewer was new to the campand the campers, and to “tell me everythingyou know about (target) so I will know him aswell as you do.” This was followed by standardprompts (e.g., “Anything else?”). This method-ology yielded voluminous “thick description”(Geertz, 1973; Shweder, 1991) on the culturalgroup under study (in this case, the kids at thecamp), with the added benefit of stemmingfrom not one but many “cultural experts.”This allowed the researchers to identify thosefeatures that the experts agreed were importantto the population, rather than being idiosyn-cratic to any given informant. To find the com-mon themes in these descriptions, responseswere coded and subjected to cluster analysis.

Confirming the importance of traits in thelanguage use of Americans (Church, 2000),much of the content of the descriptions con-sisted of trait terms. However, the data also re-vealed that these trait descriptors tended to behedged spontaneously, that is, described in


terms of the conditions under which targetsdisplayed particular qualities (e.g., “Johnnygets aggressive when he gets teased about hisglasses”). Clustering the types of situationalhedges used to describe the targets revealed fivepsychological situations that seemed importantto the kids at the camp: three negative situa-tions (“peer teased, provoked, or threatened,”“adult warned,” and “adult punished”) andtwo positive situations (“adult praised” and“peer approached prosocially”). The distinc-tion between nominal and psychological situa-tions, though subtle, has important implica-tions, because to the degree that culturedictates the types of situations that “go to-gether,” exercises in the generalizability ofnominal situations may be limited in their use-fulness (Mendoza-Denton et al., 1997). Interms of assessment, identification of such psy-chological situations cannot be known withoutdeep familiarity with the culture. We return tothis point in the “Implications” section of thischapter.

If . . . Then . . . Profiles:Meaningful Patterns of Variability

Figure 7.1 shows illustrative profiles for twochildren at the camp. Their verbally aggressivebehavior across the five types of psychologicalsituations described earlier (Shoda et al., 1994)is shown in Z-scores—in other words, the chil-dren’s observed level of aggression in that situa-tion, in standard deviation units, relative to themean of the entire sample (Z0 on the Y axis).Thus, these profiles do not simply reflect thefact that situations, unsurprisingly, make adifference (e.g., on average, people tend tobe more aggressive when teased than whenpraised). The two lines within each panel in-dicate the profiles based on two separate,nonoverlapping samples of situations, shownas a solid line and a dotted line. It is worth not-ing here that the fact that these stability coeffi-cients are found when reliability is high (densedata sampling) flatly contradicts the key traitassumption that variability in a person’s behav-ior across situations is “noise” (see Mischel &Shoda, 1995; Mischel, 2004). In more re-cent research, the profile similarity in twinshas been found to be greater than chance(Borkenau et al., 2006).

The feature of if . . . then . . profiles that isimportant for this analysis is that they readily

invite questions about the person’s construalsof different situations, and the relevant motiva-tions, goals, expectations, and processing dy-namics. Child 9, for example, reliably becomesverbally aggressive when warned by adults,leading observers to consider why he might re-act in particular to being warned, and themeaning of such warnings for that individual.Perhaps the child becomes embarrassed at be-ing “shown up” by adults in front of peers, orloves to challenge authority and see how muchhe can get away with. Child 28, by contrast,becomes reliably aggressive when approachessociably by peers, inviting and suggesting acompletely different set of explanations for his


FIGURE 7.1. Illustrative if . . . then . . . “signatures”of verbal aggression in relation to five situationsin two nonoverlapping time samples (solid anddotted lines). Data are shown in standardizedscores (Z) relative to the normative levels of ver-bal aggression in each situation. From Mischeland Shoda (1995, p. 249). Copyright 1995 by theAmerican Psychological Association. Reprintedby permission.

behavior, for how the child construes theworld, for what he may consider threatening,or what goals may motivate him.

As these examples illustrate, there is not aone-to-one correspondence between the out-ward behavior (e.g., aggression) and the under-lying disposition. Instead, such profiles requireexplanations of another nature, and one thatperceivers seem to engage in intuitively(Kammrath et al., 2005; Plaks et al., 2003):They invite questions about how the targetfeels, what the target thinks, and how the tar-get perceives his or her world. In the next sec-tion, we review the theoretical account that canaccount for such profiles, then detail theconvergences of such a model with the pre-mises of cultural psychology.

THE CULTURALLY CONSTITUTEDCOGNITIVE–AFFECTIVE PROCESSING SYSTEM

Having established if . . . then . . . signatures asa second, reliable locus of personality coher-ence, the task became to generate a frameworkthat could account for both these profiles andoverall aggregate behavioral tendencies. In re-sponse to this task, Mischel and Shoda (1995,1999) proposed a Cognitive–Affective Person-ality System (CAPS) framework that integratesinsights about knowledge activation (Ander-son, 1988; Higgins, 1996; Hong & Mallorie,2004; Kashima, 2001), social cognition (e.g.,Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1989; Downey &Feldman, 1996; Read, Jones, & Miller, 1990),and connectionism (Hinton, McClelland, &Rumelhart, 1986; Kashima, 2004; Read &Miller, 1998, 2002). We describe the frame-work in some detail below as one representa-tive of a family of approaches (see Cervone,2004; Hong & Chiu, 2001; Kashima, 2001;Pervin, 2001; see also Hong, Wang, No, &Chiu, Chapter 13, this volume) that, ratherthan parsing causal forces in terms of what is“dance” versus “dancer,” demonstrates howpersonality processes and the mediating unitsproposed to account for them are inherentlycontextual in nature (see also Norenzayan etal., Chapter 23, this volume). Following the de-scription of this general framework as it hasbeen related to culture and personality(Mendoza-Denton et al., 1999), we extend andrefine the framework to explicitly to take a sys-tem view of culture (Kitayama, 2002) into ac-count.

Rather than being a theory of personality perse, CAPS theory is a general framework thatoutlines a set of principles. It proposes that hu-man behavior is mediated by a set of cognitive–affective units (CAUs) organized within a sta-ble network of activation. This network or or-ganization, according to Mischel and Shoda(1995), constitutes the basic stable structure ofthe personality processing system and underliesthe behavioral expressions that characterize theindividual.

Common Units for Culture and Personality: CAUs

CAUs are conceptualized in terms of five rela-tively stable “person variables” that have beenidentified in a century of psychological re-search as playing an important role in socialbehavior generation (Cervone, 2004; Read etal., 1990; Mischel, 1973; Pervin, 2001). Theyare summarized in Table 7.1. The content ofCAUs is determined through, and groundedin, the individual’s cultural context—what istaught by one’s family, what is valued by one’scommunity, and what is afforded by one’s cul-ture (Kitayama, 2002; Mischel & Shoda 1995;Shoda, 1999).

CAUs provide a natural bridge to the studyof culture as a result of their striking conver-gence with widely accepted definitions of cul-ture. Classical, as well modern, definitionsof culture consistently emphasize CAU-type


TABLE 7.1. Types of CAUs in the Personality MediatingSystem

1. Encodings: Categories (constructs) for the self,people, events, and situations (external andinternal).

2. Expectations and beliefs: About the socialworld, about outcomes for behavior inparticular situations, about one’s self-efficacy.

3. Affects: Feelings, emotions, and affectiveresponses (including physiological reactions).

4. Goals: Desirable outcomes and affective states,aversive outcomes and affective states; goalsand life projects.

5. Competencies and self-regulatory plans:Potential behaviors and scripts that one can do,and plans and strategies for organizing actionand for affecting outcomes and one’s ownbehavior and internal states.

Note. From Mischel and Shoda (1995, p. 253). Copyright1995 by the American Psychological Association. Reprintedby permission.

constructs—values, beliefs, meanings, customs,attributions, attitudes, and appraisals—as cen-tral components of the cultural heritage that isshared and transmitted among members of agiven cultural group (Geertz, 1973;Obeyeskere, 1981; Schwartz, 1992; Triandis &Suh, 2002; Triandis et al., 1980; Tylor, 1871).There seems to be wide agreement that cultureplays a large role in determining what is val-ued, what is worth pursuing, and how to inter-pret the world.

Given the correspondence between elementsof culture and elements of a person, it is tempt-ing to draw a one-to-one correspondence be-tween “culture” and “person,” such that a per-son is viewed as a culture writ small, or itsconverse, that culture is “personality writlarge” (Benedict, 1934). A moment’s thought,however, reveals a much more complicated re-lationship between “culture” and “person.” Aperson cannot be a “culture” writ small, be-cause the person can be thought of as consist-ing of many little cultures—people are Thai,they are men, they are family men, they arehusbands, they are colleagues at work—andeach of these is its own distinct culture. Themutual influence of culture and person, then,operates at multiple levels, such that each per-son’s social circles dictate his or her unique so-cial reality (Linton, 1936; Mendoza-Denton etal., 1999).

Culture and Principles of Knowledge Activation

As several researchers have noted (Kashima,2001; Hong & Mallorie, 2004) principles ofknowledge activation (Higgins, 1996) are help-ful in thinking about the intersection betweenculture and personality. Members of culturalgroups differ in terms of what goals, values,and beliefs are available. For example, whereasone culture may teach beliefs about spirit pos-session to its members, this notion may not bepart of the explanatory repertoire for others’behavior among members of other groups. TheCAPS framework also assumes that people dif-fer in the chronic accessibility (Higgins, 1996;Mischel & Shoda, 1995; Shoda, LeeTiernan, &Mischel, 2002) of constructs, that is, the easewith which particular CAUs become activated.For example, a strong cultural norm of valuingothers’ welfare may make such a concern morechronically accessible—thus, easily activated—to individuals of that culture (e.g., Markus &Kitayama, 1991). As another example, by vir-

tue of shared experiences, stigmatized groupmembers within a given culture may have con-cerns about discrimination more chronicallyaccessible than nonstigmatized group members(Mendoza-Denton et al., 1997). Finally, themodel also postulates that of all the beliefs,goals, values, encodings, and feelings that onecan potentially experience at any given time,only those that are relevant in a given situationcan become activated and influence subsequentbehavior (Hong, Benet-Martinez, Chiu, &Morris, 2003). As such, CAPS makes specificthe notion of applicability. For example, onecultural difference identified in prior researchhas been a greater tendency toward self-enhancement in the United States than in Japan(Heine et al., 1999), but this cultural differenceis expressed in culturally defined situations andcontexts. Another example comes fromKitayama, Markus, Matsumoto, and Norasak-kunkit (1997), who demonstrated that Euro-pean Americans are highly self-enhancing, andthis is especially true for situations that Euro-pean Americans spontaneously nominate as be-ing relevant to their self-esteem. By contrast,Japanese were found to be self-critical but,again, more pronouncedly so in situationsidentified by the ingroup as relevant to self-esteem. As such, culture influences personalitythrough and through—not only in terms of thegoals and important beliefs but also in the waythat situations are represented and what psy-chological features situations contain.

Thinking about a box of crayons offers a met-aphor for cultural influences and principles ofknowledge activation. Culture dictates whatconstructs or CAUs an individual has at his orher disposal to color the world. If a given crayon(CAU) is not available, the person cannot use it.“Accessibility” refers to the ease with which aperson is likely to use that crayon once it is avail-able. If we imagine a box of crayons with threerows, for example, a person is more likely to usethose crayons that are more easily reachable,such as the ones in front. Finally, “applicability”refers to the rules a culture dictates about whatcrayons one can use and when. A spirit posses-sion “crayon”—if available—may be applicableto explaining mental illness in certain culturesbut not in others.

Interconnections among CAUs

As Kitayama (2002) notes, “It is to be antici-pated that cultures should be different not only


in terms of central tendencies in any given vari-ables but also in terms of functional relationsamong them” (p. 93). This quote captures thesecond important feature of CAPS, namely,that the person is not conceptualized only asthe receptacle of disjointed, unrelated CAUs.Rather, CAUs operate within an interconnectednetwork whereby CAUS have excitatory andinhibitory links to each other, and in which dif-ferent pathways become activated in relation tofeatures of the situation. For any given CAU,positive (excitatory) connections to it increasethat CAUs activation level, whereas negative(inhibitory) connections to it decrease its acti-vation level. A highly simplified, schematizedversion of a CAPS is shown in Figure 7.2.

The large circle in the middle of Figure 7.2represents the “person,” whereas his or her sta-ble network of CAUs is represented by thenodes and excitatory (solid lines) and inhibi-tory (dotted lines) links among those nodes. Al-though the “network” of CAUs and intercon-nections is itself stable, as the individual movesacross different situations, different mediatingunits and their characteristic interrelationshipsbecome activated (contingent on applicability)in relation to psychological features of thosesituations. The framework accounts for and isable to generate meaningfully patterned ex-pression of behavior in relationship to situa-tions, as well as to generalized overall tenden-cies in behavior (Shoda & Mischel, 1998). Thisis an important point, because it highlights the

fact that the CAPS approach does not neces-sarily stand in contrast to broad differencesbetween individuals (Mischel & Shoda, 1999).

Life experiences shared by members of agroup—the teachings of elders, the experiencesshared with others, the values imposed bysociety—generate a CAPS network that is im-mersed in and reflects the surrounding culture.If features of a situation activate this culturallyshared subnetwork, an individual may generatesimilar reactions to that situation, without im-plications for the rest of the individual’s dis-tinctive processing dynamics (see also Cohen,1997). In other words, when situations reliablyactivate shared networks, cultural commonali-ties in behavior may occur, whereas in situa-tions that do not activate a culturally sharedpsychological feature, group members’ re-sponses may not converge (although they mayconverge with those of another group).

Consider one of the most striking examplesof cultural convergence within the UnitedStates in recent memory—reactions to the 1995verdict of the murder trial of the African Amer-ican former football star and celebrity O. J.Simpson. At the time, it was clear that opinionsregarding the defendant’s guilt were sharplysplit along racial lines. An analysis of reactionsto the verdict showed that, among AfricanAmericans, certain features of the case—suchas the detective who planted evidence toinfluence a conviction—reliably activatedcognitions about historically unfair police


FIGURE 7.2. Schematic illustration of the CAPS. From Mischel and Shoda (1995, p. 254). Copyright 1995by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted by permission.

treatment towards African Americans in theUnited States. These cognitions, in turn, inhib-ited others, such as “There is a lot of evidenceagainst the defendant.” European Americans,for whom the realities of race-based discrimi-nation are both less available and less accessi-ble, instead focused on the evidence—and helda strong belief that Simpson should have beenfound guilty. Indeed, the effect of race on reac-tions to the verdict was mediated by the sharednetwork of cognitions activated (Mendoza-Denton et al., 1997). Of note, reactions to ver-dicts of other high-profile trials are generallynot of necessity split along racial lines, suggest-ing that members of cultural groups can sharesubnetworks activated in some situations butdo not have to display similarity in behavior toothers.

AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM VIEWOF CULTURE AND PERSON DYNAMICS

Kitayama and colleagues (Kitayama, 2002;Kitayama & Markus, 1999; Kitayama et al.,1997) have contributed a perspective that addsanother layer of complexity to our understand-ing of the co-constitution of person and cul-ture. Similar to how we have argued for a dy-namic and flexible view of personality in favorof a static, context-free view, a system view ofculture stands in contrast to static treatmentsof cultures as explanatory, even causal entitiesthat “account” for group differences (cf.Betancourt & López, 1993). The influence ofculture on personality is broader, and its dy-namics influence the person at several levels,such that culture is not just stored “in thehead” (a view perhaps taken too easily takenfrom the earlier CAPS analysis) but rather lim-its, directs, and invites culturally consonantbehavior in other ways.

A system view of culture recognizes that cul-tural values and belief systems shape the insti-tutions and everyday practices of a culture,which themselves provide cultural affordances(Kitayama & Markus, 1999) or opportunitiesfor the expression and reinforcement of thesecultural values. A core cultural belief systemsuch as the Protestant work ethic (Levy, West,Ramirez, & Karafantis, 2006), for example,can give rise to institutions that reinforce itsvery unfolding, and influence the settings andsituations that people navigate in their dailylives (Vandello & Cohen, 2004). In a similar

way, a belief in personal mastery over the envi-ronment, or over nature, can lead to thevaluation, and construction, of gymnasiumswhere such mastery and discipline becomepracticable and true (“physical culture”;Triandis et al., 1980). At the level of the indi-vidual, these macro-level influences lead to dif-ferences in the psychological availability of cer-tain constructs (e.g., belief in mastery overaging), the (chronic) accessibility of these beliefsystems (through gyms, ads, and other artifactsserving chronically to prime ideas of beauty,health, and youth), as well as the organizationamong the cognitions and affective evalua-tions. As such, then, a system view of culturereminds us that culture not only influences thecontent of the box of crayons people use to“color their world” but in fact also influencesthe coloring book itself.

A Schematized View of the C-CAPS Model

The Cultural Cognitive–Affective ProcessingSystem (C-CAPS) model is one in which a sys-tem view of culture and a system view of theperson are integrated and explicitly acknowl-edged to influence each other. Figure 7.3 pro-vides a schematic view of this multisystemmodel: This section walks the reader throughFigure 7.3. We begin with the three boxes onthe left-hand side—subjective culture, physicalculture, and nominal situations. As a whole,they make up the cultural affordance processesthat not only shape the CAPS system but alsoconstrain the kinds of situations to which theCAPS system is exposed. “Subjective culture”is the term that Triandis and colleagues (1980)have used to refer to the cultural beliefs, values,and meaning systems that become transmittedfrom one generation to the next. Examples ofsuch cultural values might be the “Protestantwork ethic” (PWE; Levy et al., 2006), “socialdominance orientation” (Pratto, Sidanius,Stallworth, & Malle, 1994), or “collectivism”(Triandis, 1996). Subjective culture is likely toinfluence directly the availability, accessibility,and network relationships of the person’s ownbeliefs, values, and goals (arrow 1 in Figure7.3). The cultural value referred to abstractlyas “PWE,” for example, might be cognitivelyrepresented in terms of concrete cognitionssuch as “Be all you can be,” “Hard work paysoff,” or “No pain, no gain” (see Geertz, 1973,for a discussion of abstract value systems vs.more concrete, or “experience-near” cognitive


representations). Arrow 2 captures the notionthat cultural value systems influence people’sphysical surroundings—the types of institu-tions that are built, for example, or the archi-tectural designs that foster culturally valuedtypes of social interaction. This arrow isbidirectional to reflect the notion that physicalculture also reifies the cultural value systemsthat create and maintain it. As arrow 3 shows,cultural belief systems and institutions then af-ford group members the specific nominal situa-tions that allow people to practice and furtherreinforce those belief systems as part of ashared reality. These nominal situations aremore discretionary, temporally discreteinstantiations of culture, such as taking anexam, running on a treadmill, or having apower lunch with a client.

Together, these first three boxes in Figure 7.3take us from a broader “culture” to a morespecific “context,” to a more specific “situa-tion,” although these distinctions themselves

do not have clean, easy boundaries. Althoughthe “power of the situation” is great (see Ross& Nisbett, 1991), even these “situations” can-not be separated from the people who collec-tively, as a culture, have defined and continueto define them.

Arrows 4 and 5 in Figure 7.3 reflect the co-constitutive influence of culture and the personas reflected in the psychological situation(Shoda et al., 1994). As discussed earlier, thesubjective meaning of a nominal situation is in-fluenced by the person’s existing knowledgestructures through appraisal processes (arrow5; see Cervone, 2004); however, appraisals arebound to and directed by their applicability toa given nominal situation (arrow 4). As in theoriginal CAPS formulation, features of the psy-chological situation then activate and inhibitother CAUs (arrows 6a and 6b), following apattern of activation and inhibition such that if. . then . . . profiles, as well as overall behaviortendencies, are displayed (arrow 7). As various


FIGURE 7.3. Schematic illustration of the culturally constituted C-CAPS. Subjective and physical cultureinfluence the contents and organization of the individual’s processing system (1), and provide the culturalaffordances that form a basis for the nominal situations experienced by the person (2, 3). Psychologicalfeatures of situations are influenced by both nominal situations and the person’s appraisal processes (4,5). The system yields if . . . then . . . signatures (6a, 6b, 7), which both influence the immediate environ-ment of the person (8) and have the potential to enact cultural change (9).

researchers have argued, these behaviors theninfluence the very situations in which peoplefind themselves in (Levy, Ayduk, & Downey,2001), creating a self-selection bias (arrow 8).For example, the person who believes in per-sonal agency and control over aging is likely tofind him- or herself working out, and encodingthe experience as daily mastery against old age.Thus, culture and the person are both interpen-etrating each other, mutually discernible yet in-separable.

Finally, arrow 9 in Figure 7.3 provides thepossibility that people can alter subjective orphysical culture. Gandhi inspired and mobi-lized entire groups of people toward a belief inthe power of peace; the Beatles changed themeaning of music; Mia Hamm played soccer ata moment in history when a nation (in thiscase, the United States) was ready to get seriousabout women and sports. Thus, individuals canalso influence the normative forces we call“culture.”

TWO ILLUSTRATIONS

The stable situation–behavior profiles gener-ated by the CAPS system lend themselves notonly to the idiographic study of persons butalso provide a nomothetic route to characterizecultural groups in terms of their sharedsubnetworks, situation–behavior signatures,and common cultural affordances. In the sec-tion that follows, we briefly illustrate someways that a dynamic system approach to cul-ture and personality can help shed light on cul-tural convergences in behavior. The emphasisin these approaches is in a deeper understand-ing of how history, cultural meaning systems,and contextual constraints shape the thoughts,cognitions, and affects that individuals experi-ence. We choose two examples—research onculture of honor, and on race-based rejectionsensitivity—to illustrate how macro-levelforces such as a herding economy or a historyof discrimination against one’s group shape thesocial-cognitive worlds of individuals.

Culture of Honor

Research on culture of honor (Cohen, 1998;Cohen, Nisbett, Bowdle, & Schwarz, 1996,Nisbett & Cohen, 1996; see also Cohen, Chap-ter 8, this volume) provides an in-depth analy-sis of how historical forces shape cultural prac-

tices and norms (cultural affordances), whichin turn influence the way individuals behave inparticular situations (person × situation inter-actions). The research provides an excellent il-lustration of how seemingly contradictorysurface-level behaviors can be understood, andsubsequently predicted, by understanding howsubjective and physical culture have shaped thecharacteristic cognitions, affects, andencodings characteristic of a given group with-in the United States.

What are these contradictory surface-levelbehaviors? As Cohen et al. (1996) noted, “Forcenturies, the American South has been re-garded as more violent than the North”(p. 945). Consistent with this reputation, ratesin the South and West for argument-related ho-micides have been shown to be higher thanthey are in the North (Nisbett & Cohen, 1996).Despite this reputation, however, Southernersalso have a reputation for being charming andpolite. A recent etiquette expert rankedCharleston, South Carolina, as the nation’smost polite city–for the 10th straight year.“When you pass people on the street, they willnod at you,” reports a Charleston city tourguide. “People who live here are, for whateverreason, polite. Whether it’s breeding or in thewater, it’s hard to say” (CNN, 2005). In short,the South’s reputation for violence standsalongside its equally strong reputation for po-liteness, for that old Southern charm. Howthen, do we reconcile the view of a violentSouth with a view of a charming South?

According to the culture of honor hypothe-sis, a herding economy in combination withloose law enforcement in the Southern andWestern United States have led to a cultural ad-aptation in which honor and reputation havebecome critical elements in the protection ofone’s property and name. In the absence of ade-quate social control, it became important to re-spond quickly and affirmatively to beingcrossed, insulted, affronted, or stolen from, soas to communicate to the community not to“mess” with one’s property and to maintainone’s status. The culture of honor, character-ized by strong vigilance to disrespect and readyuse of violence to protect property and name,has over time affected social practices andnorms. This is symbolized both in games thatamount to tests of “manhood” (e.g., “chicken”games, or kicking each other in the shins) andin legal lenience toward violence instigated byaffronts to honor (Cohen & Nisbett, 1994,


1997). These practices and laws are good ex-amples of the way subjective culture influencesphysical culture, as illustrated by arrow 2 inFigure 7.3.

As Cohen, Vandello, Puente, and Rantilla(1999) explain, a culture of honor that rests onviolent retaliation following affront dictatesnot only how to react when such an affront oc-curs, but also how to act when an affront doesnot occur. More specifically, in a culture whereserious retribution is a consequence of disre-spect, it is to one’s best interest to be unambigu-ous about according respect when one is notlooking for trouble. As such, then, a distinctif . . . then . . . pattern can be viewed as charac-terizing the behavior of people sharing a cul-ture of honor.

In a laboratory-based “experimental ethnog-raphy” that provided empirical support for this“culture of honor profile,” Cohen and col-leagues (1996, Study 3) recruited Northern andSouthern white men to participate in a labora-tory study generally described to be about per-sonality. An ingenious experimental manipula-tion followed. Participants were brought intothe lab, asked to fill out questionnaires, andthen drop off the packet at the end of a long,narrow hallway. Half of the Southern and halfof the Northern participants were then sub-jected to an affront: While walking down thehallway, they had to squeeze past an assistant(in reality, a confederate) getting something outof a cabinet. The confederate, feigning annoy-ance, slammed the cabinet shut, insulted theparticipant under his breath, and intentionallybumped the participant on his way out of thehallway. At this point, the participant still hadto make his way to the end of the hallway, butat this point a different person (also a confeder-ate) began walking down the hall toward him.Given the width of the hallway, this in effect setthe stage for a potential game of “chicken,”where the point is to see who swerves out of theway first. The distance at which the participant“chickened out” or got out of the confederate’sway was expected to vary both as a function ofthe participant’s background and whether hehad been bumped or not. Following this en-counter, the participant finally made it to theend of the hall, where he was met by a differentconfederate. This confederate, blind to the re-gional background of the participant, rated thefirmness of the participant’s handshake andgave an overall impression of the participant’sdomineering behavior.

As expected, and corroborating prior re-search, Southern men who had been bumped,relative to men from the North, waited longerbefore stepping aside to let the second confed-erate through. This is consistent with the inter-pretation that following an affront (the bumpby the first confederate), a more aggressive re-sponse to restore honor was facilitated amongSouthern men. Participants were also rated bythe third confederate as more aggressive anddominant, and as giving a firmer handshakerelative to that of Northern participants. Tell-ingly, however, among participants who hadnot been bumped, the Southern men were more“polite” than their Northern counterparts:They got out of the second confederate’s wayearlier, gave less firm handshakes, and were lessdomineering and aggressive with the third con-federate.

Thus, the results from this study are consis-tent both with the notion that Southerners aremore violent, and that Southerners are morepolite. Which one is correct? The answer isboth—a clear if . . . then . . . pattern, predictedfrom an in-depth analysis of the historical andsocial influences affecting the South, as well asastute expectations as to how those macro-level influences affect the way individuals con-strue and respond to situations. Importantly, aglobal analysis of Southern aggression withoutregard to the situation would miss these dy-namics entirely.

Mere Recategorization, or Dynamic Complexity?

Cultural psychologists might worry about acharacterization—or caricaturization—ofSouthern “personality” as a two-point pat-tern dictated by respect and affront, wherethe stable aspect of the person, instead of be-ing a global adjective, is now conveniently re-placed by a global belief system or even a setof folk beliefs. However, it is important to re-member that the C-CAPS—the shared net-works of beliefs, cognitions, affects, and ac-tions, activated in relation to situations—existwithin a broader network that may or maynot be shared by other members of the group(Kashima, 2004). For example, while twomen may both have grown up in the South,and may both feel physiological arousal whenverbally insulted in a hallway (Cohen et al.,1996), one of these two men may considerself-control an important life value, perhapsas a result of martial arts classes, or a deep


religious conviction of “turning the othercheek.”

Although efforts toward a contextual analy-sis of behavior within cultural and cross-cultural psychology have an established history(Hoorens & Poortinga, 2000), such analyseshave been criticized (Shweder, 1991) as conve-niently recategorizing people into smaller andsmaller groups every time a prediction goesawry (e.g., where insights about “Southernmen” become insights about “Southern menwho hold deep religious beliefs” and eventually“Southern men who hold deep religious beliefsbut who have self-regulatory competency”). Bycontrast, a view of the culture–personality sys-tem as a dynamic network allows us to under-stand how one can reconcile both cultural ho-mogeneity and difference as part of the samedynamic process. The strength of the C-CAPSlies in its recognition that an individual whocan behave similarly to others in his or her cul-tural group, when the correct psychologicalfeatures of situations are activated, can act in acompletely idiosyncratic manner when a differ-ent set of features is activated, thus allowingfor individuality and commonality within thesame individual at different times (Mendoza-Denton et al., 1997). Thus, rather than anatheoretical recategorization of behavioral re-sponses into smaller and smaller groups, TheC-CAPS view focuses on the stability of theif . . . then . . . Culture–personality profiles,and their diagnostic use toward a deeper un-derstanding of the interplay between culturalconditions and processing dynamics. The levelof specificity chosen with C-CAPS is a choicethat depends entirely on the goals for which itis used, all the way from the individual life his-tory (McAdams, 1999) to large group and cul-tural comparisons.

Race-Based Rejection Sensitivity

To this point, we have provided illustrative ex-amples of C-CAPS, such that particular fea-tures of situations (e.g., an affront to honor, ora crooked cop planting evidence) activate cul-turally shared dynamics that predict behaviorby members of a cultural group. There is thepossibility, however, of variability even in situa-tions that seem especially relevant to culturalgroups. This variability can be fruitfully har-nessed to understand and map a given culturaldynamic—in other words, individual differ-ences providing a window into psychological

process (Mendoza-Denton, Page-Gould, &Pietrzak, 2006). One example of this is workon sensitivity to race-based rejection in the U.S.context, in which clear, within-group variabil-ity coexists with a dynamic predicated on par-ticular experiences being more likely to occurto members of a particular group.

As several researchers have emphasized, thepsychology of minority group members mustbe understood within the group’s own contextand historical background, an important partof which is a history of stigmatization and thecontinuing discrimination that exists to thisday (Sellers, Caldwell, Schmeelk-Cone, &Zimmerman, 2003; Shelton, 2000). This his-tory, as well as prior experiences, are likely toaffect individuals in profound ways, affectingboth the sense of self (Humphreys & Kashima,2002; Mischel & Morf, 2003; Kashima et al.,2004) and the stable responses that the individ-ual marshals in response to discrimination.One such mechanism termed sensitivity torace-based rejection (RS-race; Mendoza-Denton, Downey, Purdie, Davis, & Pietrzak,2002; Mendoza-Denton et al., 2005) also illus-trates the intricate co-constitution of culture(societal stereotypes and prejudice), nominalsituations (e.g., the university setting), and theperson (RS-race dynamic).

Growing out of developmental perspectiveson attachment, the construct of RS-race has itstheoretical precursors in research on rejectionsensitivity (Downey & Feldman, 1996; Levy etal., 2001). Based on a series of prospective, lon-gitudinal, and experimental studies, Downeyand colleagues have proposed that when peo-ple experience rejection from parents, peers, orother important figures in the form of abuse orneglect, they are vulnerable to developing anx-ious expectations of rejection, namely, a “hot,”affectively laden expectation that future rejec-tion lies in store in similar kinds of situations.These anxious expectations are activated in sit-uations where rejection is both applicable andsalient (Higgins, 1996), and is a good illustra-tion of the idea that the stable dispositional fea-ture of the individual, namely, anxious expecta-tions, are made accessible specifically inrelation to features of the situations. Ayduk,Downey, Testa, Yen, and Shoda (1999), for ex-ample, found that when rejection-sensitivewomen were rejected, they retaliated by bad-mouthing the perpetrator; however, when analternative, benign explanation for the rejec-tion was offered, no retaliation was observed.


These anxious expectations lower the thresh-old for perceiving the rejection and, once therejection is perceived, activate intense, “hot”reactions to it.

To the degree that affiliation and acceptancecan be considered a fundamental human mo-tive (Fiske, 2004), people may be universallycapable of developing the dynamic of rejectionsensitivity (anxious expectations → readyperceptions → hot reactions) if rejected or ne-glected. However, the manifestation of rejec-tion may be expressed in many different waysthat are constrained by culture. Mendoza-Denton and colleagues (2005) postulated thatrejection can occur on the basis of not only id-iosyncratic characteristics but also devaluedgroup membership—such as gender, sexual ori-entation, or race.

Cultural influences come into play at severallevels. First, as has been widely recognized,stigma is context-specific: An attribute or per-sonal characteristic that is devalued in one do-main may be valued (or be neutrally valenced)in another context (Crocker, Major, & Steele,1998). As such, the context within which a per-son operates can dictate the type of interper-sonal experiences—and stable dynamics—thatdevelop as a result. Second, even when twogroups might be negatively stigmatized, the na-ture of the stigma depends on the assumptionsthat a given stigma carries about one’s group.In the United States, for example, being AfricanAmerican carries a suspicion about academicinability (Steele, 1997), but not about athleticability, whereas the reverse is true of AsianAmericans (Chan & Mendoza-Denton, 2004).As such, then, although two people may beequally apprehensive concerning their status,the situations that activate their rejection con-cerns are different. Finally, the coping mecha-nisms marshaled in response to the rejectionmay be different. Again, one’s cultural groupprovides one with culture-specific strategies,values, and culturally appropriate strategiesmarshaled in response to rejection.

If one takes such a cultural-psychologicalanalysis seriously, it becomes difficult, if notimpossible, to create an technique to assessstatus-based rejection expectations indepen-dently of context. Accordingly, Mendoza-Denton et al. (2002) conducted focus groups tofind out the situations that activate race-basedrejection concerns among African Americans,and constructed a questionnaire based specifi-cally on those situations (this methodology

parallels Kitayama et al.’s (1997) situationsampling procedure). The kinds of situationsincluded scenarios such as a random trafficstop or being passed over for an opportunity toanswer a difficult question in class—situationsthat contain “active ingredients” for makingdiscrimination applicable and salient amongAfrican Americans. The researchers adminis-tered this questionnaire to a sample of AfricanAmerican, European American, and AsianAmerican undergraduates. As expected, Afri-can Americans scored highest on the measure,whereas European American and Asian Ameri-can participants scored low and did not differ.Individual differences in the measure predictedspontaneous attributions to race in these situa-tions among African Americans but not amongEuropean Americans or Asian Americans(Mendoza-Denton et al., 2002). among AfricanAmericans, individual differences in anxiousexpectations of race-based rejection subse-quently predicted, over a 3-week period, re-ports of rejection, and more intense feelings ofalienation and rejection following the rejection.Over the course of five semesters, individualdifferences in RS-race among African Ameri-cans predicted students’ grade point averages(GPAs). This last result in particular illustrateswell how culture is both “in the head” and“out there.” Individuals enact self-protectivemechanisms in response to discrimination,which, at a system level, is maintained by thebroader culture’s subjective culture (e.g., ste-reotypes, system justifications), physical cul-ture (majority-dominated college settings), andnominal settings (unequal opportunities).Rather than being a question about explainingthe phenomenon either through social or per-sonality psychology, this approach shows notonly their inseparability but also the indispens-ability of their interplay for an understandingof the dynamic.

It may be helpful at this point to considera hypothetical scenario in which twoAmericans—one black, one white—scoreequally highly on a measure of neuroticism, butin one case the score is capturing the individ-ual’s concerns surrounding societal discrimina-tion, whereas in the other the score is capturingthe individual’s concern surrounding romanticrelationships. Far from being mere “adapta-tions” (McCrae, 2000), not to be confusedwith dispositions, we argue that it is preciselyby knowing about the trigger features, the out-comes, and the historical context surrounding


the behavior of each person that one begins re-ally to arrive at the cultural psychology under-lying social behavior (Cohen, 1997; Mendoza-Denton et al., 1997). A deep understanding ofpeople’s responses to the particular predica-ment in question depends on cultural back-ground, as well as cognitive-social learninghistory—in one case, a strong historical back-drop of oppression and discrimination(Mendoza-Denton et al., 2002) and in theother, perhaps neglect or abuse in the home(Downey & Feldman, 1996). To draw on anearlier analogy, the only way to distinguish be-tween the two cars is by looking under thehood.

IMPLICATIONS

Assessment Issues

Having provided two illustrations of how theC-CAPS operates, we now turn to a discussionof personality assessment through a cultural-psychological lens. As noted earlier, the currentdominant approach to personality assessmentand comparison across cultures is the globaltrait approach (Triandis & Suh, 2002), whichis both helpful and attractive because it pro-vides a rigorous, methodologically driven ap-proach to assessment. However, as we havenoted, aggregating or ignoring situational vari-ability in behavior necessarily precludes ananalysis of the ways in which personality dy-namics and culture influence one another.

But how should situations be grouped? Thisis the critical question for a viable cultural-psychological approach to personality. As re-viewed earlier, this approach suggests thatrather than looking at nominal situations (e.g.,the marketplace, the university, a social chataround the water cooler) that are of limitedgeneralizability (e.g., see B. B. Whiting &Whiting, 1975), people act on situations thatare psychologically similar (e.g., contexts thatare ripe for social rejection; opportunities inwhich one can advance one’s children’s educa-tion). The distinction between nominal andpsychological situations lies precisely at theheart of a cultural psychology in which theworld outside is interpreted through the lens ofthe culture, and those interpretations are them-selves facilitated through cultural affordances.To the degree that psychological situationalgroupings are culturally specific, it is the taskof the cultural psychologist to uncover those

local meanings and not be lured by outwardappearances. As some of the research summa-rized in this chapter illustrates, personality pro-cesses as they are embedded and expressed intheir cultural context can be captured with var-ious methodologies.

Bottom-Up Approaches

As described earlier, Wright and Mischel(1988) used clustering techniques to identifydifferent types of commonly used situationalmodifiers that the cultural experts in that con-text (the targets’ peers and counselors) used todescribe a particular cultural group. This is anexample of a “bottom-up” strategy, in whichthe researcher recruits “experts” or informantsin a given culture to provide the raw data forsubsequent coding and clustering.

Top-Down Approaches

A second, “top-down” approach to assessmentis one in which the researcher begins with atheory of the internal processing dynamics thatmay characterize a type, and is then able to hy-pothesize the distinctive if . . . then . . . profilefor that type, as well as the psychological trig-ger features that define the profile (e.g.,Downey & Feldman, 1996). A theory about acultural group’s distinctive processing dynam-ics can be derived from careful study about agroup’s history, or the social, environmental,and historical forces that have shaped its peo-ple. An excellent example of this approach isthe careful analysis leading to the culture ofhonor research reviewed earlier. A hybrid ap-proach, containing elements of both a top-down and a bottom-up approach, is seen inMendoza-Denton et al. (2002), who not onlyhypothesized the dynamic of RS-race on thebasis of historical and societal analysis but alsointerviewed people about the specific situationsin which the dynamic would be played out.

Interpreting Cross-Cultural Differencesin Global Traits

Researchers have shown quite convincinglythat there are trait-level differences among cul-tural groups (Triandis & Suh, 2002). Again,the proposed approach is not incompatible:The C-CAPS predicts, and is able to accountfor, both if . . . then . . . patterns and broad dif-ferences between groups. In considering find-


ings that two cultural groups differ—or donot—on a given trait, however, the C-CAPS ap-proach uncovers alternative interpretations toa one-to-one correspondence between the traitand underlying dispositions.

Consider findings from Kammrath et al.(2005, Study 3), who presented people withseveral distinct if . . . then . . . patterns thatwere nevertheless identical in their overall in-terpersonal warmth. For example, one targetwas reliably friendlier toward authority figuresthan to peers, whereas a second target dis-played precisely the opposite pattern. A thirdtarget was not differentially friendly towardauthorities and peers. Participants rated theirimpressions of each target using Goldberg’stransparent, bipolar Big Five scale (Golberg,1992). From a global trait perspective, peopleshould rate all targets equally on Agreeablenessand Extraversion, given that all targets dis-played the same overall level of interpersonalwarmth. The results showed that although rat-ings of Extraversion did not differ across thethree targets, the target that was warm towardauthorities was seen as distinctly disagreeable,whereas the target that was friendly to peerswas rated as quite agreeable (the third targetwas rated in the middle). These findings sug-gest caution in interpreting broad trait dimen-sions as indexes of overall behavior aggregates.In the research described here, the targets didnot actually differ in their overall warmth, de-spite clear differences in perceivers’ ratings oftheir Agreeableness.

A second caution in interpreting trait-levelcultural differences too literally is seen inShoda, Mischel, and Wright (1993), who alsoanalyzed data from the boys’ summer camp de-scribed earlier (Shoda et al., 1994; Wright &Mischel, 1988). For this analysis, the research-ers analyzed the if . . . then . . . profile patternsof those boys who were collectively agreed tobe prototypical exemplars of “friendly,” “with-drawn,” and “aggressive” children. Surpris-ingly, when looking at the children’s physicalaggression, it was not the prototypically “ag-gressive” children who displayed the mostoverall physical aggression—it was the camp-ers labeled as “withdrawn.”. Evidently, eventhough the perceivers used the label “aggres-sive” to describe children and agreed as towhich children could be described this way, thespecific pattern to which the label referred didnot necessarily correspond to the surface-levelbehavior. As another example, consider find-

ings on gender stereotypes by Mendoza-Denton, Park, Kammrath, and Peake (2004).Despite the fact that men are stereotypically la-beled as “assertive” and women as “passive,”Mendoza-Denton et al. found that women arein fact expected to be more assertive than menin certain situations (e.g., those that have to dowith home and hearth). The relevant point isthat perceivers’ labels do not necessarily corre-spond to the surface-level manifestations ofbehavior that the labels suggest.

As these examples suggest, the relationshipbetween the trait terms people use to describeothers and the behavior patterns to which theyrelate is not straightforward. People undeni-ably use traits, and the basic classification ofthese into five categories seems to have solidsupport, but their interpretation as reflectingbiological dispositions of entire cultural groups(e.g., McCrae, 2004) seems premature. Havingidentified through careful, rigorous work thatsome groups of people differ from others in thetraits ascribed to them, the logical next stepseems not to look for genetic differences, butrather to understand cultural variability in thelay theories associated with these traits.

CONCLUSIONS

In the seminal article “Cultural Psychology:What Is It?” Shweder (1990) refers to a song byPaul McCartney and Stevie Wonder, “Ebonyand Ivory,” with the lyric, “We all know thatpeople are the same wherever you go.”Shweder cites this lyric as an example of the in-tuitive lay notion, based on Platonic philoso-phy, of psychic unity—in other words, the ideathat in spite of cultural superficialities, a basichumanity unites all of us (see Triandis, Chapter3, this volume). In current cross-cultural con-ceptualizations, such psychic unity is claimedto be a universal personality trait structure thatgoes above and beyond cultural differences—with the strong claim that, indeed, people arethe same wherever you go. Cultural psychologyhas suggested an alternative path to this ap-proach, rejecting the notion of psychic unityand instead preferring to show that, by virtueof the fact that culture and psyche make eachother up, people are just, irreducibly, not thesame wherever you go.

And yet McCartney and Wonder do seem tohave a fundamental point that cannot be easilydismissed. It stands to reason that, as a species,


there should be a set of characteristics thatunites all of us. Within the C-CAPS framework,the potential candidates for universality are thebasic architecture of the system and its govern-ing principles—availability, accessibility, appli-cability, and organization.

Despite calls not to equate personality exclu-sively with global traits, and warnings aboutthe utility and comparability of broad con-structs across cultures (Bock, 2000; Church,2000; Kashima, 2001; Pervin, 1999), the tacitequation of consistency with “individualbehavior dispositions that are expressed asconsistent behavior across time and across situ-ations” (Poortinga & Van Hemert, 2001,p. 1034) remains, in our reading, the defaultassumption among researchers interested inculture and personality. The cost of this as-sumption for the study of culture and personal-ity is that it bypasses some of the most excitingadvances in current personality science, andobscures opportunities for integration(Church, 2000; Mischel, 2004; Shoda &Mischel, 2000; Shoda et al., 2002; Triandis,2000).

We have proposed here that a processingmodel that can account for person × situationinteractions may be fruitfully applied to under-standing how culture and person are mutuallyconstitutive. This model departs from the clas-sic notion of a bounded, causal entity called a“person” that exerts a unidirectional causal in-fluence on behavior independent of situationalor cultural forces. The framework offers a per-spective that legitimizes cross-situational vari-ability in behavior as the output of a culturallyimbued, dynamic, meaning-making process(see Norenzayan et al., Chapter 23, this vol-ume). It identifies an alternative set of mediat-ing units—and their interrelationships—as theactive ingredients of a cultural personality sys-tem. The cognitive–affective units and contex-tual variables outlined in Figure 7.3 are framedat a broad level, and require specification at thelevel of CAU contents and contextual variablesto be able to offer prediction. In terms of thecontents and cultural manifestations of the C-CAPS, Shweder’s (1991) description could notbe more apt: “The mind, left to its own devices,is mindless” (p. 83).

Thus, rather than itself specifying a set ofpredictions, the C-CAPS framework offers a setof principles that researchers can use to guidetheir theory-building work. Such theory build-ing, as we have reviewed, can occur in both a

top-down or a bottom-up approach, but likelyrequires as a first step intimacy with a culturalgroup, through either observation or the in-sights of cultural informants (see also Cohen,Chapter 8, this volume). We have argued thatinsights in social cognition and personality sci-ence over the past two decades provide a set ofprinciples for research that can lead to a cumu-lative science of culture–personality studies. Afailure to take them into account risks fallingprey to overgeneralizations and untenable ste-reotyping that in the past yielded studies of“national character” (Benedict, 1934) and“modal personality” (DuBois, 1944) that wereultimately untenable (see Triandis, Chapter 3,this volume).

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