Advances in Experimental Social Psychology

A growing body of literature has documented cultural differences in cognitive processes and also proposed various factors underlying these cultural differences. At the same time, not much attention has been paid to proximal-level processes that connect distal-level societal factors to individuals’ cognitive processing. This chapter aims to present a framework to integrate factors at multiple levels to understand cultural influences on cognitive processes. The chapter begins by providing an overview of cultural differences in cognitive processes, including potential moderators of cultural differences. Next, factors underlying cultural differences at multiple levels are outlined, with a focus on proximal-level situational processes. Subsequently, by introducing the case of Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 47 # 2013 Elsevier Inc. ISSN 0065-2601 All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-407236-7.00003-6 131 culturally contingent consequences of power, the chapter illustrates how cultural contexts canmoderate the effect of a certain factor on cognitive processes, highlighting the importance of multilevel analyses. Implications of multilevel analyses and directions for future research are discussed at the end. Studies on cross-cultural differences in cognitive processes have been rapidly accumulating over the past decade (Nisbett, 2003; Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005; Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001). These studies have demonstrated cultural differences across a wide range of cognitive processes, including processes which used to be considered universal. For example, although studies done in Western cultural contexts have repeatedly shown a robust tendency for people to overestimate internal causes and underestimate external causes of behavior (i.e., the fundamental attribution error; Ross, 1977), such a tendency has been found to be attenuated or nonexistent in Asian cultural contexts (e.g., Miller, 1984). Demonstrations of cultural differences in cognitive processes highlight the crucial role that sociocultural contexts play in shaping the nature and function of cognitive processes. As is often the case in social psychological research (Zanna & Fazio, 1982), however, questions guiding cross-cultural research have evolved over the past decades (Heine & Norenzayan, 2006). First-generation questions asked “Is there a cultural difference?” and these led to the accumulation of evidence showing cultural differences in cognitive processes, such as the studies that showed cultural differences in the fundamental attribution error. Second-generation questions built on findings of cultural differences and probed, “When is there such an effect?” (i.e., under what conditions) or “How does the effect occur?” (i.e., through what processes does culture shape psychological experience). For example, researchers who asked the second-generation questions have shown how cultural differences in attribution depend on moderating conditions, such as situational salience (e.g., Choi & Nisbett, 1998), and how the way people view the self can shape their cognitive processes (e.g., Kühnen & Oyserman, 2002). At the same time, even though “when” and “how” questions are closely related to each other, they have rarely been asked simultaneously. While too much emphasis on “when” questions can lead to a relatively dispersed understanding, exclusive focus on “how” questions can reduce the rich sociocultural phenomena too much (Zanna & Fazio, 1982). To integrate “when” and “how” questions into a single framework, this chapter proposes the importance of taking into account factors at multiple levels to understand 132 Yuri Miyamoto