Rethinking Culture and Cognition

Abstract

Paul DiMaggio's (1997) Annual Review of Sociology article urged integration of the cognitive and the cultural, triggering a cognitive turn in cultural sociology. Since then, a burgeoning literature in cultural sociology has incorporated ideas from the cognitive sciences—cognitive anthropology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience and philosophy—significantly reshaping sociologists’ approach to culture, both theoretically and methodologically. This article reviews work published since DiMaggio's agenda-setting piece—research that builds on cross-disciplinary links between cultural sociology and the cognitive sciences. These works present new ideas on the acquisition, storage, and retrieval of culture, on how forms of personal culture interact, on how culture becomes shared, and on how social interaction and cultural environments inform cognitive processes. Within our discussion, we point to research questions that remain unsettled. We then conclude with issues for future research in culture and cognition that can enrich sociological analysis about action more generally.

Dueling with Dual-Process Models: Cognition, Creativity, and Context

“…First, the binary classification of contexts as broadly “settled” or “problematic” is too coarse-grained to capture the range of contexts in which cognition and action occur, and the tension and dynamic interplay between them is more analytically meaningful than sociologists engaging with dual-process models have recognized (Brekhus 2015; Luft 2020; Shaw 2015, 2021; Vaisey 2014). Summarizing the past decade of dual-process research in sociology, Cerulo and colleagues (2021:71) note that uncertain and disorganized contexts trigger deliberate cognition, whereas routine and organized contexts encourage automatic processing. This summation clearly signals the lack of theoretical consideration or empirical investigation of cases or contexts in which these move back and forth or occur simultaneously.…”

“…Dual-process models of cognition, which distinguish cognitive processes that execute autonomously from those that require controlled attention (see Evans and Stanovich 2013), hold notable affinities with the practice theories of Bourdieu (1977, 1990) and Giddens (1984) and the account of action within American Pragmatism (e.g., Dewey [1922] 2002), making the growing popularity of these models within sociology unsurprising (Leschziner 2019; Lizardo et al 2016; Moore 2017). Initially imported into sociology by DiMaggio (1997) and popularized by Vaisey’s (2009) “sociological dual-process model” (Vila-Henninger 2015:240), dual-process models have become essential to discussions about how culture shapes action (see Cerulo, Leschziner, and Shepherd 2021:74–77; Lizardo 2017; Miles 2015). Although much of this work provides a general model emphasizing the role of automatic cognition and dispositional action (Miles 2015; Srivastava and Banajia 2011; Vaisey 2009; Vaisey and Lizardo 2010), sociologists have used dual-process models to analyze a variety of sociocultural contexts and in so doing have developed fuller, more complex accounts of how context, cognition, and action interrelate (see Cerulo 2018; Leschziner and Brett 2019; Leschziner and Green 2013; Luft 2020; McDonnell 2014; Pagis and Summers-Effler 2021; Winchester 2016).…”

Postdiction in Visual Awareness and Intrinsic Religiosity

“…The question arises as to why in some individuals postdiction is tied to delusional thoughts, while in others, it is confined to intrinsic religiosity. The answer might come from cultural symbols interacting with cognitive representational systems, which are crucial in social‐cognitive development (Cerulo, Leschziner, & Shepherd, 2021 ). From our perspective, it is notable that our participants came from a highly religious milieu and regularly pursued their faith in congregations and churches.…”

Two traditions of cognitive sociology: An analysis and assessment of their cognitive and methodological assumptions

“…, 2021 more recent articles as well as in many other theoretical and empirical contributions of the advocates of IT (e.g. Cerulo, 2018Cerulo, , 2019Cerulo et al, 2021;Leschziner & Brett, 2019;Rotolo, 2021;Winchester, 2016). For example, Ignatow (2009) combined qualitative and quantitative methods in order to study embodied metaphors used in on-line moral discourses in secular and religious internet support groups for overeaters.…”

“…Ignatow, 2007;Rotolo, 2021;Winchester, 2016) assume that groups of individuals have acquired or internalized the same implicit cultural schemas and embodied metaphors through social learning during their cognitive development. However, these authors have not provided detailed models about cognitive and developmental mechanisms operating in these social learning processes (however, see Lizardo, 2017Lizardo, , 2021Cerulo et al, 2021). This is a serious problem since for example Turner (1994Turner ( , 2002 has criticized practice theories in the social sciences for their postulation of the implicitly learned cognitive dispositions, presuppositions, schemas and frameworks shared by groups of people, while failing to specify any plausible and reliable cognitive mechanism through which their implicit social learning or transmission could happen.…”