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This article explores the consequences of failure to communicate early, as recommended in risk communication scholarship, during the first stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia and the United Kingdom. We begin by observing that the principles of risk communication are regarded as basic best practices rather than as moral rules. We argue firstly, that they nonetheless encapsulate value commitments, and secondly, that these values should more explicitly underpin communication practices in a pandemic. Our focus is to explore the values associated with the principle of communicating early and often and how use of this principle can signal respect for people's self-determination whilst also conveying other values relevant to the circumstances. We suggest that doing this requires communication that explicitly acknowledges and addresses with empathy those who will be most directly impacted by any disease-control measures. We suggest further that communication in a pandemic should be more explicit about how values are expressed in response strategies and that doing so may improve the appraisal of new information as it becomes available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The purpose of this study is to test whether groups with different cultural cognition orientations construct different stories about the same policy issue given the same information. We employed a focus group methodology to assemble participants with similar cultural dispositions and used the Narrative Policy Framework to examine the policy narratives that groups form about campaign finance. Our analyses indicate that the stories these homogeneous cultural groups tell associate political process concerns related to campaign finance to their core cultural values. Even when provided with the same information, the stories that the groups produced varied along theoretically consistent cultural dimensions. Our findings show the narrative cores displayed similar attribution of the problem to intentional human action; however we observed variation in the manner in which certain characters were assigned blame, and significant differences in the density of several of the narrative networks. We found that differences in presence of victims emerged along the grid dimension of cultural cognition with egalitarian narratives cores possessing victims, whereas hierarchist narratives did not. A difference that emerged along the group dimension of cultural cognition was the core narrative of individualist groups generated policy solutions, while communitarian narrative cores did not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims at investigating how similar and different the embodied cognition of Turkish and English speakers is by providing a systematic description of Turkish and English white colour idiomatic expressions and by analyzing them within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory through which the cognitive motivations behind the idiomatic expressions can be demonstrated. In order to do so, a large-scale corpus study based on specialized dictionaries on idioms in Turkish and English was carried out and a table was presented for each language illustrating the idiomatic expression, its meaning, its translation for the Turkish part, and the underlying conceptual metaphor or metonymy. After this cognitive analysis, it was revealed that despite some similarities in the cognitive mappings of the idioms in Turkish and English, the connotations of white colour idioms in two genetically unrelated languages vary because of cultural, historical, religious, or customary matters.

In this article, I draw on my experience as an environmental social scientist and narrative nonfiction writer conducting research in working class conservative agricultural communities that frequently challenge or reject science communication. Based on my own trial-and-error path as a public intellectual committed to advancing sustainable agriculture, I present a method that I've developed to promote broader and more diverse public dialogue about environmental problem solving. Acknowledging that people interpret the world through socially-reinforced cultural cognition and pre-existing cognitive frames—and also that humans are social animals who thrive in groups I propose that frames can be the science communicator's friend. I have yet to find a community that does not have some connection to ancestral or local knowledge about community interdependence and the importance of being a good neighbor. Indeed, I often find that these “neighborliness” frames are at the very core of people's cultural cognition. Such neighborliness frames, in turn, provide a strong foundation for environmental consciousness. Thus, by being curious about a community's unique history with and knowledge about neighborliness, science communicators can help to build up frames necessary for environmental actions, while also helping cultivate broader understandings of the “neighborhood” within which communities' values and worldviews demand action.

Research suggests that cultural worldviews bias how and what people think about various societal risks. But how does this mechanism manifest when people receive balanced information about a highly publicised health issue such as cigarette smoking? Using the cultural cognition worldview scales, we demonstrate that despite the considerable interventions post the 1964 landmark Surgeon General's Report, young adults in the U.S. still perceive smoking risks in ways that affirm their cultural worldviews along two dimensions: egalitarianism-hierarchism and individualism-communitarianism. Those who subscribe to hierarchical and individualistic worldviews were more dismissive of the risks associated with cigarette smoking and exposure, while egalitarians and communitarians associated smoking with higher risks. We observed an interaction between the two worldview dimensions. Besides, exposed to balanced information – as is often the case in media coverage based on the journalistic norm of balance – about the risks and benefits of smoking, those who are concurrently hierarchical and individualistic in their outlook assimilated information about benefits while discounting the dangers of smoking. Egalitarian communitarians (on the other end of the continuum) discounted the benefits information vis-à-vis the risk information. Thus, culturally-biased cognition of risk perception does not only apply to novel and abstract risks but also highly publicised ones. Communication and public policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes how elementary-aged children engaged in a world cultures unit showed positive development related to intercultural competence as exhibited through connected global education aims. Twenty-five third graders participated in the integrated social studies and literacy curriculum for 11 weeks. Prior to the intervention, students had little knowledge of or experience with other cultures, resulting in distorted, stereotypical conceptions. Subsequent to experiencing the curriculum, many students exhibited positive development in intercultural competence as demonstrated through global education aims, ranging from an understanding of internal culture to nascent open-mindedness and a resistance to stereotyping. The findings demonstrate that young children are capable of engaging with complex ideas surrounding cultures and can achieve aims for intercultural competence—albeit to varying degrees—if engaged in a theoretically based, developmentally appropriate curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proponents of deliberative democracy believe deliberation provides the best chance of finding effective and legitimate climate policies. However, in many societies there is substantial evidence of biased cognition and polarisation about climate change. Further, many appear unable to distinguish reliable scientific information from false claims or misinformation. While deliberation significantly reduces polarisation about climate change, and can even increase the provision of reliable beliefs, these benefits are difficult to scale up, and are slow to affect whole societies. In response, I propose a combined strategy of 'thinking and nudging'. While deliberative theorists tend to view nudging askance, combining deliberation with nudges promises to be a timelier and more effective response to climate change than deliberation alone. I outline several proposals to improve societal deliberative capacity while reducing climate risks, including media reform, strategic communication and framing of debates, incentivising pro-climate behaviour change, and better education about science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When India was a British colony, there existed a total different ideology about being an Indian. So, it's important to re-examine the dynamics of feelings of individuals who were once segregated on the grounds of different caste, class, religions, etc. during earlier times, to the individuals of now. How integrated or secluded do they feel even after our constitution gives each one several rights. Qualitative research was carried out alongside an unstructured interview among majority and minority groups through purposive sampling of their religion. Then content analysis was done among the reviews of now and those of the earlier times. Sample size included 60 people who belong to different religious communities. Findings suggest, minorities and Hindus felt somewhat more integrated in Indian culture. Although, some had different views. It was the British's and other Bhartiya dynasties contributions which united India together. Now, India is divided through caste, religion, atrocities on regional antagonism, cultural inflight with the issue of reservation in public services. Still, the approach of unity in diversity is keeping Indians united to an extent. Thus, it can be implied that people have different perception about the way experiences occur in their lives. Based on it, they make certain ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brexit, i.e. the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU), is a major event not only in European but also in global politics. Its effect is still to be witnessed and its future impact is debated from a variety of angles – social, economic, cultural, ethnic, religious, etc. The present paper offers a cognitive linguistic perspective on the phenomenon. It aims to investigate the conceptual metaphorization of Brexit on the first days after the 2016 referendum. That period seems of special importance as, arguably, it was then that for many UK citizens, Brexit suddenly became part of reality and not just a hypothetical possibility. The paper presents data on the dynamics of employing different source domains on each of the first 4 days after the referendum. The main objective is to isolate regularities and tendencies in how the selected culturally-significant source domains help structure the concept. The analysis of the dataset of English-language EU online media texts appearing on the first 4 post-referendum days reveals that the most prominent source domains in the metaphoric conceptualization of brexit are divorce, a natural disaster and part of a journey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrating climate change into environmental education programs and formal science classrooms can be difficult, as the issue remains controversial and highly politicized among the American public. This study proposes that the same cultural values that shape worldview differences and divide public opinion on anthropogenic climate change will influence if and how science educators support education on the topic. An online survey with quantitative and qualitative measures was distributed among science educators in the southeastern United States to test what, if any, impact cultural cognition has on their opinions about climate change education. The results suggest that respondents' cultural values have a significant influence on their intentions to support climate change education and preferences for curricula content. The findings also suggest potential avenues for the field of environmental education to develop climate change materials that may help decrease unintentional biases among science educators and more effectively engage their support in teaching its causes and potential solutions regardless of worldview differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consensus messaging is a climate change communication strategy emphasizing the fact of scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Its proponents encourage scientists, journalists, and educators to transmit consensus messages in hopes of improving public climate literacy. Critics of this approach question its methodology for determining consensus and its effectiveness as a strategy for improving public understanding and policymaking. I review these debates to determine what is at stake in disagreements over consensus messaging and suggest that issues of climate change danger are addressed too narrowly when the expectations, style and categories of consensus messaging are dominant. I recommend that “migration-first” approaches displace the priority of “skeptic-first” approaches to climate change communication, and that scholars begin asking what is owed to those most affected by climate change danger.

According to cultural cognition theory, individuals hold opinions about politically contested issues like climate change that are consistent with their “cultural way of life,” conforming their opinions to how they think society should be organized and to what they perceive are the attitudes of their cultural peers. Yet despite dozens of cultural cognition studies, none have directly examined the role of the news media in facilitating these differential interpretations. To address this gap, drawing on a national survey of US adults administered in 2015, we statistically modeled the cultural cognition process in relation to news choices and media effects on public attitudes about climate change. Individuals possessing strongly held cultural worldviews, our findings show, not only choose news outlets where they expect to find culturally congruent arguments about climate change, but they also selectively process the arguments they encounter. Overall, our study demonstrates the substantial role that cultural cognition in combination with news media choices play in contributing to opinion polarization on climate change and other politicized science topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sample of 2232 committed churchgoers from a range of churches in the UK completed a questionnaire that included a measure of rejection of Darwinian evolution. Respondents with undergraduate or postgraduate qualifications had slightly lower odds of rejecting evolution than those without degrees, but whether qualifications were in non-biological science, biology or theology made little difference to the likelihood of rejection. Those who attended Anglican or Methodist (AM) churches were much less likely to reject evolution than those who attended Evangelical or Pentecostal (EP) churches, but the effect of education on reducing rejection was similar in both groups. Individual theological conservatism was strongly associated with rejection, but whereas liberals showed declining rejection with increased education, there was no such effect for conservatives. Frequent church attendance and Bible reading both predicted rejection, and the effect of Bible reading was most pronounced among AM churchgoers. Higher education of any kind may reduce the likelihood of rejection of evolution among many UK churchgoers, but theological conservatives from any tradition will tend to maintain their belief that Darwinian evolution does not explain the origin of species whatever their educational experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article attempts to connect literatures from the Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) model and cultural cognition theory. We do this by assessing the relationship between the two prominent cultural cognition variables (i.e., group and grid) and risk perceptions. We then examine whether these risk perceptions are associated with three outcomes important to the RISP model: information seeking, systematic processing, and heuristic processing, through a serial mediation model. We used 2015 data collected from 10 communities across the United States to test our hypotheses. Our results show that people high on group and low on grid (egalitarian communitarians) show greater risk perceptions regarding water quality issues. Moreover, these higher levels of perceived risk translate into increased information seeking, systematic processing of information, and lower heuristic processing through intervening variables from the RISP model (e.g., negative emotions and information insufficiency). These results extend the extant literature by expanding on the treatment of political ideology within the RISP model literature and taking a more nuanced approach to political beliefs in accordance with the cultural cognitions literature. Our article also expands on the RISP literature by looking at information‐processing variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graffiti can be viewed as stories about embodied identities of the self and others which can be shared in intersubjective discourse, visual communication of varying content and motives, and utilizing specific technology and mediums. Graffiti's palimpestuous nature, in its physical and symbolic forms of layering information, is present in production and perceiving graffiti. A creator and a reader of graffiti are both palimpsesting the work, acting as narrators of their own mental sheets. The concept of graffiti as a palimpsest can be exemplified for example in graffiti art where the interpretation of a work of art depends on the properties of the work, the perceiver and the social and institutional agreements. How graffiti are interpreted is informed by perceiving individuals' characters, such as knowledge and skills, as well as the cultural and sociohistorical context where these individuals are immersed and act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnocentrism, it is said, involves believing certain things to be true: that one's culture is superior to others, more deserving of respect, or at the ‘centre’ of things. On the alternative view defended in this article, ethnocentrism is a type of bias, not a set of beliefs. If this is correct, it challenges conventional wisdom about the scope, danger, and avoidance of ethnocentrism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This exploratory research seeks to investigate the risk perception of Turkish citizen's vis-à-vis Syrian refugees, utilising cultural cognition as a theoretical sounding board. Delimited to the city of Izmir, the aims of this research were to ascertain what perceived risks Syrian refugees pose onto Turkish society, how these perceptions relate to worldview adherences amongst Turkish citizens, and what psychological processes may explain the development of such perceptions. Employing a mixed-methods approach, triangulation of both news article and focus group content analyses identified five commonly perceived risks relating to Syrian refugee entry into Turkey: employment, inflow, social, political and security. This information informed the design of a survey instrument, of which was used to compare worldview adherences to perceptions of said risks and demographic characteristics. For two of the five risks, results showed that egalitarians perceived the refugees as a higher risk than those with hierarchist identities. It was also found that individuals with higher levels of education and employment were more likely to perceive Syrian refugees as a risk to Turkish society. As a starting point to explore the development of such perceptions of risk, the processes of identity-protective cognition, reactive devaluation, self-censorship, and optimism bias were used to tentatively explicate the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public support for environmental policy provides an important foundation for democratic governance. Numerous policy innovations may improve nonpoint source pollution, but little research has examined which types of individuals are likely to support various runoff reduction policies. We conducted a household mail survey of 1136 residents in southern Wisconsin. In general, residents were more likely to support water quality policies if they were communitarians, egalitarians, concerned about water pollution, and perceived water quality as poor. The majority of respondents somewhat to strongly supported all of the seven proposed water quality policies, but opposed relying on voluntary action without government involvement on farms. Residents had higher support for incentives and market-based approaches (carrot policies) than regulation and taxes (stick policies). A more complicated pattern emerged in within-subject comparisons of residents’ views of carrot and stick approaches. Stick approaches polarized respondents by decreasing support among people with individualistic worldviews, while slightly increasing support among people with communitarian worldviews. Residents with an agricultural occupation were more likely to support voluntary, non-governmental approaches for reducing agricultural runoff, and were also more likely to support regulation for reducing urban lawn runoff. This research highlights the dominant role of cultural worldviews and the secondary roles of water pollution concern, perceived water quality, and self-interest in explaining support for diverse policies to reduce nonpoint source pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper approaches Irish English from a cultural linguistic perspective. It illustrates how the study of cultural schemas, cultural categories, cultural conceptualisations, and conceptual metaphors/metonymies can contribute to the understanding of Irish English as a variety of English whose speech community shares a unique cultural cognition, which is instantiated in linguistic patterns that appear to be 'marked' for everybody from outside of Ireland. Drawing from two corpora (ICE-Ireland, Corpus of Galway City Spoken English) as well as from ethnographic research (Wentz 1911; National Folklore Collection 1939/2017), the paper discusses possible cultural keywords of Irish English, cultural schemas involving banshees and fairies as well as conceptual metonymies such as the church is authority, all of which can be understood to express particular Irish cultural experiences. The paper also illustrates how cultural conceptualisations are constantly being negotiated and renegotiated through time and across generations within the Irish English speech community. The paper illustrates the applicability of the cultural linguistic paradigm to the study of Irish English, offering a new perspective on a well-studied variety of English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of locus of control orientation on natural disaster insurance adoption among private homeowners in Accra, Ghana. Derived from social learning theory, the locus of control construct can be used to distinguish between individuals by the degree to which they believe they control their own destiny. At one end of the continuum are those with an external locus of control, who believe that luck, chance, fate, or powerful others determine what happens to them. At the other end are those with an internal locus of control, who believe that they can influence what happens to them. This study tests the hypothesis that homeowners with an internal locus of control orientation are more likely to purchase natural disaster insurance than those with an external locus of control. To this end, insured and uninsured homeowners in Accra completed the Internal Control Index (ICI), which measures beliefs regarding control outcomes. The results suggest that more internally oriented homeowners are more likely to be insured against extreme natural events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural psychologists have shown that people from Western countries exhibit more independent self-construal and analytic (rule-based) cognition than people from East Asia, who exhibit more interdependent self-construal and holistic (relationship-based) cognition. One explanation for this cross-cultural variation is the ecocultural hypothesis, which links contemporary psychological differences to ancestral differences in subsistence and societal cohesion: Western thinking formed in response to solitary herding, which fostered independence, while East Asian thinking emerged in response to communal rice farming, which fostered interdependence. Here, we report two experiments that tested the ecocultural hypothesis in the laboratory. In both, participants played one of two tasks designed to recreate the key factors of working alone and working together. Before and after each task, participants completed psychological measures of independent–interdependent self-construal and analytic–holistic cognition. We found no convincing evidence that either solitary or collective tasks affected any of the measures in the predicted directions. This fails to support the ecocultural hypothesis. However, it may also be that our priming tasks are inappropriate or inadequate for simulating subsistence-related behavioural practices, or that these measures are fixed early in development and therefore not experimentally primable, despite many previous studies that have purported to find such priming effects.

Ethnoichthyology is a branch of ethnobiology that explores the relationships between humans and fish, including local ecological knowledge about ichtyofauna, capture processes and utilization of the catches. Because of the current bushmeat trade crisis, the aquatic resources in the Congo Basin rainforest are increasingly viewed has promising alternate resources and have recently drawn the attention of conservation and development agencies. Yet, more attention should be given to the social context of fishing and to the cultural values locally attributed to fish. This paper describes some aspects of the ethnoichthyology of the Bakwele, a group of shifting cultivators of southeastern Cameroon. While focusing on the local ecological knowledge and the medicinal uses of fish by the Bakwele, the paper aims to emphasize the ecological and sociocultural interactions that form the basis of their art of fishing.

The prohibition against targeting noncombatants is a long-held commitment in both Muslim and Western military ethics. Nevertheless, some militant Muslim groups, and particularly the Islamic State, have created ever-widening space for attacking those traditionally considered immune from targeting in military operations. Our essay uses two theoretical apparatuses developed in social psychology—cultural cognition and moral foundations theory—to explain how certain aspects of post-9/11 tactics on the part of the United States and its allies have contributed to this phenomenon. We also use these same tools to show that similar dynamics work to contribute to the rightwing backlash against Muslims in the United States.

This article examines the 'AdjEM+PP' construction in the English-Italian language pair (e.g., angry at my audacity/arrabbiato per la mia audacia) with the aim of identifying the kinaesthetic embodied schemas that motivate the language of emotions. The analysis of corpus data highlights the interplay between culture and mind, and the cross-linguistic comparison offers some interesting observations that appear to undermine some stereotypes about the way in which emotions are conceived of in the two cultures. Comparative semantics foregrounds the non-diagrammatic rendition in the translation of emotion language and allows for typological hypotheses about cultural cognition and the connection between Talmy's dichotomy of manner-framed and path-framed languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper1 is to discuss the linguistic and conceptual devices employed for the expression of the emotion of pride in English and Greek culture. The focus will be (a) on the way the emotion of pride is conceptualized in the two cultures, (b) on the way it is expressed, not only in terms of lexical entities but also in terms of expressions in which the two cognitive processes, metaphor and metonymy, feature, and moreover, how the interplay between them is realized, and (c) on the role of the emotion of pride in the English and Greek cultural framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a remedy for a defect in existing accounts of public risk perceptions. The accounts in question feature two dynamics: the affect heuristic, which emphasizes the impact of visceral feelings on information processing; and the cultural cognition thesis, which describes the tendency of individuals to form beliefs that reflect and reinforce their group commitments. The defect is the failure of these two dynamics, when combined, to explain the peculiar selectivity of public risk controversies: despite their intensity and disruptiveness, such controversies occur less frequently than the affect heuristic and the cultural cognition thesis seem to predict. To account for this aspect of public risk perceptions, the paper describes a model that adds the phenomenon of culturally antagonistic memes – argumentative tropes that fuse positions on risk with contested visions of the best life. Arising adventitiously, antagonistic memes transform affect and cultural cognition from consensus-generating, truth-convergent influences on information processing into conflictual, identity-protective ones. The paper supports this model with experimental results involving perceptions of the risk of the Zika virus: a general sample of US subjects, whose cultural orientations were measured with the Cultural Cognition Worldview Scales, formed polarized affective reactions when exposed to information that was pervaded with antagonistic memes linking Zika to global warming; when exposed to comparable information linking Zika to unlawful immigration, the opposing affective stances of the subjects flipped in direction. Normative and prescriptive implications of these results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the websites of two religious organizations representing opposing sides of the religious response toward environmentalism and climate change. This research seeks to understand how each side communicates with followers. Using rhetorical framing analysis, it is shown the religious right advocates a dominion stance and uses a romance genre filled with stories, contrast, spin, appeals to logic, and rhetoric of hope and fear. The religious left advocates a stewardship stance and uses a romance genre filled with stories, appeals to logic, and rhetoric of hope. Cultural cognition theory of risk perception reveals each side subscribes to opposing cultural worldviews of an ideal society. The hermeneutical analysis suggests that the debate is not a conflict over the science of climate change but instead is a conflict over cultural worldviews of an ideal society. This manuscript offers suggestions for macromarketing in confronting the conflicting views exhibited in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores what cultural cognition of 'marriage' is metaphorically conceptualized in Indonesian expressions. This paper has two questions. Firstly, what cultural cognitions of 'marriage' are encoded in the use of metaphorical expressions in Indonesian? Secondly, how such cultural cognition of 'marriage' is metaphorically conceptualized in Indonesian expressions? The analysis and discussion of this exploration basically follow (i) the principles of embodiment in Cognitive Linguistics and (ii) the logic of cultural conceptualization in Cultural Linguistics. Both serve as the primary bases to analyze the problem of the study. The paper is expected to contribute to the present linguistic study in two-fold benefits. Firstly, it presents the discussion of the cultural cognitions of marriage represented in Indonesian metaphorical expressions. Secondly, it discusses the methodological issues of (i) how to understand the relation between culture and language and (ii) how to uncover any cultural representations in linguistic metaphors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]