On Metacognition and Culture

Metacognitive experiences have an important impact on judgment and decision-making. How difficult information is to process, for example, influences liking (Reber, Winkielman, and Schwarz, 1998), perceived distance (Alter and Oppenheimer, 2008), perceived uniqueness (Pocheptsova, Labroo, and Dhar, 2010), and frequency estimates (Tversky and Kahneman, 1973). Based on existing research, one might assume metacognitive effects are universal. But could they differ by culture? We suggest this possibility based on the notion that metacognitive effects on judgment are largely inference-based (Schwarz 2004) and that there are cultural differences in the lay theories that give rise to such inferences (Markus and Kitayama, 2003). What people infer from meta cognitive experiences depends on their lay theory regarding what makes information easy or difficult to process in a particular situation (Winkielman and Schwarz, 2001). Given culture’s ability to shape people’s lay theories in general (Briley, Morris, and Simonson 2010), it should also impact the inferences people draw from meta cognitive experiences. Consider the act of choice. A European-American cultural context is characterized by independent self-construal and a disjoint model of agency, where people see choice as reflecting or corresponding to the inner-self (Markus and Kitayama, 2003). An Indian cultural context, however, is characterized by interdependent self construal and a conjoint model of agency, in which,, choice is seen less as self-expression and more as reflecting contextual influences such as social roles (Kim and Drolet, 2003; Kim and Markus, 1999; Savani, Markus, and Conner 2008). Building on these two streams of research, we suggest the inferences people draw from the cognitive experience of choice difficulty should depend on cultural differences in self-construal and related models of agency.