Stanford Psychology Podcast 148 - Dorsa Amir: How Culture Shapes Cognition
Feb 27, 2025
In this engaging conversation, Dr. Dorsa Amir, an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University, explores how culture shapes cognition. She introduces a groundbreaking framework with four pathways of cultural influence on cognitive processes. Dorsa discusses the surprising ways cultural contexts affect perception and memory, emphasizing the importance of language and technology. Her unique blend of anthropology and cognitive science sheds light on cognitive adaptability, challenging notions of universal experiences in visual illusions.
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Need for a Framework
- Cultural psychology needs clearer frameworks to unify diverse research.
- A more mechanistic understanding of how culture shapes cognition is needed.
Pathways of Cultural Influence
- Culture can shape cognition through no effect, production, pruning, or privileging.
- Privileging, where culture strengthens certain cognitive pathways without eliminating others, might be the most common.
Cultural Influence on Cognitive Processes
- Low-level cognitive processes, like visual perception, are less susceptible to cultural influence than higher-level processes.
- The costs and benefits of cognitive flexibility determine how culture shapes them.