▶ Date: 2023. 11. 23(THU)

▶ Time: 4:30 ~ 5:30PM

▶ Venue: Research Building I, #310

▶ Speaker: Prof. Ji Hye Kim(Sogang University)

▶ Title: Exploring Shared Beliefs and their Implications for Social Issues

▶ Abstract:

What is culture? How can we better measure it? In quantitative cross-cultural research, scholars often use surveys to capture how culture gets internalized into human cognition, and what is widely shared within a society. Such practice presumes that members of a particular country are homogeneous in terms of their belief systems (e.g., South Koreans as collectivists). However, not everybody in society shares the same belief structures, which emphasizes the need for better measurement to accurately examine beliefs. In this talk, I propose an analytic strategy based on cultural cognitive sociology, which uncovers several, previously hidden belief patterns without presupposing group-based differences. Focusing on widely used measurement of personal values (e.g., power, tradition, benevolence, self-direction), I analyze both ‘explicit’ belief responses from conventional surveys and ‘implicit’ responses from online psychological experiments. Findings show heterogeneous cultural logics shared by South Koreans, which highlight the similarities and differences between explicit and implicit beliefs, capturing culture internalized into two cognitive modes. Also, I discuss Korean findings in comparison with the US case, exploring their implications for cross-cultural research and enhancing our understanding of social issues.