Social transmission and shared reality in cultural dynamics
Introduction
Culture is a set of available information that is transmitted non-genetically in a human population. The social transmission of cultural information between individuals in situ is central to cultural dynamics — the formation, maintenance, and transformation of culture over time. Interpersonal communication, as a type of cultural transmission, is critical for the establishment of shared reality. In this paper, we will spell out the ways in which shared reality is implicated in cultural transmission and therefore in cultural dynamics.
Cultural transmission is composed of four subprocesses: production, grounding, interpretation, and memory. Individuals produce a communicable representation of cultural information, ground it to the common ground (i.e., add it to the information actually, and perceived to be, shared with their interaction partners), interpret the grounded information (i.e., transform it into a mental representation), and commit it to memory for future use [1]. Of these, grounding establishes mutuality. It occurs when the sender and receiver both recognize that their understanding of the communicated information is sufficiently similar to carry out their joint activity in the context [2, 3].
We argue that shared reality affects cultural transmission by changing the way in which grounded information is interpreted. Specifically, in the presence of shared reality, this information is tagged as socially verified ‘fact’ (Figure 1). Importantly, socially verified information is more likely to spread through social networks (Figure 2). In this way, shared reality links cultural transmission to macro-level cultural diffusion. In this article, we will first review relevant literature to flesh out these propositions and supportive evidence, and then examine the role of emotion in this process.
Section snippets
Grounding and shared reality in dyadic context
When cultural information is grounded in a dyadic context, the sender and receiver accept the grounded information for the purpose of their interaction in the current context. At this point, the information is not necessarily taken to be a verified ‘fact’ that is generally applicable to everyone under all circumstances. However, if the sender and receiver achieve a shared psychological response to the information and mutually recognize this as fulfilling either epistemic motives (i.e., to find
Cultural transmission beyond dyad
Once cultural information is grounded and interpreted as the dyad's shared reality, the cultural information is regarded as a fact that applies to everyone under all circumstances. One of the consequences is that the cultural information can then be further disseminated, diffusing through social networks in the broader community and population (Figure 2). Different experimental paradigms can simulate the diffusion of cultural information through social networks with different structural
Collective common ground, collective shared reality, and cultural dynamics
If cultural information spreads beyond dyads (mass media and other communication channels can play a significant role here) and its members have a mutual sense of shared reality about it within the population (collective shared reality), this information enters into the collective common ground (i.e., information that people in a population take for granted as shared within the population). Information that is congruent with the common ground tends to be preferentially selected for further
Emotion in cultural transmission and shared reality
There is growing evidence that emotion plays a significant role in cultural dynamics. In particular, emotional representations — those relating to potential threats or opportunities in the environment [32, 33] — are especially likely to characterize the collective common ground. This is because when people experience an emotional response to an event, they are highly likely to talk about this event, thereby establishing the mutuality of their emotional reaction with others and, thus, a shared
Conclusion
Shared reality processes provide a critical link in connecting micro-level cultural transmission to macro-level diffusion of cultural information, and therefore formation, maintenance, and transformation of the distribution of cultural information in a population. We suggest that shared reality acts as a cognitive tag, signifying that the transmitted and grounded cultural information has been socially verified as a ‘fact’ and therefore is applicable in the future to others under other
Conflict of interest statement
Nothing declared.
References and recommended reading
Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as:
• of special interest
•• of outstanding interest
Acknowledgement
Preparation for this manuscript was facilitated by grants from the Australian Research Council (DP160102226 and DP160102231) to YK.
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