Elsevier

Current Opinion in Psychology

Volume 23, October 2018, Pages 15-19
Current Opinion in Psychology

Social transmission and shared reality in cultural dynamics

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.10.004Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Clarifies the role of shared reality within the process of social transmission of cultural information in cultural dynamics.

  • Reviews the research on shared reality process in dyadic cultural transmission.

  • Reviews the research on the role of shared reality process in cultural transmission in social networks.

  • Highlights the importance of emotion in shared reality and cultural dynamics.

Micro cultural dynamics are concerned with the mechanisms of transmission, retention, and modification of cultural information in social networks. When interacting individuals mutually recognize that they share psychological reactions to given cultural information, it may be grounded as an aspect of their shared reality under specifiable conditions. The interpretation of cultural information as socially verified shared reality provides a basis for further dissemination of the information and coordinated social action. We review the recent literature that supports this general contention, while highlighting the role of emotion  a somewhat under-recognized aspect of shared reality research  and emphasizing the mediating role of cultural dynamics in the mutual constitution of social reality and shared reality.

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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