title: Probing the Cultural Constitution of Causal Cognition - A Research Program.
abstract: To what extent is the way people perceive, represent, and reason about causal relationships dependent on culture? While there have been sporadic attempts to explore this question, a systematic investigation is still lacking. Here, we propose that human causal cognition is not only superficially affected by cultural background, but that it is co-constituted by the cultural nature of the human species. To this end, we take stock of on-going research, with a particular focus on the methodological approaches taken: cross-species comparisons, archeological accounts, developmental studies, cross-cultural, and cross-linguistic experiments, as well as in-depth within-culture analyses of cognitive concepts, processes, and changes over time. We argue that only a combination of these approaches will allow us to integrate different components of cognition, levels of analysis, and points of view-the key requirements for a comprehensive, interdisciplinary research program to advance this field.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychosocial Science, Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen Bergen, Norway.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bender
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychosocial Science, Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen Bergen, Norway.
authors.forename: Sieghard
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Beller
keywords: causal cognition; culture; interdisciplinary approach; language; methods