Data from: Experimental priming of independent and interdependent activity does not affect culturally-variable psychological processes

Cultural psychologists have shown that people from Western countries exhibit more independent self-construal and analytic (rule-based) cognition than people from East Asia, who exhibit more interdependent self-construal and holistic (relationship-based) cognition. One explanation for this cross-cultural variation is the ecocultural hypothesis, which links contemporary psychological differences to ancestral differences in subsistence and societal cohesion: Western thinking formed in response to solitary herding, which fostered independence, while East Asian thinking emerged in response to communal rice farming, which fostered interdependence. Here we report two experiments that tested the ecocultural hypothesis in the lab. In both, participants played one of two tasks designed to recreate the key factors of working alone and working together. Before and after each task, participants completed psychological measures of independent-interdependent self-construal and analytic-holistic cognition. We found no convincing evidence that either solitary or collective tasks affected any of the measures in the predicted directions. This fails to support the ecocultural hypothesis. However, it may also be that our priming tasks are inappropriate or inadequate for simulating subsistence-related behavioral practices, or that these measures are fixed early in development and therefore not experimentally primable, despite many previous studies that have purported to find such priming effects.文化心理学家已证实，西方人群相较于东亚人群，更倾向于展现独立型自我构念（independent self-construal）与分析型（基于规则）认知风格；而东亚人群则更多表现出互依型自我构念（interdependent self-construal）与整体型（基于关系）认知风格。针对这一跨文化差异，现有研究提出了生态文化假说（ecocultural hypothesis），该理论将当代心理差异与不同族群在生存方式与社会凝聚性上的祖先层面差异相联系：西方思维模式形成于独居放牧的生存环境，该环境培育了个体独立性；东亚思维模式则起源于集体稻作农业，催生了互依性认知。本研究报告两项旨在实验室环境下验证生态文化假说的实验。两项实验均设置两类任务，用以复刻独立劳作与协作劳作的核心情境。在每项任务实施前后，参与者均需完成独立-互依型自我构念以及分析-整体型认知风格的心理测评。研究结果未发现可靠证据表明，独立或协作任务会按照预设方向对上述测评指标产生影响，因此无法为生态文化假说提供支持。不过，这一结论也存在其他可能的解释：其一，本研究采用的启动任务或许并不适宜或不足以模拟与生存方式相关的行为实践；其二，尽管此前诸多研究声称观测到此类启动效应，但这类心理特质可能在个体发展早期便已固化，因此无法通过实验手段实现启动。