Culture and Cognition

1997/08/01 by Paul DiMaggio · 5 citations
Social Sciences · Psychology · Arts and Humanities · #Social and Cultural Dynamics #Cultural Differences and Values #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Cognition #Schematic #Agency (philosophy) #Action (physics) #Cognitive science #Identity (music) #Sociology #Social cognition #Psychology #Collective action #Epistemology #Social psychology #Cognitive psychology #Social science #Political science

paper · doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.23.1.263

openalex publication_date 1997/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Recent work in cognitive psychology and social cognition bears heavily on concerns of sociologists of culture. Cognitive research confirms views of culture as fragmented; clarifies the roles of institutions and agency; and illuminates supra-individual aspects of culture. Individuals experience culture as disparate bits of information and as schematic structures that organize that information. Culture carried by institutions, networks, and social movements diffuses, activates, and selects among available schemata. Implications for the study of identity, collective memory, social classification, and logics of action are developed.

Citations

• The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior
• Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony
• The Fabrication of Meaning: Literary Interpretation in the United States, Great Britain, and the West Indies
• On the Microfoundations of Macrosociology
• Structure‐Mapping: A Theoretical Framework for Analogy*
• What properties of culture should we measure?
• Studies of the Routine Grounds of Everyday Activities
• Psychological status of the script concept.
• Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation.
• Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies
• The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis
• Principles of Categorization

Cited by

• Fixing the communications failure
• Beyond Two Minds: Cognitive, Embodied, and Evaluative Processes in Creativity
• Cultural cognition of the risks and benefits of nanotechnology
• Approaching culture in medical education: Three perspectives
• Cultural cognition [wikipedia]