Identifying the Cultural Elements that Anchor Evaluative Reasoning

• In Event: 3184 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 03. Evaluation, Beliefs, and Reasoning

Abstract

This paper develops and applies a framework for identifying the cultural elements that anchor the process of evaluative reasoning. Previous research has established that evaluative reasoning is often incoherent, leaving open the question of how it is that people can reason effortlessly and in apparently patterned ways. Recent theorizing on the subject argues that evaluation is a function of both personal and situational factors, but it remains unclear how these are to be analyzed empirically. Informed by conceptual metaphor and image schema theories from the cognitive sciences, I address these challenges in a study of evaluative reasoning about age-appropriateness. By identifying the schematic “building blocks” manifest in parents’ evaluative reasoning and identifying patterns of schematic co-occurrence, I am able to identify the cultural elements which anchor the task, and which produce both variation and consistency. I present my empirical findings and discuss implications for cultural sociology more generally.

Author

• Michael Lee Wood, University of Notre Dame