Use of Cognitive Field Research Methods to Investigate Cultural Groups: The Case of Individual Decision Making in Middle Eastern Crowds - eScholarship

Abstract

Use of Cognitive Field Research Methods to Investigate Cultural Groups: The Case of Individual Decision Making in Middle Eastern Crowds Winston R. Sieck (sieck@decisionmaking.com) Anna P. McHugh (amchugh@decisionmaking.com) Jennifer L. Smith (jsmith@decisionmaking.com) Klein Associates † , 1750 Commerce Center Blvd. Fairborn, OH 45324 USA East, with an emphasis on the successes, limitations, and lessons of the methodology. Abstract How does individual judgment and decision making mediate the behavior of crowds in the Middle East? Questions such as this cannot be answered by standard experimental psychological methods, and classic ethnographic approaches are limited as well. This paper discusses the applicability of the Critical Decision Method for investigating the decision making of non-western cultural groups in naturalistic settings. The results provide an existence proof that the method can be feasibly extended for studying cognition in non-western cultures. Typical Cultural Research Methods This paper describes methodological approaches for studying cognition in cultural groups. The discussion is presented in the context of ongoing research into crowd behavior, as it emerges from the decision making of individuals. The general region of interest is the Middle East, extending from Egypt and the Arabian peninsula in the south up through Lebanon and Syria, and also extending from the Mediterranean on the west to the Iraq/Iran border on the east. These boundaries roughly correspond to those of primary Arabic speakers, which is often how this broad cultural group tends to define itself (Patai, 2002). Crowd behavior is an important international and interdisciplinary research area that is currently experiencing an upsurge in activity, primarily due to the practical consequences associated with large, uncontrolled crowds. At this point, it is still fair to conclude that, while considerable thought has been directed towards understanding crowd behavior, the empirical base remains thin. This state is obviously rooted in the inherent difficulties in collecting pertinent and rigorous psychological data. In addition, or perhaps, as a consequence, much existing theorizing is distinctly behaviorist in flavor, as evidenced by the rubric, “crowd behavior,” to define the domain of interest. As mentioned, the focus of the current paper is on methodologies for investigating cognition in cultural groups, in general, using our own work on decision making of crowd members as a specific case. In the remainder of this paper, we summarize experimental and ethnographic approaches for studying culture, and then introduce a commonly used cognitive field research methodology, the Critical Decision Method (CDM) as a potential alternative approach. We then briefly describe our ongoing research using the CDM to investigate crowd member decision making in the Middle Much important work in culture and cognition is being carried out by applying standard experimental procedures across cultures, with national origin constituting the usual operational definition of cultural group. Such investigations permit the relative isolation of particular components of cognition, and thus provide a close comparative analysis of cultural differences on the details of particular cognitive processes, such as judgment and reasoning (e.g. Norenzayan, Smith, Kim, & Nisbett, 2002; Yates, Lee, Sieck, Choi, & Price, 2002). Nevertheless, such methods are simply not appropriate for investigating questions pertaining to cognition as it occurs in natural settings. In order to uncover individuals’ decision processes in crowd situations, beginning with questions like, “What judgments and decisions are people actually making in the context of a crowd event?” it is necessary to relinquish the rigors of experimental control and other conveniences associated with laboratory work. Perhaps the quintessential cultural anthropological method is ethnography. The roots of modern ethnography are in the studies of cultural anthropologists, such as Boas and Malinowski. The research questions that ethnographers address are typically descriptive in nature. They want to know, “What are the beliefs, practices, and values of this cultural group?” The ethnographer takes a holistic perspective. To understand a group’s culture, the researcher studies many aspects of the group, including behavior patterns, verbal and written communications, religion, politics, family life, history, and many other areas. Central to ethnography is the belief that immersion in a group or community, “encountering it firsthand and making some sense out of it” (Agar, 1986, p. 12), is necessary to gain a deep understanding of the culture. The research is time- intensive, sometimes lasting for several years. Fieldwork typically includes interviews, observations, and reviews of documents and artifacts. Many ethnographers take on the role of participant observer, becoming actively involved in the community rather than watching it from a distance. This allows them to not only see and hear about how the individuals live, but to actually live the life themselves. Unlike most experimental research, ethnographic research does not proceed linearly, going from hypothesis to data collection to data analysis. Instead, data analysis is often

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