Prof. Marc Slors, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

Abstract

While most implicit cognition is typically considered to be evolutionarily old, natural and associative, some implicit cognition is cultural and rule-based. I will argue that the use of and adherence to cultural conventions involves implicit cognition and is based on  implicit learning. It is fast, automatic, non-reflective and ‘low-cost’. I will also argue that this implicit cultural cognition serves the purpose of coordinating the various jobs, roles and tasks that are characteristic of human societies with massively divided labour. Many or most of these tasks, roles and jobs require ‘high cost’ explicit cognition that would be impossible or at least impaired if coordination would require more than implicit processing. On this picture, the use of cultural conventions is thus not only essential for human societies, it is also necessarily inflexible due to its implicit character. This can shed new light on psychological phenomena such as overimitation and culture shock. It also suggests that in dealing with cultural frictions we should not focus exclusively on differences in beliefs and values.