Episode 343: Culture and the Concept of a Person

How would you a describe a friend or a co-worker? Would you list their personality traits like generous, aggressive, principled, or stubborn? Or would you give more concrete context-filled descriptions ("she argues with her parents a lot," "she brings us donuts at work sometimes"?) According to Shweder and Bourne's influential 1982 article, culture and the dominant metaphors within it influence how we answer these questions. David and Tamler continue their deep dive into the work of Richard Shweder with a discussion of his paper "Does the Concept of a Person Vary Cross-Culturally."

Plus, you might not save baby Hitler from drowning, but would you save his father or his grandfather? Moral psychology has a new paradigm!

Pucci, M., & Gagliardi, L. (2026). The killing baby Hitler dilemma: A novel paradigm for studying causal-temporal distance in moral decision-making. Consciousness and Cognition, 145, 104141.

Shweder, R. A., & Bourne, E. J. (1982). Does the concept of the person vary cross-culturally?. In Cultural conceptions of mental health and therapy (pp. 97-137). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.