The implicit activation mechanism of culture: A survey experiment on associations with childbearing.

Highlights • Theoretical account of the interaction between public and personal culture. • Public culture activates cognitive associations beneath conscious awareness. • Partial empirical test of proposed account using survey experiment on childbearing. • Comparison of the effect of beliefs about family and finances on associations. • Discussion of conditions under which this proposed account is relevant to behavior. Abstract This paper proposes a mechanism by which exposure to forms of culture “in the world” activates individuals’ cognitive associations beneath conscious awareness, making certain behaviors more likely. A survey experiment illustrates part of the proposed mechanism, testing whether cues that make salient a shared cultural representation affect the activation of individuals’ associations with childbearing. Drawing on cultural beliefs regarding the ostensible contradiction between close relations and monetary exchange, we expect that making one of these spheres salient would inhibit activation of associations with the other sphere. As predicted, respondents randomly assigned to a cue regarding family have fewer associations between childbearing and finances. We demonstrate the relevance of these findings to respondents’ fertility desires, a measure connected to behavior. We discuss the conditions under which this mechanism may exert the most influence on behavior and outline key future research questions that the proposed model introduces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]