Hon g an d Ch iuPARADIGM SHIFT TOWARD A PARADIGM SHIFT: FROM CROSS-CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN SOCIAL COGNITION TO SOCIAL-COGNITIVE MEDIATION OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

Cultural psychologists have often sought to explaincross-culturaldifferences in so-cial cognition as differences rooted in the cultures ’ positions on a small collection of pan-cultural dimensions (e.g., individualism-collectivism). In this paper, we ar-gue for a paradigm shift in cultural psychology.Drawing on the arguments and data presented in the papers of this special issue, we propose to view cultures as dy-namic open systems that spread across geographical boundaries and evolve through time. This alternative view links cultural differences in social cognition to cultures ’ axiomatic assumptions (or cultural theories) in the relevant domains, and specifies the social cognitive principles that govern the activation and application of such cultural theories in specific contexts. This new approach captures the com-plexityof cultural processes,paves theway for an excitingagenda for future investi-gations, and provides a common language for psychologists to describe how culture affects social cognition as well as how cultural influences are mediated by basic social cognitive processes. Recent findings from cross-cultural research have cast doubt on the uni-versality of basic psychological processes. A variety of studies have dem-onstrated that how people perceive their social environment depends o