Linking culture and individual behavior: The concept and measurement of cultural consonance

Culture has been a central concept in the social sciences for well over a century. Yet, a theory of culture with an associated measurement model providing the means to systematically study its effects has proven elusive. Developments in cognitive culture theory over the past several years provide a new perspective and a new set of tools. Culture can be conceptualized as a set of shared cognitive models that encode the information required for individuals to function in a given social setting. These cultural models can be elicited and examined in detail using the methods of cultural domain analysis, and the cultural consensus model (CCM) can be used to test for sharing and to describe variation in culture. Using the results of cultural consensus analysis as a foundation, cultural consonance can be measured for individuals. Cultural consonance is the degree to which individuals, in their own behaviors, approximate the prototypes for behavior encoded in cultural models. Cultural consonance thus extends cognitive culture theory to an examination of culture expressed in behavior. In this article, this theoretical and methodological orientation is presented, and some implications of its empirical examination are discussed.