Effect of Cultural Frame Switching on Autobiographical Memory in Monocultural Individuals

In the present paper author examined a possibility of cultural frame switching in monocultural individuals. Following one line of scientific reasoning, namely cultural frame switching approach, it seems impossible to show judgments and behaviors in accordance with another culture if a person did not undergo a socialization process in that culture. According to another point of view, culture-as-situated-cognition model, people share cultural mindsets, and making one cultural mindset temporary accessible without acquiring new cultural knowledge might actually lead to culture-specific changes in behaviors and judgments. In order to resolve this controversy, the author decided to focus on autobiographical memories as a mean of measuring changes because this construct systematically differed in bicultural individuals while they switched between their inherited cultures. The author performed an experimental using the language of participation as a source of priming of cultural mindsets. The empirical part was divided into two smaller parts: The first one was an online survey, which provided data on possible confounder of the further results, namely covariate variables, and the second part was an experiment itself. The final sample consisted of 66 university students. Participants in two groups showed no differences in frequency of memory functions usage and marginally significant differences in a content of autobiographical memories, specifically, participants in the English language condition showed the more self-oriented content of memories in comparison with their counterparts in the Russian language condition. The author further discussed the results and made limitations with directions for future researches.