Social Identity and the Recoding of Reality: Its Relevance for Cross-Cultural Psychology

Abstract

A methodological development in a current research program for the cross-cultural study of subjective identity is presented. The Associative Network Analysis (ANA) permits an idiographic exploration of cognitive mapping; it consists in generating the associative structure linked to various aspects of the individual's phenomenal world including the Self. Categorisation of social identity elements are seen as the result of recoding processes through which experience is transformed into images and thoughts and selectively stored in long term memory. Recoding rules expressing a link between individual values, strivings and perception of the external world can be determined.