4.2 The Features of Cognitive Culture

LO 4.2: Summarize the major features of cognitive culture.

Sociologists study how people come to a shared meaning for objects, actions, and ideas (or culture). Culture provides people with “scripts, narratives, embodied practices, and schemas” that allow social life to exist and persist (Mohr et al., 2020, p. 3). In other words, culture shapes thinking or cognition. Cognitive culture includes social institutions, roles, statuses, symbolic boundaries, frames, perceptions, repertoires of action, narratives, and values (see Figure 4.3).