Microcultural Analysis of Variation in Sharing of Causal Reasoning about Behavior

This article explores the relation of culture to consumption by investigating individual, social, and cultural sources of variation in the sharing of causal reasoning about behavior in two microcultures. The results suggest (1 ) the importance of intracultural variation in the study of culture, (2) differences between experts and novices as a robust source of this variation, (3) novel insights into the relationship between expertise and sociocultural phenomena, and (4) the potential for investigating attitude structure, categorization, and attribution as products of causal reasoning originating from cultural belief systems. The study also demonstrates the synergy created by diverse research methods. Copyright 1996 by the University of Chicago.