a b s t r a c tThe study of culture and decision making addresses variations in how and why people from different cultures sometimes tend to decide differently. This review is organized around what is intended to be a comprehensive analysis of the distinct fundamental questions that people must answer in the process of making virtually all real-life decisions. Our emphasis was on recent developments as well as identifying important yet neglected topics (e.g., how decision episodes get started-or not, and why some decisions are never implemented). Early as well as current efforts have focused mainly on East Asian and North American Caucasian cultures, with little treatment of other populations. In such studies, individualism and collectivism have been the dominant explanatory factors although related but distinct concepts such as ''tightness" and ''looseness" have been welcome additions to recent discussions. Throughout, the review emphasizes practical concerns, such as the challenges of intercultural learning and collaboration.

Cultural comparison has challenged people's assumptions of universality in psychology. It has also revealed that many questions and approaches in psychology are not culture-free, but reflect a distinctively Western analytic framework. In this framework, the world is assumed to operate by discernible and stable rules, contradiction is a problem to be resolved, and entities are viewed as relatively independent agents. Context and relationships between people and objects are relatively downplayed-or, when they are examined, are assumed to operate under parsimonious rules. Dialectical or holistic thinking, a framework more prevalent in East Asian societies, involves greater attention to context and relationships, assumptions of change rather than stasis, and acceptance of contradiction. Analytic thinking is useful for science and daily life. But sometimes dialectical thinking results in more accurate conclusions or pragmatically useful decisions than analytic thinking. Therefore, we propose that both dialectical and analytic thinking should be consciously adopted as tools in the "cognitive toolbox" of researchers and laypeople alike. In the present article, we review the cross-cultural work demonstrating the psychological differences that analytic versus dialectical thinking produce. We then consider the strengths of each type of thinking and how they may serve complementary functions for problem solving.

Averaging independent numerical judgments can be more accurate than the average individual judgment. This "wisdom of crowds" effect has been shown with large, diverse samples, but the layperson wishing to take advantage of this may only have access to the opinions of a small, more demographically homogeneous "convenience sample." How wise are homogeneous crowds relative to diverse crowds? In simulations and survey studies, we demonstrate three necessary conditions under which small socially diverse crowds can outperform socially homogeneous crowds: Social identity must predict judgment, the effect of social identity on judgment must be at least moderate in size, and the average estimates of the social groups in question must "bracket" the truth being judged. Seven survey studies suggest that these conditions are rarely met in real judgment tasks. Comparisons between the performances of diverse and homogeneous crowds further confirm that social diversity can make crowds wiser but typically by a very small margin.

Research on culture and cognition suggests that East Asians are relatively holistic and North Americans are relatively analytic. Social orientation and philosophical traditions have been linked to those differences; collectivism and Confucian tradition are associated with holistic thinking whereas individualism and Western philosophy are associated with analytic thinking. We tested whether Brazilians, who are Western such as North Americans and collectivistic such as East Asians, would more closely resemble U.S. Americans or Chinese participants in various measures of cognitive style. Across five studies, Brazilians were always more holistic than Americans and sometimes more holistic than Chinese participants. Brazilians differed from Chinese participants in that they were particularly optimistic in their judgments about the future (Study 3) and reported varying their emotion expressivity more by context (Study 5). Results build on previous East/West comparisons by identifying a non-Confucian, Western group that may be as holistic as East Asians.

MKP-1 is a critical negative regulator of p38 and JNK MAP kinases. While loss of Mkp-1 function enhances cytokine production after bacterial challenge, little is known about the role of Mkp-1 in the innate immune response to viral infections. In this study we examined the role of Mkp-1 in the pulmonary immune response during influenza infection in mice. Mkp-1+/+ and Mkp-1-/- mice were intranasally inoculated with 1,000 plaque-forming units of the mouse-adapted H1N1 A/WSN/33 strain of influenza. Mice were monitored up to 6 days post inoculation and evaluated for altered host physiology, viral replication, and host immune response. Compared to Mkp-1+/+ animals, Mkp-1-/- mice exhibited accelerated weight loss and hypothermia. cDNA array analysis indicated that over 50 immune response-related genes were more robustly expressed in the lungs of Mkp-1-/- mice than in the Mkp-1+/+ mice upon influenza infection. The levels of IL-6, IL-10, and IFN-β were also higher in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid from Mkp-1-/- mice. Mechanistically, p38 and JNK activation was prolonged in Mkp-1 deficient cells treated with agents mimicking viral RNA. Together, these data support the model that Mkp-1 plays an important role in the feedback control of p38 and JNK, thus limiting harmful innate immune response and preventing severe clinical disease during pulmonary influenza infection.