Culture and the Assumptions About Appearance and Reality: A Scientometric Look at a Century of Research

Abstract

The world can be represented by two layers of information: how it appears on the outside (appearance) and what it is on the inside (reality). The relationship between appearance and reality has been conceptualised as the convergence and divergence theories of appearance, which posits that appearance is a reliable (convergence) or unreliable (divergence) representation of reality. The current scientometric review examines the literature on culture and the assumptions about appearance and reality. A sample of 4,164 documents was examined with CiteSpace software. An optimised Document Co-Citation Analysis was computed and a network consisting of 3,116 nodes was obtained. Impactful publications were identified and major thematic developments were discussed. Five major clusters were identified, labelled as ‘Cultural Identity’, ‘Social Politics’, ‘Social Constructionism’, ‘Heritage & Memory’, and ‘Contemporary Society’. People's assumptions about appearance and reality emerged to be relevant to the historical and contemporary worlds, with implications from social politics, cultural identity, to how people make sense of their past, present, and future. These implications suggest that the relationship between appearance and reality is more than a philosophical inquiry. Integrating the literature on appearance and reality with cultural psychology work reveals new empirical questions and promising directions for future research. philosophical inquiry. Integrating the literature on appearance and reality with cultural psychology reveals new empirical questions and promising directions for future research.