Temperature, Language, and Cultural Values: Some New Directions and Invitations to New Debates (Follow Ups to Kashima & Kashima, 1999, 2003)

Abstract

In the present article, we present a re-examination of data originally published by Kashima and Kashima (1998, 2003). In their 2003 article, Kashima and Kashima show a moderation effect of temperature on the relation between personal pronoun drop and cultural values. Based on new insights from the grounded cognition literature, we propose an alternative framework, and find that 1) Kashima and Kashima’s (2003) findings were strictly due to the effects of two outliers in the data, and 2) that a mediational model, with pronoun drop mediating the relationship between temperature and cultural values, fits the data better. Nevertheless, we remain careful about the conclusions that may be drawn from this study and recommend different methods of investigating the relationship and gathering more data points.

Keywords: cultural psychology, social cognition, language, interpersonal relations, environmental psychology