Although using a gut-based response does not always lead to the wrong answer, it can result in people using gut-based response in situations where systematic reasoning is required. Additionally, research has shown that people who were given culturally fluent cues tended to employ more gut-based reasoning, resulting in a higher prevalence of them giving the wrong answer in comparison to those who were not exposed to such cues.

Cultural Fluency and Gut-based Responses

Through using cultural knowledge, people, upon realizing that something is not right or does not align with their own personal cultural knowledge network, begin to switch from using an associative, gut-based reasoning to systematic, rule-based reasoning to approach an unexpected situation. 

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Certain information, that is often implicit, regarding how things work within a specific culture. From our expectations of how a bride should dress for their wedding or what one should eat for breakfast, cultural knowledge networks help us determine what is expected to come next in a situation. 

Cultural Knowledge Networks

Oyserman, D., & Dawson, A. (2020). Your fake news, our facts: Identity-based motivation shapes what we believe, share, and accept. In R. Greifeneder, M. Jaffé, E. J. New- man, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), The psychology of fake news: Accepting, sharing, and correcting misinformation (pp. 173–195). London: Routledge. 

Your fake news, our facts: Identity-based motivation shapes what we believe, share, and accept

- Bruner and Postman (1949) asked American college students to recognize shapes (hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades) that had mismatched colors (i.e. a red spade)
- They noted that the students were slower to recognize these mismatched shapes than the shapes that were their "normal" color (i.e. a “black” spade) because they applied their culture-based knowledge automatically

Bruner and Postman Shape Study

- Mourey, Lam, and Oyserman (2015) conducted a series of experiments in which participants were either exposed to a “culturally fluent” or “culturally disfluent” situation or product while performing a task
- For example, in one experiment, people were randomly assigned to one of four groups; one of the groups was the “culturally fluent” one in which participants were asked to do a task on Valentine’s Day on a screen that displayed a pink-colored border. The other groups either did the task on Valentine’s day without a pink border, or did the task a week after Valentine's day with or without a pink border

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