Why did some cultural psychologists argue that culture can shape how people think?

Cultural psychologists and anthropologists argue that culture shapes human thought by rejecting the notion of a universal psyche in favor of the idea that culture conditions an individual's psychological makeup.1

In the 1930s, researchers like Ruth Benedict observed that distinct cultures evolve unique psychological orientations toward reality. These orientations act as a "psychological set" that determines how members of a culture perceive and process information from their environment.1

This perspective is closely linked to the Whorfian hypothesis, which posits that language influences thought and perception. Anthropologists such as Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf suggested that because different languages are structured differently—such as how they categorize time through verb tenses—they lead speakers to view and conceptualize the world in fundamentally different ways. While strong versions of these theories suggesting that language or culture strictly "determine" thought have faced significant criticism and are largely rejected by modern scholars, the view that culture and language exert an influence on cognitive processes remains a subject of ongoing study.2