Sustainable Food Laboratory

¹This type of data-gathering – and the analysis of transcripts, based on techniques of cognitive anthropology and linguistics – yields insights not available from standard interview, polling, or focus group techniques. It does not look for statements of opinion, but for patterns of thought that may even be unconscious. It does not look for familiarity with issues in the news, but for more established and long-standing, default reasoning patterns. Some of the clues to these important patterns come from topics that are omitted, moments of inconsistency where one understanding clashes with another, and the metaphorspeople use to talk about a subject. Furthermore, the method is designed to explore the differences between rhetorical mode– in which people define themselves in opposition to other groups and perspectives, and repeat ideas and phrases familiar from public discourse – and reasonable mode– in which they reflect their own experiences, think for themselves, and are more open to new information. Put briefly, this analysis focuses on howpeople think rather than whatthey think.

Cognitive research works on the premise that unconscious, default understandings of the world (cognitive and cultural models) can guide people’s understanding of an issue in ways they do not even recognize. One of the most important aspects of these default models is that they often lead people to understandings that they might reject at other moments of more
careful reflection. For example, average Americans recognize on an intellectual level that their food comes from a complex process of production and distribution that is very important to their quality of life, yet habitual ways of thinking about food create cognitive “blindspots.” People who know better on some level, still are easily derailed from thinking about food systems because of well-established, default understandings of the world. These hidden, underlying understandings can be very difficult to challenge and displace, and, if they are not accounted for, they can derail communications.