Margret Aenne Schoop

• Preferences and ways of life have in the literature been described as both stable and forever malleable. The Theory of Socio-Cultural Viability, of cultural theory for short, is approaching the puzzle from the angle of Anthropology and is commonly used in Political Science. In order to not only test the theory’s value and reliability, but also to develop new ways of employing it in assessing individuals’ and groups’ biases, the present dissertation is structured into three co-dependent papers. The first study, Four Angles to Every Issue, investigates in how far an open-ended discussion of wicked problems leads to an emergence of all four cultures, as predicted by the theory, and supports the assumption of clustering and polarization of preferences in open debates. The second paper, Measuring the Malleable, then takes the analysis to the individual level. The results show that they do in fact remain the same within one context, but do not across life domains. This supports the assumption of multiple selves in the theory and is in line with much of psychological research. The third article then builds on this idea by illuminating cultural theory’s overlap with multiple theories from the field of Psychology. By identifying overlaps and potential links, the paper is able to explain the underlying processes and mechanisms of cultural theory with psychological findings. The last chapter is the general discussion, which offers a synthesis of the presented findings, as well as options for further research. Continuing in the direction that this thesis has shown would allow a better understanding of human interaction and bias formation, as well as transmissions. The focus should from here on out lie on the mechanisms that enable the identified processes and thereby allow a better and more holistic understanding of how biases come about and change malleably.