HI Michael,

Thank you for the response. You pose some very deep and interesting questions.

First let me say that culture, and context in general, is always a factor in human behavior and the standards in which we place anything as "good" or "bad," "normal" or "abnormal." See my post on the differing conceptions of normal and abnormal - https://medium.com/p/af61575fd8d9

So, certainly culture determines how and what we consider truth or rational thinking. Norms and beliefs of a culture will influence what deviates from that norm. In that way, the content of the bias can heavily depend on the culture. The cognitive mechanism - i.e., that tendency for our brains to "take shortcuts" to reach conclusions - is fundamentally the same.

In the coming weeks I will be conintuing to write on this topic with explorations of the specific biases. I think the role of culture will become clearer in those examples.

Meditation and similar practices can definitely produce changes in the way we think. Mindfulness is exactly what slows down these rapid. relatively automatic tendencies to take mental shortcuts and helps us to more deeply examine our thoughts (and the many sensations we experience at every moment). We can train our brain to notice that we are "jumping to conclusions" so to speak and step back to more consciously consider our thoughts and behaviors. Awareness is the key to identifying our cognitive patterns and mistakes. But remember, this automatic processing is not all bad. It helps us quickly navigate through situations. The study of cognitive biases looks at the times when we make errors in those judgments.

I hope this was helpful.

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