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Cultural dimensions of health and behavior have been difficult to study because of limited theoretical and methodological models linking the cultural, the individual, and the biological. We employ a cognitive theory of culture to understand culture and health in an African American community in the southern United States. First, cultural consensus analysis is used to test for shared cultural models of lifestyles and social supports within the community. Then, the theoretical and operational construct of "cultural consonance" is used to assess the degree to which individuals behave in a way consistent with cultural models. Findings indicate that cultural consonance in lifestyle and social support combine synergistically in association with blood pressure. These associations of cultural consonance and health are not altered by taking into account a variety of other variables, indicating an independent association of cultural dimensions of behavior with health status. Implications of these results for culture theory are discussed. (culture theory, culture consensus analysis, cultural consonance, African American community, arterial blood pressure)
The past forty years have been a remarkably productive time for research on social variables and disease. Two traditions in research have been dominant. The first, represented by fields such as social epidemiology and medical sociology, has documented the risk of disease among groups occupying specific social positions, including positions in the socioeconomic hierarchy and status-role positions such as marital status (Kaplan 1995). The second, represented by health psychology and psychosomatic medicine, has developed detailed individual-difference models of psychosocial stresses, documenting differential risk of disease between individuals in relation to their exposure to stressors and their resources available to cope with those stressors (Scheier and Bridges 1995).
In anthropology, research on the distribution of disease began with studies of modernization initiated in the 1950s. The term modernization was used to contrast communities and individuals in terms of traits such as subsistence versus wage-labor occupations, use of nonlocal languages, adoption of nonlocal religious practices, and changes in traditional social organization. A greater exposure to modernization was associated with an increased risk of those chronic diseases characteristic of industrial nations, such as high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, and diabetes (McGarvey 1999). These observations led anthropological researchers to adapt individual-difference models of social stress to examine differential risk of disease within specific...