Falcinelli Ilenia, Fini Chiara, Mazzuca Claudia, Borghi Anna M
Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, and Health Studies, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2024 Jul 10;15:1389581. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1389581. eCollection 2024.
Investigating how people represent the natural environment and abstract it into geographical (e.g., ) and geopolitical (e.g., ) categories is pivotal to comprehending how they move and interact with the places they inhabit. Yet, the conceptualization of geographical and geopolitical domains has received scant attention so far. To deal with that, we reviewed 50 articles tackling this topic. Most studies have focused on assessing the universality of these concepts-especially geographical ones-mainly using free-listing and ethnophysiographic methods. Current perspectives tend to favor a non-universalistic characterization of these kinds of concepts, emphasizing their high cross-linguistic and cross-cultural variability, especially when compared to other semantic domains. Since geographical and geopolitical features are not pre-segmented by nature, the role of categories imposed by humans is crucial for these concepts. Significantly, their variability does not only depend on "cross" differences: evidence suggests that the cognitive demand requested by the task, idiosyncratic characteristics of individuals such as expertise level, and the typology of inhabited environments are further factors impacting the conceptual flexibility of these domains. Exploring the factors influencing our understanding of geographical and geopolitical categories can provide valuable insights for instructing effective communication policies to enhance sustainable development and address ecological emergencies, taking into consideration diverse cultural backgrounds within different populations.
研究人们如何呈现自然环境并将其抽象为地理（例如）和地缘政治（例如）类别，对于理解他们如何在居住的地方移动和互动至关重要。然而，到目前为止，地理和地缘政治领域的概念化受到的关注很少。为了解决这个问题，我们回顾了50篇探讨该主题的文章。大多数研究主要使用自由列举和民族自然地理学方法，侧重于评估这些概念的普遍性，尤其是地理概念。当前的观点倾向于对这类概念进行非普遍主义的描述，强调它们在跨语言和跨文化方面的高度变异性，特别是与其他语义领域相比。由于地理和地缘政治特征本质上不是预先划分的，人类强加的类别的作用对于这些概念至关重要。值得注意的是，它们的变异性不仅取决于“跨”差异：有证据表明，任务所要求的认知需求、个体的特质（如专业水平）以及居住环境的类型是影响这些领域概念灵活性的进一步因素。探索影响我们对地理和地缘政治类别的理解的因素，可以为制定有效的沟通政策提供有价值的见解，以促进可持续发展并应对生态紧急情况，同时考虑不同人群中的多样文化背景。
