How to power encultured minds

Cultural psychologists often describe the relationship between mind and culture as ‘dynamic.’ In light of this, we provide two desiderata that a theory about encultured minds ought to meet: the theory ought to reflect how cultural psychologists describe their own findings and it ought to be thoroughly naturalistic. We show that a realist theory of causal powers—which holds that powers are causally-efficacious and empirically-discoverable—fits the bill. After an introduction to the major concepts in cultural psychology and describing causal power realism, we use a case study—the effects of pathogen prevalence on culture and cognition—to show the explanatory capacities of the powers framework.