Thanks for the comment Clint,
It's pretty true what you pointed out about the differences between content and context knowledge. The gift example is particularly insightful. Further, your last sentence has a lot of sense to me: "the higher level principle is that all or most humans see trust as defined by the same set of cues, but we frequently have a different set of filters for interpreting whether a behavior is classified as one of those cues or not". Trust is valuable but what trust implies is different from culture to culture. That makes me think about what is "universal" and what is not and how it should be considered. Let me clarify these ideas.

In the "Big Five" model the Webster dictionary of English was analyzed in order to find the most relevant terms that express personality characteristics. After further analysis those characteristics were factored in 5 main traits. Then those experiments were used in different countries and / or cultures based on english translations. The same big five traits were found. I think that also some studies have replicated the same procedure (starting from the dictionary and so on). Now that you have exposed the difference between content / context I think that, well, if these traits have been found, ok, but does it imply that their meaning are the equal? Or that in order to manage cultural differences a high level of abstraction is needed so that the actual implementations are difficult to implement if we follow them?

Or is it culture really needed? I mean, it would be a "doomed" concept, too big to deal with. That's why up to a certain extent Communities of Practise is helpful because they put you in a more accurate mental framework. But, likewise, to actually implement or track the variables specified in CoPs is not easy. Or maybe we have to forget about everything and see how Amazon, Google and similar sites have dealt with personalization, customization and recommendation issues. Sometimes I think it has sense to look at them. They have faced, let's say, the very first digital global challenges, very similar to the ones e-learning is facing.

Javier,

Thanks for sharing this connection idea with implicit personality theory. I need to read more on it to understand it better, but I think the central idea of it is interesting particularly in a cross-cultural setting.
The central idea that we build general expectations about a person after we know something of their central traits (e.g. when we believe that a happy person is also friendly, or that quiet people are timid. on the other hand, people who are irritable are seen as messed up in their every other day's life). (adapted from Wikipedia)
But in cross-cultural situations, our predictions more frequently fail. They often do within our own culture too, but I think perhaps it is more frequent cross-culturally. In other words, the implicit rules and cues that we use to identify "sincerity, honesty, understanding, loyal and trustworthy" can often change depending on the cultural context.

For instance, in Riall Nolan's book on Development Anthropology, he makes a distinction between content and context knowledge.

"Content knowledge includes specific details of processes, operations, and formulae – the procedures necessary to accomplish a task. Context knowledge refers to an understanding of a specific environment in which the task will be carried out [and how it will interact, effect and be affected by every other situational factor].

Knowing the vocabulary and grammar of Arabic, for example, is a type of content knowledge. Understanding the appropriate thing to say in Arabic to a particular person at a particular time to produce a specific result is an example of context knowledge.

Gift giving is another example. The mechanics of [making a gift or] shopping for a gift, paying for it, and wrapping it and delivering it might be considered a form of content knowledge. After all, stores, credit cards, and post offices work in roughly the similar ways around the world. But as I've noted, each culture will have a different set of artifacts, behaviors, and associated values.

Many cultures give gifts, in other words, but not all cultures give the same gifts, not all cultures give gifts in the same ways, and not all cultures value gifts in the same way. So although giving a gift looks simple in the abstract, what is chosen, who receives it, and how it is presented – all issues of context – will ultimately determine whether or not the gift is seen within that context as homage, tribute, thanks, appreciation, payment, tipping, a bribe, or perhaps as a deadly insult."

So even in giving a gift, there are often many contextual factors that determine whether it is seen as the cues we use to identify "sincerity, honesty, understanding, loyal and trustworthy" - or as something else.

So perhaps the higher level principle is that all or most humans see trust as defined by the same set of cues, but we frequently have a different set of filters for interpreting whether a behavior is classified as one of those cues or not. Does that make sense? Do you agree?

Thanks for this post.