ABSTRACT
Individuals are variably able to act on shared knowledge in incorporating cultural expectations into their own lives. This is the essence of cultural consonance. This basic idea has been suggested by others, notably including Edward Sapir, Kurt Lewin, and John Cassel. The difficulty has been in describing shared culture in sufficient detail to generate precise measures at the individual level. This chapter details the derivation of the concept of cultural consonance; explores in detail how it differs from earlier perspectives; and, demonstrates the utility of the concept as a predictor of health outcomes.
