Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Cultural Psychology
Foundation Year Introduction into
Psychology
Dora Simunovic
Name The Human Races
Name The Human Races
• There is only one human race left alive, the
Homo sapiens (sapiens)
– But there were many…
Homo
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Homo
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Homo
Homo
Invasion of the Humans
Invasion of the Humans
What happened to the Neanderthals?
What happened to the Neanderthals?
• Stronger, more robust
• Larger brain
• Lived in social units
compatible to those of
Homo sapiens
• More successful hunter
• Possibly had language
• All around “Better
hardware”
What happened to the Neanderthals?
• Interbreeding: Neanderthals were assimilated
genetically into the larger Homo sapiens
population
• Climate change: fluctuating European weather
• Pathogens caused local population extinction
• The first (of many) genocides committed by
modern man
• Unlike the Homo sapiens, the Neanderthals
had one way of doing it which barely changed
– They had art, but not culture!
Homo sapiens
• Origin of human
culture
– Living in complex social
groups?
– Cooperative hunting
and scavenging?
– Advanced ToM?
– Imagination (required for
non-trial-and-error learning)?
What is culture?
What is culture?
What is culture?
• Matsumoto & Juang, 2013
• What adapts?
– Behavioural strategies, attitudes, perception of
interpersonal relationships…
– Psychological tendencies, self-construal…
– Patterns of cognition, attention, systems of thought,
memory…
Describe yourself
• Complete at least five sentences beginning
with:
I AM_____________
I AM_____________
I AM_____________
I AM_____________
I AM_____________
Describe yourself
• Complete at least five sentences beginning
with:
I AM_____________
I AM_____________
I AM_____________
I AM_____________
I AM_____________
Self-construal
• The Self v. Jibun
• Markus & Kitayama, 1991, 2010
Culture and attention/perception
• Masuda & Nisbett, 2001
• “Please describe what
you have just seen.”
East v West
• Cross-cultural psychology tests cultural
parameters of psychological knowledge
– Seeks to find which psychological mechanisms
function across culture
– Often based on the comparison of two groups
who are theoretically different along a certain
dimension
• Gambling?
• Suicide bombing?
• Sexualisation of feet?
• Paedophilia?
What is adaptational?
• Rocking back and forth?
• Screaming at nobody in particular?
• Gambling?
• Suicide bombing?
• Sexualisation of feet?
• Paedophilia?
Fallacy of Evolutionary Psychology
• Reducing a psychological
phenomenon to
a) genetic complex,
b) neural circuits, or
c) a response to hypothetical
historical situations (Just-so
stories)
Fallacy of Evolutionary Psychology
• Reducing a psychological
phenomenon to
a) genetic complex,
b) neural circuits, or
c) a response to hypothetical
historical situations (Just-so
stories)
In my opinion, evolutionary psychology is a framework for asking questions rather
than the ultimate tool for answering them. Human behaviour cannot be reduced to
the “simplicity” of today’s genetics. However, the situational forces which drive
genetic and other types of change, can only be accessed by asking evolutionary
questions. Evo.Psych. is a study of those forces.
What is sexy?
• Think about it as a strategy. What do we do to
be sexy?
Sexual Strategies
FEMALE MALE
• Beauty • Strength
• Hip-to-waist ratio • Wealth
• Youthfulness • Social position
• Care-giving • Resource-generating
• Fertility • Security
We signal these desirable characteristics to the potential
partners; the costlier the signal, the more value it has.
Sexual Strategies
• The cost of having offspring is different for
men and for women
– Much more risk for women: loss of autonomy
during pregnancy, death at childbirth, children
directly dependant on mothers for the first few
months of their lives…
– Not so for men
Sexual Strategies
• Simplified:
– On average, men want a lot of no-strings-attached
sex, and behave accordingly
– On average, women want long-term committed
relationships, and behave accordingly
• Does that explain SOME of the psychological
differences between men and women?
• Where does culture of “male” and “female”
come in?
Why do we even religion?
• Again, think about religion (as a social
phenomenon), and religious belief (as an
individual characteristic), as strategies
individuals employ to increase their fitness.
Religion as an Adaptation
• By-product of other mechanisms
– Theory of Mind ascribed to (super)natural agents
– Etiology (causal narratives for natural events)
– Agent detection (detecting presence of other
actors)
– Terror Management Theory (dealing with the
knowledge that we will die)
Religion as an Adaptation
• Adaptation in and of itself
– Costly signalling theory (hard-to-fake religious
rituals signal an individual’s commitment to the
group)
– Big Gods as a supernatural
monitoring presence, making
sure big groups behave
– Religion as a meme
Memes
Memetics
• Meme: μῖμος, to
imitate
• Richard Dawkins, 1976
• “An idea,
behaviour, or style
that spreads from
person to person
within a culture”
• “Mind virus”
Methods in Evolutionary Psychology
• Evolutionary psychology investigates how and
why certain characteristics of the human
mind, brain and behaviour persist
• Methods:
– Cross-cultural comparison
– Cross-species comparison
– Behavioural experiments
– Simulations (Evolutionary game theory)
Game theory
• The study of mathematical models of conflict
and cooperation between intelligent rational
decision-makers
– You can describe society as an incentive structure
• E.g., each individual has an incentive to be treated well
by other members of society. What do they have to do
in order to achieve that?
Axelrod’s computer simulation
• Had experts from all around the world come
up with strategies to increase fitness in the
Prisoner’s Dilemma
Axelrod’s computer simulation
Axelrod’s computer simulation
Evolutionary Game Theory
• Strategies are evaluated based on how they
contribute to the individual’s long-term fitness
• Under which circumstances are which
strategies:
– Evolvable?
– Stabile?
Evolutionary Game Theory
• Strategies are evaluated based on how they
contribute to the individual’s long-term fitness
• Under which circumstances are which
strategies:
– Evolvable?
– Stabile?
• How would it be to be a
single hawk in a
population of doves?
What about the reverse?
Evolutionary stabile strategy
• A strategy is evolutionarily stabile if,
– It cannot be invaded easily by an opposing
strategy
– It could itself invade a population of other
strategies
Altruism
• Selflessness, other-regarding preferences