Lecture 24: Human and animal Flashcards
Define culture
Information acquired from other members of the same species involving a group of people who have a shared historical, geographical or linguistic context.
Describe the sambia culture
They live in Eastern papua new guinea and believe that being feminine is a natural essence but to be masculine,it needs to be cultivated. To transform boys to men, they pierce the septum of the nose and thrash them with sticks.
How much do we know about human psychology as a whole?
Not much because almost all studies involve westernised countries. The participants only host about 12% of the population and two thirds are undergraduate students. Westernised countries are also called W.E.I.R.D; western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic.
What does cultural psychology study?
The variability of human behaviour, the universals of human behaviour and the interaction between inherited predispositions and cultural context.
What are the four main methods to study cultural differences?
Observation, anthropological record, surveys and experiments.
Give an example of the american culture; culture of honour
How was this culture of honour found?
Hatfield Mcoy feud. Hatfield had a hog, Mcoy claimed it was his. They went to court. Mcoy lost and then his brothers murdered the Judge. This began a family feud and resulted in more than a dozen deaths.
Cohen 1996 looked at archival records and compared South USA to North USA. South USA had more argument related murders but this was the only difference in murder types. This shows that this culture is the norm in the south.
He also did surveys, South USA people were more likely to agree that a man should kill to defend his house but there was no difference between the north and south in other types of violence.
Physiology: More testosterone was released by the Southerns after the asshole manipulation; the confederate bumps into them and calls them an asshole. The testosterone prepares them to compete.
Behaviour: After the asshole principle, the confederate dared them to a game of chicken; walking towards each other and measuring when the participant gives way. Southern people gave way at many more inches if they didn’t do the asshole condition but if they did, the distance was very small.
Give an example of a study about the perception of objects across cultures
North Americans focus on the focal object instead of the context which is analytic. Asian cultures focus on the context around the focal object, which is holistic. Different tasks require different judgements. Sometimes the focal aspect shouldn’t be influenced by context; absolute but sometimes the context should change your judgement; relative. Kitayama 2003 researched this, he found that if asked to draw a relative interpretation of the length of a line in a box, then the line would be 1/3 of the height of the square as it was in the original but if they did an absolute interpretation, they would draw the same length as the original which wouldn’t fit the smaller box appropriately. Japanese were better at relative and americans were better at the absolute task.
Describe the development of cognition in children
One of the first signs in when they understand that others can have a false belief that isn’t based on reality or their own beliefs. For example, Anne’s box, where anne hides someone’s ball in her box and the child has to tell sally where the ball is. This milestone usually occurs at age 5.
When doing cross cultural studies of human cognition, where should you start looking?
Everywhere, you should do the broad sweep approach. The more cultures that are studied, the better.
Describe Muller Lyer’s study
They tested them on the illusion with a line and two arrows, facing in different directions. Evastonia and N.U. students correctly answered the two lines as being equal the most at about 20%. Whereas tribes got the answer correct a lot less often. This could be because they don’t see buildings that look similar, as the corner of a room can look like this, the inside and the outside. Some tribes were better in other conditions with similar questions whereas quite a lot scored lowly on most.
Describe cross cultural research about the ultimatum game
The ultimatum game involves one participant receiving a sum of money. They’re told to split the money between themselves and someone else. If the second player accepts it, it’s fine but if they reject it then no one receives the money. Henrich 2005 found that a culture in Lamalera in Indonesia was very cooperative, which was rare as most weren’t cooperative. This reflects their cultures as they’re collective hunters with non-kin. Does economic life depend on the cooperation of non-kin? The Hadza community were also cooperative which reflects them as it’s very small scale community with no anonymity. Also there was follow up research that found that if markets disappeared then there would be little effect on the community aka aggregate market integration.
List 3 advantages of the broad sweep method?
And one disadvantage
It’s exploratory, it generates hypotheses and it detects variation.
However, universality is a question of probability.
When doing a cross cultural experiment, where should you start looking?
Far away, this is the maximum difference approach
Describe Sauter’s study that compared Europians and Himbas
They recognize each others’ emotional vocalisations but not stuff like triumph and relief.
List 2 advantages and 2 disadvantages of the maximum difference approach
It’s quick and there is a good chance of variation
It’s a matter of luck and there isn’t any indicator of universality
