10. Culture core

Question 1

what is different about the definition of culture?

Answer 1

there is no strict definition of culture- used flexibly in different disciplines (arts humanities and sciences)

Question 2

who defines culture and what as?

Answer 2

Barett et al. (2002) = ‘beliefs or rules of behaviour (or perhaps more generally knowledge of the world) that are passed on from one individual to another by some form of social learning (including teaching

Question 3

what does EP aim to discover about culture?

Answer 3

Culture is a characteristic feature of the human species- a fundamental part of our behaviour.
Culture is often seen as unique to the human species, thus evolutionary psychologists want to know why we have it, what it is for and how it works.

Question 4

what can we say culture is?

Answer 4

Any kind of physical manifestation of tech/ shared practice/ beliefs all of that is culture.

Question 5

is there evidence of culture in different species

Answer 5

If we take culture to be any behavioural practice/ tech that is not a inherent part of behaviour and is transmitted socially then we can see evidence in non-human species.

Question 6

sudy of animals showing culture?

Answer 6

Chimpanzees (Whiten et al, 1999, Nature)

1. Analysis of 39 behaviours over 151 years (observations) – e.g. termite fishing, courtship rituals
2. Differences between populations can differ across boundaries (e.g. a large river- . nut cracking one side of a river but not the other even though species genetically the same.)
3. Can’t be explained by ecological factors such as availability of suitable raw materials for making tools/ only get nut cracking where you get a certain nut.

Clearly suggests there is something cultural going on here. No clear geographical explanation of why behaviours exist in some sites and not others so thus must be cultural.

Question 7

so overall what can be said about animals exhibiting culture?

Answer 7

Clearly other species show patterns of behaviour that have to be described as cultural. The process may be the same, but it doesn’t manifest itself in the same way, or with as much complexity as in humans. And isn’t necessarily driven by the same mechanisms.

Question 8

what are the two main questions that can be asked about culture in humans?

Answer 8

1. What are the psychological processes underlying culture?

2. Why/how are these abilities so developed in humans?

Question 9

what do psychologists argue is crucial for culture?

Answer 9

Psychologists argue that social learning is crucial for the development of cultural behavior- (Tomasello and Call, 1997)

Question 10

what are the three ways an individual can learn from another?

Answer 10

• Stimulus enhancement
• Emulation
• Imitation

Question 11

who developed stimulus enhancement?

Answer 11

Whiten & Ham, 1992)

Question 12

talk about stimulus enhancement

Answer 12

• Most basic level of cultural transmission.
• A model’s action draws the observers’ attention to a particular stimulus. The observer figures out the relevant action-outcome connection for themselves (birds and bottle tops)
• Provide other individuals with a prompt to investigate a stimuli and develop their own discoveries about the stimuli.
• So not truly socially transmitted

Question 13

give e.g.s of stimulus enhancement

Answer 13

• E.g. birds and bottle tops birds would peck the foil on top of milk bottles this is a culturally transmitted practice birds observe other birds interacting with bottle would then explore bottle and then find the cream themselves.
• E.g. yam washing Japanese Macaques- yams nicer to eat if washed observe one individual washing and took yam into water and found nicer to eat.

Question 14

who developed emulation?

Answer 14

Tomasello 1990

Question 15

talk about emulation

Answer 15

• The observer emulates the goal or outcome of the model’s behaviour but does not copy every step.
• Trying to replicate an outcome
• Common amongst chimps- e.g. see older chimp getting termites out of mound- figure out yourself how to do this. Lots of young chimps will pay a large amount of attention to what older chimps are doing.
• But no explicit teaching and still have to figure out for themselves how to make it all work.

Question 16

talk about imitation

Answer 16

• ‘gold standard’ of cultural transmission.

* The observer copies the actions of the model

Question 17

what social learning is common in humans

Answer 17

imitation not just engage in imitation but actually over-imitation in children.

Question 18

give e.g. of over imitation in children

Answer 18

Nielsen (2010) – tapping a puzzle box will result in children also tapping the box even though this bears no influence in actually completing the task.

Question 19

why is it proposed that over-imitation occurs?

Answer 19

o Marsh et al. 2014- social modulation of over-imitation- much more likely to get over-imitation if an audience suggesting that is something to do with showing an audience that you are engaging in these tasks.
o Marsh et al., 2013- Children with ASD conditions are less likely to show over-imitation
o So potentially something to do with engaging in social relationships

Question 20

what is the crucial thing about over-imitation?

Answer 20

• The crucial thing about over-imitation is that if you engage in it, then you are going to take on non-functional social behaviours from your social group which means that you can then get all this cultural complexity that is removed from the immediate constraints and drives and needs of your ecology.

Question 21

what does over imitation allow in humans?

Answer 21

• So you can use imitation to get useful behaviour patterns that help in ecology but what over-imitation does in humans is that it allows us to take on all of these additional aspects of behaviours that aren’t functional. And that of course opens doorways into dysfunctional behaviour also.

Question 22

e.g. of over imitation in chimps versus children

Answer 22

Children will imitate the behaviour of a poke and lift box
Chimps will copy the poke/ lift if you prime with poke more likely to use poke and vice versa. So they will copy human behaviour, what they won’t do is copy the human over-embellishments.
e.g. Clay and Tennie
• Opening a box to get out a sticker (children) and grape (bonobos)- added two irrelevant actions into this also.
• The observer copies the actions of the model
• Common in humans
• Over-imitation is not seen in primates

Question 23

why is it proposed that social learning is a good idea? and who proposed this

Answer 23

Morgan et al. 2015 paper
• Faster than trial-and-error learning much more straight forward to learn from an individual than trying to work it out on own.
• More efficient (if someone else has already learned something)

Question 24

good quote for more efficient of social learning

Answer 24

‘Each generation can stand on the shoulders of its predecessors’ Barrett et al. (2002)

Question 25

what is efficiency of cultural transmission also known as?

Answer 25

the Ratchet Effect/ Cumulative Cultural Evolution- - if don’t need to learn from scratch then can actually build that information also. Can take cultural info and enhance and develop it which is how you get building levels of cultural complexity.

Question 26

e.g. of humans being able to develop more complex behaviors

Answer 26

o E..g. lift and poke box- can show a child and a chimp a lift and they will both do it- if you then show a child a poke and say this is better and more efficient they will do the poke also. But with a chimp if you have shown them a way to get what they want out of the puzzle box they wont then change this way. They can learn something socially, but one it is learned they wont change the way they do it. Thus, cultural behaviors amongst chimps are much less likely to develop/ become elaborate as they are not adjusting what they are doing. They’re developing behavioral patterns through social learning and imitation but they are not able to elaborate on these and make changes one they exist.

Question 27

why is it probable that humans can develop more and more complex culture and chimps cant?

Answer 27

o In order to change what you’re doing to make it better you have to be able to think about the way you think about what you’re doing (meta-represent it ) and hold all this in head. Probably chimps don’t have that representation to start adjusting things e.g. comparing two methods in head.

Question 28

but what is the problem with learning through imitation only?

Answer 28

If imitation is such a good idea – who will act as an individual learner? (Rogers, 1989) Why would anyone act as an individual learner themselves in order to allow culture to cumulatively get better if everyone can get by with social learning

Question 29

what is the suggested explanation for why individuals would still act as a individual learner?

Answer 29

o But, people might be selective in their imitation, and/or individual learners might get special privilege (Boyd & Richerson, 1994)
– We idolise ‘good’ examples (cultural icons)
– We have a strong willingness to conform (Milgram, 1974!)

– Frequency dependent selection type thing- most people will be social learners most of the time and sometimes individual learners whereas others should really to be individual learners most of the time as they’re the ones creating all the extra skills and knowledge base which allows the rest of the population to thrive. The rest of the population can only thrive if they are copying the right people at a reasonable rate.

Question 30

what needs to be done to fully understand how cultural transmission works?

Answer 30

If were going to try and understand what culture is and how it works, we need to decide in what way we can try and quantify it in the same way we quantify other things that evolve.

Question 31

what is bio evolution based on? and how does this link to culture?

Answer 31

• Biological evolution is based on the replication of DNA (in genes) through generations
• Social scientists have resisted partitioning culture into component units, in the same way as DNA, as they argue that culture operates as a whole.

Question 32

when can we push the analogy of a gene and a meme

Answer 32

But as long as treating it as an analogy and not an absolute thing we can push the analogy to a certain extent  Dawkins popularised idea of thinking about behaviour from gene based view.

Question 33

who proposed the idea of a meme

Answer 33

Dawkins (1976)

Question 34

what is Dawkins argument?

Answer 34

His argument is that we can think about operating through selection for certain memes over others in the same way that biological evolution is about the selection of some genes over others within the population.

Question 35

what may memes be subject to?

Answer 35

Subject to their own selection

Question 36

give and example of culture evolving

Answer 36

Evolution of the teddy bear? (driven by predisposition to neotenous faces) (Hinde & Barden, 1985; Morris et al., 1995). Bias in what people liked to look at in a teddy bear which influenced what people bought. People bought more cute baby like looking bears and because those have been more successful producers were more likely to make cute bears which became more exaggerated.

Question 37

give an e.g. of genes being adaptive

Answer 37

• Genetic adaptation = Sickle-cell trait (West/Central Africa) (Weisenfeld, 1967) genetic mutations which stop people dying from malaria. Red blood cells that are harder for malaria to colonize. Advantage of being resistant to malaria vastly outweighs risk of sickle-cell anemia.
o Genetic adaptation to malaria
o Heterozygous= resistant to malaria
o Homozygous= thalassemia (sickle-cell anemia) (fatal blood condition)

Question 38

how may cultural adaption be a compliment to genetic adaption? and what overall is this an example of?

Answer 38

• frequency of this trait depends on the farming practices
o higher frequency of sickle-cell trait where yam farming occurs (trees are removed allowing pools of water to develop thus +mosquitos and +malaria) thus more malaria and then in turn more sickle-cell genes. Thus a cultural practice is creating a scenario in which a particular gene is more advantageous than others=

culture shaping genes.

Question 39

give an e.g. of culture as an adaption

Answer 39

Behavioural adaptions in the Mediterranean (Sardinia) (Brown, 1986)
• Transhumance – livestock flock in lowlands in winter, and highlands in summer- rules about where flocks should be at different times of year.
• Highlands mosquito free, but poor grazing
• Strict rules on who can go into the malaria areas in summer (no women, children) – but the meme manifests itself without knowledge (‘evil-eye’)- what they are actually doing is protecting the population from malaria (a biological threat)

Question 40

what overall can be said about genetics culture and malaria response

Answer 40

In some populations you get genetic responses and in others you get behavioural responses and these are converging to protect populations. Anti-malaria strategies are an example of convergence of genetic and behavioural traits in the population.

Question 41

but what can some cultural traits be?

Answer 41

highly maladaptive

Question 42

give an e.g. of maladaptive traits

Answer 42

• Cigarette smoking
• Drug use
• Contraception (think of it as a good thing but not good for maximising reproductive success)
• Extreme female thinness (e.g. heroin chique- why was this seen as valuable)
• Demographic transition? (why do we have smaller families than we need to)

Question 43

what question does maladaptive traits give rise to?

Answer 43

So why would culture, if culture is adaptive, produce behaviours that seem to run counter to our genetic fitness.

Question 44

e.g. of highly maladaptive cultural practice

Answer 44

Kuru (neurodegenerative prion disease)
• Endemic among the Fore (New Guinea). Resulted from cannibalism/ passed on from cannibalism. Funerial cannibalism when someone died.
• Latency to symptoms 2-23 years (when you can start getting ill after catching)
• Fore believed kuru was due to sorcery, refused to change eating practices forced to by government.
• Short term benefit
o Cannibalism provided protein when rise of agriculture reduced game and population was growing
• Only women dismembered and ate the corpses. Male warriors believed it made them vulnerable in combat (imposition?)
• Highly maladaptive behaviour and yet still doing it and unwilling to disengage from behaviour causing problems.

Question 45

what do we need to do to understand how cultural aberrations occur?

Answer 45

In order to try and understand how that happens, but also to what extent things like that are aberrations (deviations) versus a normal result of culture, we need to think about what our model of culture really is and how do we think cultural evolution is really working.

Question 46

what have researchers developed to understand underlying process of cultural evolution?

Answer 46

Researchers have developed mathematical models to understand the underlying processes of cultural evolution

Question 47

how do models of culture differ

Answer 47

Three main approaches that differ in the extent to which culture is influenced by/interacts with genetic fitness.

• Each of these think about culture and genes interacting in different ways and therefore all produce different answers to the question of whether culture is inherently adaptive or can it be more often really mal-adaptive.

Question 48

models of culture proposed

Answer 48

• The dual inheritance model
• Extended phenotype models
• Phenogenotype Co-evolutionary models

Question 49

who developed the dual-inheritance model?

Answer 49

Boyd & Richerson (1985, 2005)

Question 50

talk about the dual-inheritance model

Answer 50

• Genes and memes are functionally independent
• Memes have neutral genetic fitness overall- being able to pass on cultural information they think on aggregate across everyone is neither beneficial nor costly to us now that we’ve got it. Therefore, of course stupid things can happen because it is happening independent of our genes and thus there is nothing holding back bad cultural practices and our choices.

Question 51

what are the stages of the dual inheritance model?

Answer 51

1. Something changes in the genes that enables cultural transmission,
2. once you have this transmission, we then start to get culture that exists independently of the genes of the individuals carrying the culture.
3. Natural and sexual selection then change what is in the gene pool over time
4. Whilst cultural selection via biased transmission (imitation) and guided variation (invention), by selecting some variants over others then changes whats in the cultural pool and this is passed down through generations
5. What we then have at our point is a dual inheritance of our genetic and cultural inheritance. And both of these get to us through independent routes.

Question 52

talk about learning bias and dual inheritance model

Answer 52

Types of learning bias- There is a dihuge literature on learning biases but there is evidence of content-based biases- some things are easier to learn and remember and thus are more likely to stay in culture pool. Frequency based bias- people are more likely to imitate what is common practice, we tend to copy highest-frequency option because if it is high frequency it must be successful. Model based biases- imitate successful people because if they’re prestigious/ successful then they must have obtained this through a successful route.
But… these biases won’t always produce the most successful outcome- some people may have prestige through routes that have nothing to do with the thing being copied and therefore is not a good idea to copy yet people still do it. Likewise, the most common may not be the most successful but you have that bias so you do it anyway.
Hence these oppositional memes (the memes that work in opposition to genetic fitness) can absolutely arise. And because genes and culture are independent there is no constraint on these oppositional memes (the controversial part- the idea that there is absolutely no constraint on oppositional memes without effecting or being constrained by genetic evolution and the other arguments go into this point and shake it up). That is their argument.

Question 53

who developed the extended phenotype model?

Answer 53

Dawkins (1982)

Question 54

talk about the extended phenotype model

Answer 54

• Genetic and memetic (cultural) fitnesses are seen as closely related
• The success of memes depends in the long term strictly on how they affect the genetic fitness of the organism (culture will always operate to the benefit of genetic fitness). Culture enables people most of the time to increase their genetic fitness and that’s why the genes that support cultural learning have been carried throughout a population because those with these genes have done well

Question 55

who argues about drives in relation to extended phenotype model and what do they say

Answer 55

• Durham (1991) argues that have two drives, primary drive (need to be warm, secure, fed ect) and secondary (learned) those primary drives are what underly everything that we do and our secondary drives, that we learn, (inc. cultural behaviours) will always, if there is a clash with primary drive, give way to the primary drive.

o most memes are neutral or enhance fitness
o oppositional memes are rare
 Primary (evolved) drives should win in clashes with secondary (learned) drive
 Brains selected for ‘good’ learning? The fact that we have huge brains, and a body that supports level of energy going to brain suggests that it is on average producing better fitness outcomes and thus oppositional means should be relatively rare because our brains are designed to learn info and for the bulk of human history this has been good for us.

• Neurological processes develop sensitively in order to allow cultural elements to be conveyed

Question 56

give an e.g. of primary and secondary drives

Answer 56

o E.g. copy something to a certain point in time, skip breakfast because you will lose weight and look better for a while but eventually will get hungry (despite clinical literature that doesn’t show this)

Question 57

under extended phenotype why would maladaptive traits arise?

Answer 57

1) unawareness
2) counter forces
3) imposition by powerful, coercion
4) Adaptations

Question 58

what is the main thing Durham would argue about maladaptive traits?

Answer 58

• Main thing Durham would argue is that these are not typical of human behaviour and are rare but most of the time culture is beneficial to out genomes.

Question 59

give e.g’s of unawareness in explaining maladaptions

Answer 59

unaware that unprotected sex causes AIDS
 Fore unaware of cannibalism-illness link because removed in time.
 People engage in unsafe practices because they don’t know.

Question 60

give e.g. of counter-forces opposing behavior change in extended phenotype model

Answer 60

 E.g. AIDS aware but Catholicism prevents condom use- another cultural pressure imposing a practice.
 Without cannibalism the Fore would starve (primary versus secondary drive, starve or eat something that will make you ill in 20 years)

Question 61

give e.g. of imposition by powerful/ coercion in extended phenotype model

Answer 61

In Fore men enforce cannibalism on women- putting others at risk and keeping safe meat to self.

Question 62

give e.g. of adaptations in extended phenotype model

Answer 62

• Adaptations (e.g. desire) uncoupled from their ‘natural’ consequences (childbirth) by cultural technology. Primary drive to have sex (now a conflict between drive to have children and drive to have enough to eat and provide). • Adaptations (e.g. desire) uncoupled from their ‘natural’ consequences (childbirth) by cultural technology. Primary drive to have sex (now a conflict between drive to have children and drive to have enough to eat and provide).

Question 63

what does the phenogenotype co-evolutionary models propose?

Answer 63

• Genes and memes are semi-independent- genes evolve, memes evolve but they also change the selection environments for each other. So the thing that will most win out is the thing that maximises both the genetic and cultural fitness of the individual.

propose bi-directional effects of genetics

Question 64

what do mathematical models of phenogenotype do?

Answer 64

o Mathematical models taking into account genotype and phenotype of parents and offspring

Question 65

what does the phenogenotype model propose that genes do?

Answer 65

constrain culture

Question 66

talk about genes constraining culture

Answer 66

• Evolved psychological adaptations resulting from natural selection constrain memes (cultural variants)
• If have different cultural variants the ones that will be selected are the ones that fit better with pre-existing genetic biases.

Question 67

give an e.g. of genes constraining culture?

Answer 67

colour categorisation (Lumsden, 1985)
o	Languages vary in the number of colour terms they user but the increase follows logical steps (some very few some many)
o	– light/ dark + and then get a small number of other colours and then more 
o	But how does this pattern connect to the way that colour is seen? 
o	Berlin and Kay (1969) elicited colour terms from native speakers of 20 languages and asked them to map these terms to colour patches.- they found that there were four major groupings corresponding to standard opponent process theory vision: red-green, blue-yellow. 
o	The cultural practice ie. naming of colours corresponds to what we know about colour vision. 
o	Lumsden (1985) then used habituation technique to see where 16-week old infants’ boundaries between colours lay. 
o	Found that infants have a category range in which they will regard all wave lengths as basically the same thing between red, yellow, green and blue. This seems to cluster with the ethnographic distribution of words that cluster with each of these colours. 
•	So the argument is that colour terminology is shaped by the perceptual biases that we are born with in terms of what we can visually distinguish as one colour versus another. That we won’t get these terms arising unless they reflect what we can see from a very early age. patterns of culture in this case language that are shaped by pre-existing biological perception biases.

Question 68

what is stage two of genophenotype co-evolution

Answer 68

2nd step then is that culture then in turn can shape our genes (this is the unique bit to this theory) in that they think these are happening simultaneously, and potentially with equal amounts of selective power on each other.

Question 69

what examples are there for culture shaping genes?

Answer 69

Lactose intolerance
and
sickle cell anaemia

Question 70

talk about lactose intolerance and genes shaping culture

Answer 70

Lactose tolerance (Durham, 1991)
•	Most humans can’t digest lactose as adults (normal pattern is that you stop producing lactase around the time that natural weening stops) because don’t need breast milk.
•	But modern Europeans can- happened circa 10,000 years ago where a group of humans decided that they wanted to carry on drinking milk as adults from animals rather than people. 
•	In order to keep digesting this means have to continue producing lactase as a adult. 
•	Genetic mutation to tolerate milk, may have co-evolved with cultural practice of cattle keeping, and vitamin D deficiency.

Question 71

talk about sickle cell aneemia and genes shaping culture

Answer 71

Sickle cell anaemia (Durham, 1991)
• Spread of sickle-cell trait was facilitated by yam farming (pressure to evolve malaria resistance due to increased risk imposed by increase in malarial habitat)
• Clear evidence that cultural practice shapes genetic evolution.

Question 72

what do we also need to consider in genophenotype co-evolution models? and what is this referred to

Answer 72

gene-meme coevolution: Niche construction

It isn’t just that genes shape culture and culture shapes genes but we can think about this dynamic as being how culture will change the ecological niche of the individual which will change natural selection, which will then change what happens culturally. Culture is effecting genes in particular by altering the environment in which we live, ecological sometimes social. ‘Fitness’ is about the ‘fit’ between organism and local ecology

Question 73

who came up with the idea of niche construction

Answer 73

Laland et al., 2000

Question 74

what is niche construction an extension of?

Answer 74

Extension of Dawkins ‘extended phenotype’ (birds’ nests, rabbits’ burrows, beavers’ dams, spiders’ webs)

Question 75

explain niche construction

Answer 75

We have natural selection which then changes the genetic inheritance we then change the environment (niche construction by humans) this changes the ecology in which we live which alters the culture (semantic information) we use in the ecology, cultural and ecological environment combined creates the selection pressures for the new generation, and that new generation then shapes their environment based on their genetic predispositions.

Question 76

give an e.g. for niche construction

Answer 76

Natural selection for high levels of intelligence and certain pressures on neonatal survival can create niche construction for neonatal medicine new ways of helping babies to survive, thus leads to enhanced survival of premature babies and thus a relaxation of natural selection because heads can get bigger and bigger and so can brains, pelvises can get smaller (very tiny women can have babies with big men and not worry about death in child birth).

Question 77

what is the issue with obstetrics

Answer 77

Some people argue the obstetric dilemma isn’t about skull size but is about maternal energy levels and that the mother can’t actually sustain a child any more. But it also does look like our brains exist at this cliff-edged fitness, and what we seem to be doing is existing at that cliff edge. Obstetric medicine is enabling us to have babies whose heads are enormous and babies that are enormous. Very well fed and can induce early if baby is too big. We are tipping over what would be the cliff edge if obstetric medicine wasn’t there to hold us up. As long as we have this modern obstetric medicine we will be fine

Question 78

what other examples are given of niche construction and who by?

Answer 78

Other examples of ‘niche construction’ (Laland et al. 2000)

meat eating
agriculture

cultural inventions

patriarchy

Question 79

talk about meat eating and niche construction

Answer 79

• Meat-eating then later cooking reduction of human gut size  calorie ‘savings’ used to fuel increased cortical size brain expansion and cultural enhancement. Save energy in terms of digestion.

Question 80

talk about agriculture and niche construction

Answer 80

• Agriculture resources easier to monopolise high status men utilise cultural ideas (inc. religion) to enhance RS via patriarchy and polygyny. Once you have agriculture (about 10,000 years ago, what you have for the first time is monopoliseable resources which are not possible if foraging. What you then have is individuals who monopolise more than others and then if high-status individual can use culture to protect own position and use this to increase reproductive success.

Question 81

talk about patriarchy and niche construction

Answer 81

o ‘The evolutionary origins of patriarchy’- Smuts 1995- in which she essentially argues that patriarchy is a way for high status men to create a cultural niche in which they massively increase their reproductive success through polygyny. And any women who are closely allied to those men/ who share genetic interests with those men (mothers and sisters) of course also have a high interest in maintaining this cultural practice because it enhances their reproductive success and their inclusive fitness also. Chimps are promiscuous but also polygynous also (alpha male dominates) if chimps were able to evoke cultural and religious ideas to reinforce the right of the alpha male to mate with more of the females they would do so but they don’t because they don’t have the culture we do.
o Uses culture to reinforce the reproductive interests of some individuals which then changes selection pressure because e.g. no longer monogamous but potentially polygynous (at least for the genes of those at the top)

Question 82

talk about cultural inventions and niche construction

Answer 82

• Cultural inventions (clothing, central heading, air conditioning) shield us/ counteract from harsh natural selection pressures. (Counteractive niche-construction)

Question 83

e.g. of niche destruction

Answer 83

• Global warming and fossil fuels? (Niche destruction)- if we get to a point of vast climate change would vastly change the natural selection environment in which we live.