Chapter 3 Flashcards
What are some ways that ecology/environment affect cultural variation?
- Small differences can have large effects (Proximal and distal causes)
- Transmitted/ and evoked culture
What are proximal versus distal causes in terms of how small differences in ecologies can have large effects?
- Proximal- have direct and immediate relations with their effects. More recent
- Distal causes are initial differences that lead to effects over long periods. Often happens through indirect relations. More distant causes
What is the difference between evoked versus transmitted culture? How did the Irish turf cutters exemplify both types of culture? Which might be more important?
Evoked culture- says that all people, regardless of where they are from have certain biologically encoded behavioral repertoires. Anyone in the area will experience the same thing. But if you move away you may not bring it with you.
-Transmitted culture- particular culture practices through social learning or by modeling others who live near them. You travel with it, it can change but you bring it with you and it is passed down.
Turf cutters- they do all the turf cutting by hand, however not everyone today does it like that anymore. They learned this from their parents as kids and it was passed down to them.
How and why do the following cultural ideas spread?
Communicable, useful, emotional, minimally conterintuitive
Communicable? Stereotypes? Dynamic social theory?
Sharing of ideas through language
Stereotypes: shared ideas of people about groups in cultural context
-Dynamic social theory:Individuals come to influence each other and do so in terms of how often the individuals interact. Few relationships= fewer people have direct influence on them
Useful
Humans have innate drive to help others and share useful information
Emotional
Draw attention towards/ to people who have gone through lots of emotion or share lots of emotion to others.
-Study of drinking rat: Study asked who would spread the story and they found out that the more dramatic and emotional the story the more likely they’d pass the story on. Because it might be useful info that might change behaviors. Contemporaty/urban legends.
Minimally Counterintuitive
Statements that violate expectations but not too crazy to be believed. Retelling American folk tales participants could remember more elements of counterintuitive versus intuitive values. If its way too crazy won’t remember or if it s too dry (need 2-3 counter intuitive’s to remember)
How and why have cultures been changing?
More interconnected, more individualistic, more intelligent
Interconnected
Sharing ideas among other cultures on various topics; social media.
-we are becoming more judgmental and traditional and choosing traditions.
Individualistic
Emphasis on independence and personal goals over interactions and collective goals. More making it on your own before what is good for the group.
Ex: college students encouraged to move out, increase divorce rate in japan
(We do what we need to do for ourselves)
Intelligent
- Becoming smarter across the cultures.
- Flynn effect– IQ’s are decreasing
- Learning more from the pop-culture and technology than what was avalliable before
- Getting more education to stay competitive
- limit: not reading as much so vocab is going down
- TV shows are becoming more complex
In what ways have early conditions have disproportionate influence on cultural evolution?
Cultural differences can persist across time. Each culture is following a path with a distinctive origin.
Ex: early settlements in Boston and Philadelphia still affect culture in those cities
What did the study on the autokinetic effect find in terms of a confederate having an effect on participants several generations later?
-Each person in the dark room had to report if the small light on the wall had any movement and if so how far? Keep in mind the light was fixed on the wall
(study)
-The first person was a confederate and reported teh light moved 16 inches (very large). there is so much ambiguity so people started to conform to others judgements. All the other participants “started to see the light move 16 inches”. The confederate then left as a new participant was brought in. The confederates effect lasted for 5 generations.
What is the pluralistic ignorance, and how has it affected the persistence of cultural ideas?
Pluralistic ignorance- is the tendency for people to collectively misinterpret the thoughts that underlie other people’s behavior.
(We try to figure out what people are thinking but really we only have to go off of is what people tell us or our observations on how they act/behave)
- Pluralistic ignorance is relevant to cultural persistence because people are influenced by what they “beleive” other people feel vs. rather than by what people actually feel
