Lecture 1: Nature- culture- self

Question 1

How does a person become a certain way?

Answer 1

Context, development (past), experiences and how they act (present), goals and motivation (future) all make up a person

Question 2

History and narratives

Answer 2

Human groups receive cultural histories due to continued transmission of conventions. Oral and written traditions about who we are and how we came to be developed. We tell others these stories to change our understanding of who we are. Can be located in larger histories of multiple ‘we’s’ to which we belong.

Question 3

What are the 3 perspectives on personality?

Answer 3

Universal human nature is a new organism in nature
Singular human life is a new subject of an individual life.
Particular human cultures is a new person in a culture

Question 4

What are some common confusions and mistakes?

Answer 4

• naturalizing cultural categories
• reducing every aspect to cultural narratives
• forgetting about the cultural and subjective position of the author (influences of the author)
• treating all accounts as equally subjective opinions

Question 5

What are the 2 steps in the evolution of human cooperation?

Answer 5

Step 1: obligating collaborative foraging
- humans have strong skills for collaborating with another due to joint intentionality
- intersubjectivity (great capacity for shared goals and shared mental states which is a natural tendency for humans)
Step 2: group mindedness
- capability for conventions (pre-existing conventional structures which individuals grow into and become aware of)
- introduced to symbolic order which is the universe of signs and meanings for human societies

Question 6

How do schemata emerge?

Answer 6

Universal human nature: collaboration and group-mindedness which leads to cultural histories influences the nurturing and learning history. This leads to schemata as a memory structure develops in repeated interactions with others that has pre-conceptions about the self, others and the world.

Question 7

What is the psychological self?

Answer 7

Reflexive arrangement of subjective I and constructed me which evolves and expands over life course. Includes messages from others and the first person perspective.

Question 8

Development of the self (McAdams)

Answer 8

Begins with the actor which is what society says we are, then identity is built on the performance in that. Involves semantic representations of traits, social roles and other features that result in and from repeated performances on the social stage of life. Involves persona, masker and karakter which is what your meaning is in the perspective of others. Involves traits and roles.
Agent involves goals and values, making choices and move forward in life with self-determination and goal-direction. Only understood as motivated agents much later even though agency is there earlier.
Self as author involves developing a narrative identity which integrates the reconstructed past, experienced present and imagined future. Contains all self stories (internalized and evolved)

Question 9

What is involved in the Life Story Interview?

Answer 9

A. Life chapters which is thinking of your life as a book or novel
B. Key Scenes in the Life Story which is focussing on key scenes which stand out, it is specific and took place at a particular time and place

Question 10

First nature and second nature

Answer 10

First nature is how universal human nature can impact the individual life story, while second nature is how cultural histories can influence the individual life story

Question 11

Joint intentionality

Answer 11

species-specific capacity to participate in collaborative activities involving two (or a few) agents.