Module: Culture Evolution Flashcards
Video: Thaipusam- a journey of devotion
o Thaipusam is one of the largest Indian religious festivals in south east Asia (Hindu).
o Why is it celebrated?
o Is celebrates to honour the day the goddess paraviti gave her son (lord murugan) a divine spear (the vel) to destroy the evil demon surapadman.
o How is thaipusam celebrated?
o With a 14km pilgrimage walk that devotes make whilst carrying various offerings to be presented to lord murugan.
o Offerings are referred to as Kavadis and are carried on people’s heads or shoulders as an act of gratitude, penance or to be granted wishes of healing education and being with child.
What are Kavadis?
o Are a form of physical burden that devotes carry during thaipusam. The simplest form is a wooden arch that people wear and is decorated with images of lord murugan, peacock feathers and flowers.
o Other forms are paal kavida which is a pot of milk and paneer kavadi is a pot filled with sanctified water- these two forms are specifically used for prayers once they reach the temple.
Why do people pierce their bodies?
o For penance, wishes or gratitude (same reasons as the other offerings).
o The original tradition was a small piercing of the tongue in order to keep silent and focus on the prayers. However, in the recent decades devotees have been getting hooks pierced into their backs under a state of trance to hold offerings which are then carried on their backs to the temple.
Theory: Extreme Rituals and Social Bonding
o Shared experience of pain bonds social groups together.
o Rituals like these evolved and persisted because they produce groups that work better together for long periods of time.
o But how can we test this theory? with an experiment
two types of experiments?
(A) True Experiment:
a. An experimental condition is compared to a control condition.
b. Participants are randomly assigned to a condition by the researcher.
c. Participants are randomly sampled from the population.
d. High experimental control over variables.
(B) Quasi-Experimental:
a. An experimental condition is required but a control condition is optional (although preferred).
b. Random assignment is NOT possible because the variable is an attribute of the participant or otherwise not subject to experimental control.
c. Participants are (often) NOT randomly sampled from the population.
d. Experimenter only has control of some of the variables.
*ALL EXPERIMENTS STUDYING CULTURE ARE QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL (unless you believe in
genetic evolution over cultural evolution).
How do we know our experimental design is valid?
look at the balance between internal and external validity.
Internal and external vailidty of field research and experiments?
What is a field experiment?
(A) Experiment:
a. Randomisation and control at the cost of external validity (internal > external validity)
b. Independent variable is manipulated to determine causal effect on dependent variable.
(B) Fieldwork:
a. Minimal researcher control but maximal external validity (external > internal) because the behaviour is “real” (i.e., naturally occurring).
(C) Field Experiment:
a. Is the balance between field observation and experiments (i.e. causality from an experiment and the external validity of a filed)
b. Attempts to match the conditions in which the beavhior naturally occurs in the real world.
c. Compramises between validity and control.
d. End goal: to make a causal inference of the “real” reality (outside the lab).
Extreme Ritual Field Experiment: Summer saltus coal/fire walk.
o From an evolutionary perspective rituals are a puzzling concept because they require a serious cost (harm to self/pain) with the only reasonable function they can think of is to reinforce social cohesion within a group.
o How do you measure togetherness?
o Anthropology: ask their elders. Elder, his son, another son, his daughter, then a grandson, then a nephew walk across the fire at midnight.
o Why do it? Been doing it since I was a boy, I will do it till the day I die.
o Both elders and younger generation are equally passionate about their traditions and say it is an amazing feeling to partake in this event.
o The heart rate of the fire walers and spectators was measured to see if we can quantifiably measure this intense feeling.
o Everyone can watch but only villagers can walk on the coals.
o People carry someone on their backs as they do it.
o A party begins after the fire walking ends.
o Members of the village (fire walkers and spectators) show almost identical patterns of arousal during the event. In contrast, on non-genetically related spectators do not show this pattern of arousal.
o Twins patterns of arousal are almost identical.
o Arousal is strong enough to give someone a heart attack.
Extreme Ritual Field Experiment: Kavadi (thaipusam festival)
o High ordeal (more extreme kavadi) lead to higher offerings to the community (cooperation) as a function of perceived pain.
o In other words, the more extreme the ritual, the more likely the community will band together.
Evolution-Specific Methods and Concerns:
Example 1- how does culture evlove? what theory and method is used?
- How does culture evolve?
- Cumulative culture (multilevel theory)
- Mathematical modelling
Mathematical Modelling:
what is mathematical modelling?
an equation is used to form ___.
example with nails and hammers.
Mathematical modelling:
Is used to map out how adaptive dynamics work. It breaks down complex systems into smaller pieces that are easier for human minds to understand.
Use an equation to formulate a theory or hypothesis about how the researcher thinks the world works.
Example:
suppose that the use of hammers, denoted by h, is predicted by the Presence of nails, denoted by n. Specifically, every nail increases hammer usage by 1%.
Make the equation: h = .1*n
Therefore, the use of hammers = 1 when there are 100 nails (i.e., .1 x 100 = 1).
We can use this equation to make a theory: we can go out into the world and test whether the increasing presence of nails increases hammer usage.
In Mathematical Modelling:
The numbers make the model ___, the maths provides ____ ___ to articulate specific ____ and hypothesis about how adaptive mechanisms play oit in highly complex systems.
The numbers make it specific, so the use of maths provides a clear language to articulate specific theories and hypothesis about how adaptive mechanisms play out in highly complex systems.
what is a model and what is the goal of modelling?
Model = means of describing relationships within the (psychological) phenomenon.
Goal = understanding or describing the phenomenon rather than making a grand statement of “truth”.
Important to remember that models are an approximation of reality….
models (in the theory sense) are approximations of reality, they do not need to be entirely accurate or fully complete. They just need to be good enough to do what we need. This is true for any statistical model (regression, factor analysis, structural equation models etc.). They’re all approximations, our best guess, about how we think the world works. They provide the best explanation based on the limited information we currently have.
Example: Research using mathematical modelling-
Demography & Technology in Tasmania
observation.
hypothesis.
test.
results.
Observation: tool kit complexity in Tasmania at the time of colonialization was smaller than in mainland Australia (i.e., tasmania experienced rapid decrease in population size during the ice age which cut them off from mainland Australia. This lead to the loss of specialized skills within their community as a means to preserve more basic skills).
Hypothesis: if communities need a certain population density of cultural models to learn from, then loss of population size during isolation at the end of the ice age would have led to tool kit complexity loss.
Test: make a mathematical model!
Henrich designed a model to describe how complex skills transmitted as a function of population size. His model suggests that, when the population falls below a certain threshold, complex skills begin to get lost because specialists are no longer around to carry the knowledge.
