WEEK 11 Flashcards
What is cultural evolution?
Concept that cultures change over time
What makes human culture so unique?
Humans are the only cultural animals.
- We focus on the elderly passing on their knowledge to the younger generation
Why are cultures important?
- Rules guide behavior
- Language & communication
- Teaching and learning
- Specialization
- Progress
What do the Sociocultural Theories believe?
- Culture determines human behavior
- Culture gets full credit for social goods and bads
What does Evolutionary Psychology believe?
- Genes determine human behavior
- Processes that increased survival and reproduction were passed on
- Genes get full credit for social goods and bads
Which perspective is true Sociocultural theories or Evolutionary Psychology?
BOTH!
What is the Cultural Animal perspective?
Combining the perspectives of Evolutionary Psychology & Sociocultural Theories.
- Evolution provides basic goals and what you have to work with (body, mind’s abilities)
- All cultures provides food, shelter, etc.
- Culture shapes HOW you achieve these goals
- Cultures vary in the type of food, shelter, etc.
What are the universal things all cultures have?
Etics
* Food
* Rules
* Ownership
* Shelter
* Mating
* Child-rearing
* Traditions and rituals
* Etc.
What are Etics?
Culture Universals
What are Emics?
Specific versions of culture universals
e.g.
Types of shelter depending on the environment (made of stone or cloth)
Why are there cultural universals?
- Evolution (Language)
- our minds have evolved to directly solve that problem (learn a language)
- Common solution to frequent problems
- Rules of the road
- Housing
- Cooking
- Writing
- Morality?
What was found by Tooby & Cosmides about cheater detection?
People easily detect cheaters, but abstract logic is hard!
Why is religion culturally universal?
- Religion is more than belief in supernatural things
Traditions
- provide connection with history
Rituals
- Connection with other people
Group cohesion
- Religion a source of connection, contacts, friends, mates
Source of meaning (epistemic)
- Banish the spectre of our inevitable death
- Purpose in life
Provides Morality
* Strong need to be a good person
What is WEIRD?
- Western
- Educated
- Industrialized
- Rich
- Democratic
Characteristics of WEIRD societies?
- Universal norms, values
- WEIRD cultures developed wider and wider sphere of values
- E.G. don’t murder anyone (not just people within our group)
- “all men are created equal”
- Individualism (weaker kin ties)
What is the reason theorised behind WEIRD societies widening the sphere of values?
- Counter intuitively, widening the sphere of values may stem from breaking up close family ties
=> Catholic church banned cousin marriage - Areas where this happened earlier: higher trust, more economic prosperity,
- research suggests that as cousin marriage declines –> democracy increases
What is true about NON-WEIRD societies compared to WEIRD ones?
Non-WEIRD cultures have local norms and values for their group
* “we don’t eat pork”
* “women must cover their heads”
* “Thou shalt not murder!” (one of us)
* “Marry someone from our group”
What are WEIRD societies characterised with?
Increased analytical thinking
- Abstract principles
- Rather than local rules and tradition
Increased concern with timekeeping
- Time is a resource
Increased impersonal prosociality
- “All men are created equal”
Decreased interpersonal prosociality
- “not my problem” “Not In My Backyard
What was MLK method for civil rights?
- Nonviolence strategy
- Change hearts and minds
- Change moral compass
How do you practice Nonviolent resistance?
- Must maintain nonviolence
- Must disrupt status quo
- Convince world that status quo is wrong
Define Emotion
– a SPECIFIC evaluative reaction to some event
* I feel sad because I got dumped
Define Mood
Mood – general disposition or state, not linked to event
* I’m in a bad mood
Define Affect
Affect – valence of evaluation toward an event
* I have a negative affective response to alligators
Is a component of emotion: How positive/negative feeling
What are the two components of affect?
Valence and Arousal
Circumplex Model of Emotion:
+ valence = +ve emotions
- valence = -ve emotions
high arousal = excited/ high intensity emotion
low arousal = calm / low intensity emotion
What are the two functions of affect?
Approach/Avoid
Fast/Slow
What are the four quadrants of the Circumplex Model of Emotion?
High Arousal + Positive valence = e.g. receiving a strawberry dessert
Low Arousal + Positive valence = receiving a bowl of rice
High Arousal + Negative valence = seeing a lion in the city
Low Arousal + Negative valence = A danger sign
Can emotions be “wrong”?
Yes
- Display vs. feeling
Display different to the emotion we’re feeling
e.g. fake smile
Misattribution of Arousal?
- Attribute feeling to wrong cause
.e.g. the jogging study
What did the jogging study by White et al show?
Displayed the Misattribution of Arousal:
- Men ran in place for 15 seconds vs. 120 seconds
- Saw a video of an attractive woman or unattractive woman they expected to meet
Physically aroused group (120 seconds) found themselves to be more attracted to to women vs the non-physically aroused (15 sec)
Digust?
- Disgust is a moral emotion
- Originally evolved for avoiding rotten food
- Major motivator in morality
- Keeps us away from immoral acts
Emotional Contagion
The idea that we experience the emotion that we see displayed by someone else:
Mirror Neurons
- basis of emotional contagion
* Active when doing or observing
* Active when feeling or observing emotional display
e.g. yawning
Mimicry: all birds flying away when one does
Mimicry?
We tend to like people who do similar things to us
- related to charisma of global leaders: understand and mimic emotions of a crowd
Empathy and emotional contagion
Understanding another person’s emotions and caring
- Emotional contagion aids understanding
- Also knowledge of context
What did Paul Ekman find in his study about emotional expression?
- Hired actors to display emotions for photos
- People in every culture around the world had above chance (50%) at identifying emotions
However it is much difficult when the task is to guess the emotion with no matching task as done it Paul’s experiment
What did Lisa Feldman-Barrett argue about emotional expression?
- Expression not universal
- Emotion is an interpretation and construction based on emotional ingredients and context (e.g. physiological state and context)
e.g. she experienced butterflies and high heart rate on date = assumed it was love
- turned out to be indigestion
Meta Emotion
- Thoughts about your emotions
e.g.
“I shouldn’t feel this happy during grieving”
“I shouldn’t feel this sad when I just won”
How do you increase happiness?
- Attempting to feel happier often backfires
- Compare to goal, fail
- Instead, do enjoyable activities, with people you love
- Happiness may result
