Midterm 341 Faroza Notes - Google Docs PDF
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This document discusses human biological and cultural variations. It explains how different racial and ethnic groups have distinct physical characteristics and how cultural context shapes individual experiences and behavior.
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The prototype of a homosapians appeared million years ago ○ THEY HAVE CHANGED BODY STRUCTURE, shape, skin color, immune system etc. while migrating from one place to another There are different races among homosapians and each racial and ethnic grou...
The prototype of a homosapians appeared million years ago ○ THEY HAVE CHANGED BODY STRUCTURE, shape, skin color, immune system etc. while migrating from one place to another There are different races among homosapians and each racial and ethnic groups have their own physical characteristics such as being fan of heavy metal which comes from UK so they have caucasian facial features ○ But when you go to other continent there are different type of facial feature with darker skin compared to those in europe ○ In Japan, people have pinkish or yellowish skin tones while others are similar to Africans or caucasian, and etc. This map was taken in karaoke which is shop that is owned by korean owners and you can sing a song ○ The group he was with consisted of students of many different ethnic backgrounds and at the karaoke they found estimation of the world map and it indicates where people were from ○ He is from tokyo, and a japanese student in front of him pointed towards tokyo He spent in tokyo until 18 years old and then he went to northern part of japan to learn about minority japanese cultures T he facial features and height are different from each others where some are tall and some are short Being canadian you might be exposed to that variety such as being french can be different W e are surrounded by people with different ethnic backgrounds But we have to take into account both cultural variations and cultural universals of human behaviors ○ For Human universals we do see similarities between Japanese Canadians, etc. ○ We are all homosapien so we are all the same species but when you compare the variability amount homosapien with chimpanzeewe canidentify that we human beings are quite similar to each other In the chart there is less genetic variability among different population of human beings compared to the variability among different populations of chimpanzees ○ The left graphs shows the differences among chimpanzees where you can see the (habeedatos) chimpanzees in 3 different locations in africa but the large values indicates that the variability is quite high The right graph shows difference in variability between europe asian and africans ○ The bar is very low which means we are so similar to each other ○ So it's reasonable to state that we share the samebiological characteristicswith other human universals (This is a factor) For many cases general psychologist focus on this aspect that we are the same (there are human universals) so we can investigatethe human mind (basic idea shared by general psychologist) However when you study psychology you have to be careful on how to deal with the issue of cultural universal and variation ○ Why? Because the basic assumptions shared by general psychologist often overemphasize human universal ○ it assumes while we are the same species then we can see all student and profs in the same way W e can identified and find individual differences and you can easily identify cultural variation in human behavior D r. Rick Shweder who was a professor of psychology in chicago university pointed out the weakness of this assumptions: that all humans are the same According to him general psychologist overemphasizethe cultural universals ○ He tried to use one metaphor which is a central processing unit ○ He criticized that psychologist treathuman mind asif they treat the computers and focus on the CPU (central processing systems) His logic is that a key goal of a general psychology is to reveal the universal aspect of the human mind as if computer researchers focus on the function of CPU ○ CPU stands for central processing unit ○ B ut cognitive and perceptual psychologist attempted to try to understand the human psychology by using the computer metaphor Computer processes pieces information ○ Information by itself is the content which is independent from the function of the computer ○ So the information and the computers are different from each other When you want to understand computer process you don’t pay attention to the information but rather the computer and inside of the computer ○ So they investigate how computer works and that it target of the analysis ○ So information is not the target of psychologist research where psychologist want to know universal abstract mind, not the information What the best way to focus on the such universal mind, the computer side, investigate the function of CPU ○ So psychologist want to investigate human mind aka CPU, target inside of you ○ Actual information processing is the target of the analysis not the content or information which is external to the human mind So to do this we have to isolate the target point which the human mind from any type of external factors or external info and instead purely focus on the inside of your head When you think of cultural variation how do you conceptualize it? ○ Majority of psychologist believe that cultural factors is external not so important for analysis rather you should focus on the universal human mind, s uperficially we are different from each other but when you focus inside our brain we can find the universal aspect called human mind ○ Metaphorically the psychologist are looking for the CPU type essence of humans rather than superficial cultural factors ○ This is the main idea by general psychologist mainly cognitive psychologist and perceptual The bottom graph is the diagram of the computer like CPU and the human ○ You are surrounded by a variable external factor which is called noise but if you can get rid of the noise then inside of the noise you can findcore essence of human mind Computer science system focuses on the CPU processing rather than information which is noisy so psychologist focus on the human mind and ignore any external factors including cultural variation because its just noisy and superficial S o what we should do as a cultural psychologist accordinging Shweder cultural psychology … (external information) ○ Mind cannot be separated from external information ○ Content and context is external information which is important ○ Cultural context shapes you and you are participant of culture and shape the culture as well So cultural psychologists share the theoretical assumption that the mind and culture are mutually … ○ … ○ … So you are born in middle of nowhere and are surrounded by caregiver and you learn new language E g. the concept of self esteem is so popular in North America so you must be attuned to the North American society where you are encouraged to like “you” ○ Where you find a positive side of “you” and then you self esteem goes up Eg. If you get an A in class you have an increase in self esteem so North American society put strong emphasis on your sense of self esteem and you are expected to have a high self esteem ○ By sharing the idea with a member of North American society now we are sometimes motivated to complete what they want to do while increasing the self esteem Eg. Sometimes they get depressed when decreasing self esteem like when you get an F in class ○ Along with social structural and culturally constructed concepts you feel happy or sad Since we live in North American society its so obvious for you so its human universal ○ But this is culturally and socially created reality You think that self esteem given an actual entity but its culturally and socially created ○ When you go to another societyself esteem is nothighly emphasize (in other cultures they don’t share idea of self esteem) In other society they give emphasis on another social construct likeself control or self adjustmentor even assessing oneself which often helpsyou to learn some skills ○ In a society that is highly expect people to not too much pay attention to self esteem but rather cooperative and caring with others and not focus on self is highly valued So if people share such an idea it creates social reality in which self control in highly emphasized rather than self esteem ○ To better understand human behavior and psychological process, it is necessary to take into account the culturally created constructand along with these construct use your own social reality you cannot separate that kind of contrast from the processes because its shapes your mind and you are the participant of the culture and you support this shared idea Eg. japanese cultures put its emphasis on calmness and quietness and not miss by any type of positive and negative feelings rather meditate and find nice feeling and have control for you own emotion That not highly valued in North American society rather here you enjoy going to the club and dancing and you feel positive feeling If you know more than one culture like if you refer to your parents from different cultures outside canada then you can understand ○ I f you contrast city culture but culture in canada you must also sense what he (Taka) says actually indeed believable ○ So culture shape you and you also shape culture M aster Yoda is contradictory for example how his size is small but strong so he says size up but does not ○ Yoda is a common name in Japan ○ The way he speaks is wrong order grammatically which is similar to japanese so what yoda say and what japanese say is very similar S hweder discusses that the reason why general psychologist focused on psychological universal while ignoring the social construct ○ accordinging to him the theoretical assumptions shared by general psychologist is so popular in the western academia since ancient greek philosophers so the more highly educated you are then the more likely you will be caught by this kind of way of thinking ○ He pointed out the original idea is from greek philosopher Plato is a classical greek philosopher in 5th century BC where his main idea is that reality is a reflection of higher truth ○ To be a philosopher to a person who have high human mind, though they should be highly motivated to seek for the higher truth rather than the superficial reality ○ Reality is contaminated by noises so you have to get rid of noises to get higher truth So all of the things that surround you is noisy so you have to get rid of this Once you get rid of the noises then you can see the truth so if your highly educated then you should look for the truth in the world and you should be motivated ○ S o that a way that scholars in western academia have believed that things originated from the idea of plato for the past 20 century so the believed that in way to take full advance in our knowledge we should not focus on contaminated noisy reality but rather than the ideal setting then you should be able to understand the real reality not superficial reality Are we able to see signs in types of thinking style shared by people in western society? ○ In science, researchers… It is important as without this procedure the state of all objects are influenced by external factors to better understand the real essence of this material you have to set up nice setting to make inside of the tube in the vacuum then you can find the true function of the material excluding the external factors Conceal an object’s true characteristic which is the scientific way of understanding the world ○ Enlightenment(in humanities) … T his means natural light which means that if you have crystal clear reasoningand if you polish your brain so everythingcan be understood very clearly so then you can betterunderstand realitywhich is called true reality rather than superficial reality So this kind of trend or thinking are called enlightenment philosopher ○ … T his is another philosophical or art movement which draw upon platonism as these philosophers and artist emphasize thathumansare the pure beings Eg. Jack Crosio said that certain people in civilized society are highly contaminated and full with social constraints so instead let's focus on primitive humans that are not surrounded by any type of social constraints ○ so they must live an egalitarian peaceful societywhich is the ideal image where he believed in that if you remove any noisy parts from human being then you can find pure human mentalities which supposed to be peaceful and egalitarian ○ … … Evolutionary theories put emphasizes oninnatenessof inherent factors The research target is focused innate and prewiredpsychological process without any learning experiences Learning skills are not scope of research interest but rather you focus on genetic factors or innateness or inherent because they want to explain human behavior evolutionarily Schwder criticizes the preconception of this views ○ W hat characteristic of the central processing unit and what characteristics human mind shared by general psychologist and how is it similar to what plato says about higher truths The real truth for plato is… ○ … Not complete The truth is somehow not complete features but its abstract CPU is not complete either so general psychologist think that there'sabstract system by the means of human behavior called the human mind Human mind is considered abstract based on general psychologist theory Abstractness is important ○ Invisible Plato says higher truth isinvisibleview when theyrefers to the human mind because the human mind is invisible You cannot see people's mind so plato’s idea and general psychologist idea is similar ○ Plato maintained that the high truth is … … This is stable rather then particular Computer scientists think that the CPU is one stable fixed functioning rather than changing function and psychologist think human mind is stable fixed and invariable ○ There is similarity between platonism and general psychological theory Inherent ○ The discourse of the CPU (agree) in general psychology is the concept of inheritance Its innately programmed ○ We have such as abstract invisible universal human mind which is inherently coming from the caregivers or parents It is straight programmed so you can see strong association between general psychologist and the evolutionary psychologist and platonism By summarizing these similarities in many essence Schweder discusses that general psychologist share the idea that we sharepsychic unity ○ According to general psychologist all people are unified by virtue of the plato’s program characteristic shared by everybody no matter whatrace, ethnicity or personality you are everyone share the same mind and same CPU structure inside the head) this is what psychologist want to investigate Schweder maintained that that is wrong where cultural psychologist challenged this view ○ How do cultural psychologist conceptualize human mind Schweder criticism towards the general psychologist idea so the general psychologist think that the human mind is the same so you don’t have to worry about the agenda, race, ethnic background or preference where everyone has the same mind ○ This looks like a liberal egalitarian ideologies but we as scientist we cannot believe in one type of idea or thought ○ Schweder criticized this idea There are some good aspects where we respect each other the same but you will miss a very important part ○ In general Schweder maintained to better understand human mind (central processing mechanism) inside of the head you have to understand the mutual interaction between culture practice, language, society, daily conversation which shape your mindset where you are influenced by others You are independent being but you are influence by others This is his main idea by schwader Cultural psychologist maintained that we are similar because of our biological basis but we are different culture to culture ○ cultural psychologist never believed in the universals where they did believe in some universal aspects but only in minor portion and rather we should look at culture influence on mind You accept the similarity and variability which seem contradictory statement is theoretical assumption shared by cultural psychologist but you can accept variability and universality …? ○ To understand this paradox … Will refer to Norenzayan and heine theoretical framework to organize universality and variability Norenzayan and Heine are professor In the chart according to Norenzayan and Heine there are at least 4 different level of universality ○ Some level of universality you can see a lot of similarity between cultures and at some levels of universality you can see huge cultural variation so they intentionally created 4 different models Accessibility universal ○ This means for people can access equally and the level of similarity across culture is very high ○ the first level of universality is the strongest case of universality so the culture variation and the learnt degree is weak This can be when a given psychological process exist in all culture and used to solve the same issue or problem in the same way and its accessible to the same degree in the same way ○ So N and H called this level of universality accessibility universal E g. in psych 104 you must know the theory of mind which is refer to the ability to attribute mental states like intense or desire or pretending or knowledge to oneself or others And understand that others have beliefs intention or desire that is different from one's own To test this theory of mind many developmental psychologist test whether and when that they understand that everyone has their own mind and different from each other ○ Without any scientific power or talking to each other it's difficult to share your thought as conversation partner has different mindset Children might not understand when young but by age 4-5 will develop this despite which culture you are in all carry out a task which is called Sally and Anne test and they understand which that one person know will not be shared with other Sally and Anne test ○ First sally would hide the ball inside the basket and then sally goes away and anne moves the ball into their box the question is where sally will look for the ball ○ If you say that sally will look for it in the box then children did not pass the test ○ But around the age of 5-6 they will say that say will look in the basket because they developed the theory of mind In this level of understanding that all people in the world learn this skill at the age 4-5 so there is no cultural variation so this is really a universal type of human behavior Next story is about the function of universality where … ○ Norenzayan et al. conducted the same study in which they investigated where people apply … How much are they able to stick to the rules and look at superficial differences? In general… (canadians) ○ They are better able to stick to the logical rules to better understand especially when conflicted with the actual example ○ It is too abstract then you can understand because you are smart and logical E g. this is a task that has been used by N where participants are exposed to variety different story which is called bundle of a small statement which is called syllogism ○ First your asked to read three sentences …, …, … ○ Could you say it's true or false and most will use the logical space and understand that no logical leaps Robin comes at the end of winter or end of spring As long as you and accept that a robin is bird then you say that three statement is all true If you are presented with another three sentence ○ …, …., …. Summit is an important meeting G7 country are Canada, Uk EU, France, germany Italy and Japan If it's logically correct then you would have to accept its logic ○ You should not be confused to get a good score in the experiment In the graph, if the bar is high then you make a lot of mistakes (% of error) ○ In the 3 ethnic groups, the intuitive syllogism they all perform very well so there is not a major difference ○ The dark blue dealing with the counterintuitive then european and asian american make similar mistake so the dark blue bar is relatively higher then light blue bar In East Asian data, there are a lot of errors why? ○ Why are they not able to logically think? ○ According to research they make mistake because those student that are highly educated are expected to pay attention to reality rather thanabstract logical space ○ T hey are highly motivated to change their rule according to the contextwhere if you are context orient and focus only on single rule rather than be flexible to better understand the reality then you are not well trained to focus on the logical space So even if you are asked to focus on the 3 statements and see if they are true or false,east asian pay too much attention to realityandthey tend to say that is wrong or false but you are supposed to answer true to logically make sense which is fact He went to japan university in this task for GRE test he got low score so he realized that east asian or japanese were not trained in this logical thinking but american society people are more logical and do better in this question like counter intuitive question ○ It's not due to genetic factor as Asian american grow up in NA perform well but east asian don’t perform as well due to cultural differenceswhich means that they can perform fairly okay but bc of the accessibility where east asian are not as accessible to logical thinking practices then they will have low performance This cultural variation is called functional universal The third type is the existential universal where … ○ Eg. H did a study where he contrasted responses …. The task is difficult but there is difference in motivation and they measures to what extent they pass this to the task eg. association task such as saying the associated words like “day and sleep” ○ If you say any associated words with these two words then you would easily find an answer In this study participants they randomly received positive or negative info ○ Where after having association task they compliment them or they will receive an insult regardless of their performance ○ They look at how the person feels after having + and - feedback which is the experimental manipulation After that then research ask them to continue to engage in the task ○ What happens based on the info you receive H found a cultural variation Y-axis indicates how much you assisted the target task in the similarity motor association task ○ X-axis is what type of feedback the participant received The feedback is randomly assigned not related to their actual performance Solid line is canadian data where canadians that were assigned to success condition where more likely to continue the task compared to those that are in failure condition ○ Once canadian they get success condition then they like the task and they continue but if they get failure task then they don’t like the task so they are less likely to continue For the japanese data, the opposite result is seen ○ Where the japanese that receive failure feedback are more likely to continue the task compared to the success condition ○ According to the data japanese are more motivated where the society is encouraged to master and strength skill are good member in society so if you find a task that is difficult then you are motivated to continue to improve but once japanese received the success feedback then they believe that they are passed the level of expectation so they don’t need to show more effort The task is complicated but the concept of motivation is shared between japanese and canadian ○ When you become more or less motivated is what varies in the culturally ○ So that type of universality where you see a lot of culture variation is called existential universal the 4th type of universal is non-universal … … ○ Abacus is for calculation ○ So if you are good at using it then you will be able to mentally move the piece up and down in their head and answer the questions fast ➔ G eneral psychology emphasis on culture universal which is universal aspect of human mind and referring to computer metaphor (referring to the CPU inside the computer) ➔ But the cultural psychology says that is wrong where you have to pay attention to info, content of story, cultural inference, societal factor ➔ maintain when thinking of cultural universal and difference you want to use 4 models: accessibility, functional, existential, and non-universal ◆ THINK OF OWN EXAMPLES FOR THE CULTURE UNIVERSAL ◆ By referring to Steven Heine, and Ara Norenzayan's graph, please list four types of "universality" and provide an example per each type of universality (150 words). The 4 universality are: accessibility, functional, existential, and non-universal. An example of accessibility universality would be ➔ Sometimes there may be overlap and some degree of both ◆ There are 4 different model but there is so many layer of universality so they will be some overlap ➔ Type of question you will get is: i think this will be Existential universal ________ C ultural psychologist says that we can identify a variety of cultural specific psychological processes but they know little about the extent of which many psychological process are universal ○ Heine and Norezayan are interested in articulating whether one type of behavior is observable in other society and when you don’t see any type of behavior in that society then you must scrutiny on what’s going on So cultural psychological research is so important in psychology but that's our claim A problem is so far psychological data process largely western ○ Steven heine looked at who wrote academic papers and published them in top psychological journals Top journal is when you have okay data then it would be rejected but if you have important finding it will be published His investigation found …. … ○ If you native tongue is english then you have advantage and there is bias Heien asked can we talk about psychological universals based on such a database H e was born in edmonton as european descent canadian and he categorized himself as a weird person thats representative of human psychology ○ Weird means … … ○ H eine maintain that thinking of population in world that people from weird society (highly educated) are highly exceptional in many aspect of their psychology But many NA psychologist only focus on these types of people in their study where these people are exceptional According to Dr. Steven Heine, who will categorize people in WEIRD (Western, Educated, industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) culture? concretely describe types of ? I n world population, american psychologist are dominant member of academic society a canadian are also popular in north america academia ○ They usually collect data from participants that are born in US or canada But if you apply majority rules but you have to acknowledge that american are only 5% of the world population ○ the weird people only make up 10% of american population which psychologist focus So 10% of 5% of world population is really small but they mentioned that 92% of publication is coming from canadian and american university So this assumption resonates with Schwder’s criticism for general psychology (prof at university of chicago) ○ He said to better understand the human mind then wehave to collect data from sample from the general publicbut this is difficultbut now a day you can access variety of databases and you can store the questions and collect the data but there are still constraints to understand general public There huge divide between people in US where each type of people in different social classes have different ideas ○ So if you only focus on data from top schools then your views may be biased so you have to collect the data from the worker which are people that finished highschool and started to work and contrast their ideas from each other which is what Schwder says What we can do as cultural psychologist is we should collect data from other continent such as Japan or South Korea aside from US and Canada ○ That the general idea suggested by steven heine We have to expand the range of data collection … ○ T he study of culture in psychology has been content with its minority status compared with mainstream psychology ○ So general psychologist pay less attention to culture but some scholar showed interest combining culture and human psychology therefore study of culture in psychology is not new even the founder of experimental psychology Wilhelm Wundtwho is german scholar started a lineof research that is Volkerpsychologie which is translate into folk psychology ○ He investigated the issue that contemporary psychologist are still debating where he tried to mix with thepsychology and anthropologyso youshould call itcultural anthropology or social anthropology ○ So he wrote 20 volumes of book which is called folk psychology Another research that emphasizes cultural influence on psychology is … ○ These are two russian scholars (first two) the last two are profs in US university ○ In 1920-30s, these founders of russian cultural historical school are interested in collecting data fromnon-highly educated individualsin rural area of russia where they found that they have particulartype of thinking stylethen those high educated These scholars are seen as seed or foundation ofcontemporarypsychology Psychology anthropologist has also contributed to theoretical development of cultural theories ○ … ○ Ruth Benedict is a famous anthropologist born and educated in US and she investigated japanese mindset during WW2(where japan and US foughtagainst each other) She could not go to Japanbut had access to 2nd and3rd generation japanese in US and learn from them while doing interview and investigate secondary atabase of japanese mindset and shewrote a book called The d Chrysanthemumand the Sword (Chrysanthemum is typeof flower which is symbol of Japanese of empire family and sword is about japanese warrior called samiri) She picked two symbol of japanese culture and depicted Japanese modest and their ○ typical behavior patterns They were enemy for US in World War 2 Its coming from anthropology where its an anthropological ethnography which is different integral study (her book teaches native japanese people a lot … ○ T hey were founder of social psychology in US where there works discussed that people create their social reality for example where three people got together and started to talk beyond the actual reality you are able to share some idea which is independent from actual reality which this idea has been discussed by social psychology ○ It works as constraint of our sorts where in a sense we can see seed of cultural psychology in our early development in social psychology in North America T hese seeds are considered the foundation of contemporary culture psychology B ut further discussing the contemporary trends of psychology, then there strand of research which directly influence theoretical framework of the recent culture psychology Jerome Bruner, Clifford Geertz and Shweder are all considered the founder of contemporary culture psychology ○ Jerome Bruner - acts of meaning ○ Schwader - thinking through culture ○ Geertz - the interpretation of culture … T ○ his book was influential in anthropology and other social science ○ His critic have 2 issue He maintained a scientifically abstract expression of human behavior such as cognition, emotion where this expression do not say anything but are too abstract He suggest thick description of an event where these expression is important to interpret one's behavior in cultural context so he advocated from shallow description of thick description By writing an ethnography of colonization processes in moral code? ○ he started his career so the context is rich in complete cultural context including conflict between french moroccans and tribal people in sahara desert who are aggressive Geertz criticized that the general psychologist are obsessed withmotivation of abstraction so removing such a rich cultural contextand then blindlyseeking for psychological universals bu t when you pay attention their interaction you cannotignore cultural context ○ so by showing the fact of important cultural context to understand their behavior or their decision-making processes then criticized general psychology ○ He said that they failed to capture the deep and rich of one's behavior if general psychologist focus only on abstract part of human mind by using abstract terms such as emotion, motivation, etc Another aspect he addressed was behaviors to acts B ehavior refers to an abstract movement produced by humans or potentially animals In contract acts are meaningful movement that are produced by human intention such as their will or desire or motivation He wants to understand why an action is taken by a persona and wants to understand the meaning of an action ○ Eg. anyone that goes to SAB, this behavior of walking or strolling but your intention is to go to SAB and get something to eat so you have motivation or intent to go their So researcher according to him you should focus on human intent of intentional behavior which is an important part to understand people rather than objective view of one's superficial behavior Geertz provides an example in terms of difference between behavior and action ○ In this image, this expression is called winking ○ What the boy is doing is different from what the cat and dog are doing so behaviourally when you see these images behaviorally all of them are rapid movement of the eyelid of one of the eyes ○ Behaviourally speaking animal behavior and human behavior are the same so psychologist are interested in this superficial behavior part according to him But the boy must do something extra in addition to this superficial behavior The boy must convey important secret message by using the sign called thewink ○ So he intends to convey a message to you but the cat and dog shows an involuntary twitch It looks similar but in the boy’s case it has a hidden intent ○ Wink is popular expression in human so its seen in daily behavior or in japanese Critical point is the winker uses this expression to convey meaning so they use this expression to communicate in specific way and delivery to someone particular and convey a message accordinging to a socially established code which is called jester The major cultural variation in the meaning of wink and the number of occurrences but compared to other animals ○ We can conclude it is accessible universal to convey a message to a particular conversation partner (not all of them) G eertz communicates that the objective of his ethnography or thick description is to identify the meaning of an action and the needs of its superficial behavior ○ So he attempted to do his best to understand hidden intent or hidden meaning of moral behavior But general psychologist ignore the difference in meaning of these nuance expression and they say its too subjective so its difficult to scientifically test ○ But cultural psychologist are interested in empirically investigate such a hidden meaning by observing human behavior ○ By observing human behavior then they want to understand human actions Geertz criticized that general psychologistonly seesuperficial part of human behavior and to better understand human mind you need to focus onaction Based on his work he said that we are inherently cultural where without the interpretation of culturally shared meaning system shared by people in society ○ So we are not able to categorize even the concept of wink to discuss wink you have to understand human intent or human way of conveying a message to other by a particular meaning system So based on these examples in his book Geertz said this quote…. ○ Max weber is a famous sociologist T itle (what does that mean?) This is methodical expression were we are spider where it can crawl on ground but mostly makes its beautiful web and catch pray in itwhere withoutwen its behaviorand movement is limited and only with web it scan move and catch food ○ Spider is human while culture is web by which you can explore the world Eg. language- without knowing english or japanese you might have problem expressing self so language is necessary part of you ○ so that's a type of webs for you and you are the user of language so it's a relationship similar to spider and spider webs J erome Bruner is a famous development and cognitive scientist and his work focus on the fact that human perception does not exist in a vacuum ○ Rather their belief, values, mood, emotion shape our perceptionswhere this type of research is new look psychology and it has become very popular in 1960 and 70s in North America His basic assumption of human behavior and then wrote cultural psychology in 1990s in his book he stated thatbehaviorism was dominant perspectivein North America but researcher are gradually aware of the human model advocate by behaviorist isnotgood enough to understand human mind ○ so Jerome Bruner was key instigator fighting against behaviorism and he advocated a new type of approach called cognitive revolution So (struggle from) behaviorism to cognitivistso hemaintained that it's important to not focus on superficial part of human behavior but rather focus on human mind ○ This statement is similar to Geertz ○ But he started to criticize the situation in psychology as a psychologist He suggest that psychologist need to take shift fromsuperficial view to cognitive ideasbut after having a long development in cognitive psychology ○ he found that cognitive psychology ignore importantpart of human activity which is cultural activityso he suggest that cultural psychologistshave to move one more step ○ So they performance of cognitive psychologist is stillfocus on superficial aspect or so is not good enough so by saying strong cognitivism to the world of meaning he requested psychologist should be focus on more content richinformation to better understand human mind So his books are stands out to be the foundational cultural psychology B ehaviourism, cognitivism and then research on meaning system how are they differentiated from each other Part of history in psychology where behaviorism is formed in 1920s and popular 1950s and 1960s ○ Behaviourist place human mind in black box because it's invisible and focus on observable stimuli response relationship ○ I n image the target focus is human mind but it's impossible to see it as its invisible so instead observes input where this is visible object factor Once you get electric shock then person show specific respond like saying ow so behaviorist say that to be scientific you should not focus on inner mind but rather focus on visible part like electric shock and responses ○ Thats general idea where researchers focus on this topic on 1950s that our research will be like physical and be very objective C ognitive psychologist said that behaviorism is notpsychology BF skinner who is famous behavior scientist, in his lab student where prohibit to talk about mind and thoughts which is the inner part of you expect for skinner behavior ○ Skinner is a prof so you need to know his intention, desire and motivation which is an inner part of skinner mind but student are not allowed to talk about their thoughts Its characterized their behavior Psychologist are supposed to learn about human mind but skinner prohibited to think about mind ○ It's ironic of those that take the behaviorist perspective cognitivism intended to bring the concept of human mind back to psychology and try to open the black box ○ This is the basic idea but however according to Bruner cognitivist revolution was not successful as well Bruner said cognitive revolution originally conceived required psychology join forces with anthropology and linguistic and philosophyand historybut they failed to do that ○ So that why bruner is not satisfied with cognitive revolution ○ It has great advance by bringing human mind back to psychology and escaping behaviorism but bruner said that is not enough Why was cognitive revolution not successful according to bruner? ○ He argued that cognitive psychology is attributable to the fact that they use the computer metaphor and use the computer model of their human mind Thank to the advances of computer technology in 1960s cognitive psychologist see human mind as a complex processing device ○ CPU story, advocated by Schweder ○ S o their focus goes inwards and all the issues such as language society culture history, ideology and law all of these factors are defined as something external from the targetable analysis, external, the noises that stopthem from purely focus on the function of the human mind when they consider the human mind as the CPU inside of the computer so they are interested in computer like information processing factors like human mind rather than paying attention to external factors like philosophy culture and history, society, ideas beliefs, The artificial intelligence project is conducted based on this assumption where you have to make human like robot that can process human information inside the CPU ○ the kind of advance in robotic some are successful were not you have chat GPT but sometimes it's difficult to incorporates social factor or philosophy and cultures in their artificial intelligence Bruner is not satisfied with metaphorical approach when you understand human mind ○ The key here they are not able to conceptualize how the external world shapes the integral world so they have big problem of understanding the interphase between the internal and external world, they fault to conceptualize howsocial cultural factors influence our mind because they basically ignore them ○ So instead of computer based model bruner said to incorporate external factor which are not external but rather important part of human mind Bruner maintained that the role of cultural psychology is to holistically understand the mutual constitution of social cultural resources in the human mind ○ Geertz and bruner come from different academic discipline but they have similar arguments People like to take bath in hot spring ○ In North America, they can go to hot spring but in japanese culture its not just washing head but it's establishing better relationship by chatting ○ You can cover body but by enjoying hot spring japanese develop good social communication It's not sexual meaning but it's an important moment establish group solidarity and good family relationships so therefore it's natural for Japanese to take bath with family member ○ So contemporary member of japanese society they do co-bathing with children not so much seen in teens but gender does not matter where girls can take bath with father or body with mother Even Japanese Maka (monkey) imitate behavior So this is historical site in mountain area of japanese so the monkeys emanate human behavior SO BRAVE MONEY CHAMPION TO HOTSPRING and they dominate the territory and enjoy hot spring like humans They enjoying chatting while bathing in bath tub where tub can be inside or outside ○ Men and women side is separated T his is japanese customs of co-bathing but there is controversy associated with japanese animation ○ Jeebere animation production ○ In these scenes father enjoys bathing with his 2 daughters ages 4-10 and the reason the father bathes with them is the mother is in hospital so its natural for japanese father to take care of young daughter ○ However western audience were disgusted by this and tried to ban the film because its immoral but other audience rejected the view where japanese culture developed interpersonal relationship by enjoying co-bathing where they have their own meaning system which is different from North America moral code If someone's behavior in a different society violates your moral code how do you understand? W hich meaning system moral or immoral and are we able to discuss morality and immorality by viewing someone's behavior in a different culture ○ There is no clear answer as morality is contingent on their own cultural meaning system or their religions, cultural customs etc. It is necessary important to account the meaning system that target culture if you want to understand or interpret the behavior, ○ to interpret the behavior you cannot apply the meaning system you have to understand the meaning system shared by given target society The image of father and daughter bathing which is okay in japanese context but its problematic in North America context You want to think of that scenario that someones meaning systems is important to better understand seemingly immoral type of behavior from your point of view ○ Eg. Usage of weed is legal in canada but you cannot bring weed to japan then you would be arrested and in singapore you would be sentenced to death so each society has different meaning system. Do you have an accent? When do you recognize that you have an accent? ○ Without contrasting yourself from other groups that speaks different type of languages with different accent you cannot discuss whether you have an accent only when you meet someone with an accent different from yours then you are consciously aware that you have an accent So this is metaphor the nature of culture ○ Anthropologist Clyde Kuckhohn who is Australian said …. … ○ So culture affect us everyday so unless we compare to other culture we won’t notice it like fish swimming under water ○ Must be attentive to our culture but how can you do that where you have contrast you culture moral code with other cultures moral code E g. hot spring or co bathing which is good chance to be aware of your moral code Which fish is happier is the fish underwater or canadian with tim horton Japanese like sushi and are happy but without they feel bad Without knowing what is necessary for you you can perceive your own culture which is the main message From the geertz quote book … ○ By being highly educated individuals being UofA student we have our own culture and moral code and motivation to show your effort to get good gpa and learn a lot which is also culture ○ But those going through different life course might have different perspective ○ Even within Canada you can have difference in motivation in life or theic between different people Culture can be anything like upper or lower class or high educated Quotes (without men, no culture and without culture, no men)…. ○ Its harsh comment of those that do not accept importance of culture ○ Without complete unit of cultural meaning system you can behave as if animal surrounded by cultural context Like baby without knowing anything you cannot behave being a mental basket you need this input You can experience this thing where you go to society where you cannot speak your own language ○ Eg. going to mongolia that you don’t know how to speak it so if you have this experiences then you must be aware that knowing about such a cultural system is important to enjoy traveling in mongolia Why our culture support you while other cultures do not but if you learn about other cultures then you can somewhat explore japanese culture … ○ S o you want to think of cultural universal rule that applies to all children but also pay attention to others behavior intheircultural context … Empirically test and… ○ Contextualizing human mind into particular culture setting is main objective of cultural psychology Title ○ Are we able to find culture among other species ○ Do animal have skills to maintain their own culture Homosapiens are cultural species where we create culture and culture influences our thought Some researcher maintain that we have a human uniqueness that differentiate us from other species ○ So researchers discuss that key factor of human is acquire culturally create shared knowledge by learning from others Eg. baby learn from caregiver, an adult learn from friends Animal can also do this ○ These examples have been reported by primatologist which are researchers that study monkey or apes Primate researcher center is most active researcher center in Japan ○ Because there are many type of Macaque monkey the government spent money to create research center Dr. Kawasaki, reported …. ○ His group engaged in observations study in 1960s where a group of savage Macaque monkey in a small Japanese island where these research carried out an experiment to see if the monkey are open to accept new type of food ○ In this particular experiment they used sweet potato where sweet potato is not found in that island but they want to know if this money accept this food The monkey were curious about the food and then found it was tasty and they accepted it B ut they found that a female monkey found piece of sweet potato and she started to wash them off Kawasaki named the monkey emo which means potato in japanese ○ After some month the emo would bring the potato to the shore, wash them off and eat it and then the emo mothers would start imitate this behavior as it would improve the taste ○ Then couple of years later 30-40% of the emo group washed potato regularly where the developed their own primitive culture So the potato washing culture in Macaque Another example of japanese cultural learning of Macaque is enjoying hot spring ○ Where one brave alpha male Macaque see humans enjoy the hot spring and imitate this behavior ○ Macaque like thepolytheneeffect of the hotspringwhere it would cure wounds and in winter the hot spring would make it warm so it groups would imitate their behavior ○ They look like human that enjoy hot springs Another example of cultural learning is chimps ant-eating tool ○ According to the repot savage chimps would peel bark from twigs and then inserted the twigs into a mound of termites where the termites would think an enemy is coming to into the mound and bite the bark where the chimps remove the twig will all them to eat it which they like ○ You may think its an innate behavior but similar behavior is seen in other part of the africa where in this case they would peel the bark but instead they will use bark to fish out the termites One type of culture emerged in one (cinagal) area while other in another if you compare (tanzania) They are either cultural variation in termite finishing behavior where one group uses bark while other uses twig So cultural learning is observable in primates and other animals as well like dolphins, elephants, whales, crow, etc. so we can conclude that instead of focus on innate ability we can witness cultural learning processes and its evident in other animals I t is also true that there is unidentifiable difference between humans and animals cultural learning skills but human species spend huge amount of energy and time to learn a single event, it takes long time while some in the same group cannot learn it at all ○ Eg. some are good at math but some are not There are individual differences even in human, even a tiny bit of culturally shaped behavior majority of the group member may not be able emanate or learn What are the qualitative differences between humans and other species? ○ What is going on when we learn something from others? … ○ Dr.Mike tomasello aid there is two type of learning ○ Model means those that know particular type of behavior ○ In general you want to learn something but you are more likely to pay what this person willing to do and what will be the effect after learning this … ○ Second type of learning ○ This is learning style in which learner focus only on what the model appears to be doing ○ Superficially learn model’s behavior and then engage in own trial and error to change the situation ○ To change the situation means… Eg. a banana is dangling from ceiling which is hard to get but if one of monkey bring a stool to bring down the banana then the other monkeys ○ But how do you learn, after you watch that monkey’s behavior they see that the monkey got the banana but then they spend a huge amount of energy on trial and error This experiment title ○ … In the experimental session … ○ so there is nice platform where model stand on platform ○ From the platform there is a desirable object and there is a rake T his is a rake --- Either object for humans is a toy This model adult retrieves the toy by the rack but for chimps case researcher use food where chimps see humans use rack to get food ○ The target of the desirable object differs across species but structure of the study is the same where they observe the model I n this image they manipulated the position of the rack, how would the participants include the chimps and humans saw the adult model use the rack in a teeth up position ○ The other half of the target model used the rack inless effective teeth down position In the image, the shape of the rack, the left rack was dragged in the teeth side down position ○ It is possible to drag the object but since the object is between the teeth, that way is not effective The right is with the teeth side up so the whole part of device is covering the whole part attached to the ground S o what is happening to the chimps and the children, after watching the model behavior they were asked to do the same thing using the same objects The results indicate that children uses the rack in the same way so if the children watched the model with the teeth down then they imitate it even though its not effective ○ But the children watched the model use the teeth up then they imitate the rack use But for chimps when they receive the rack they put a huge amount of time to use it where they don’t care about what they saw previously so they will use teeth up or down where that doesn’t matter ○ So they do many tries and try to catch the object either effectively or not but then they later understand that teeth up is more effective in reaching the food Are chimps smarter than humans? Human understand the target model intention and are try to be loyal and try to imitate model’s behavior while chimps they try to solve the problem by themselves and not observe the model’s intention accurately and they try to understand that if you move something then you can get food through trials and errors ○ So chimps can learn only the fact but not the strategies of acquiring food and not the model’s intention but they focus on the fact that food can be closer when you use a particular device so chimps needed to invent their own way of getting the object by their wn trials and errors and then you can get food by accident so you learn by yourself to o get the foods So they don’t care of model’s intention or strategy In human case they are more likely to be attentive to model’s idea so they may have some idea that they have their own idea and other have their own idea and strategies ○ Not only do they pay attention to what will happen but they pay attention to model intention or strategy and they try to be loyal to their strategy even though teeth down is less effective they are trying to focus on model’s intention then their own trial and error So therefore children learning is imitative learning while animal learning is emulative Teeth down position was not effective so you might misconstrued that chimps are smarter than 3-year old children but it has its own smartest to survive in nature by in the long run imitative learning has huge benefits bypaying attention tomodel’s intention and showing loyalty and fidelity to imitate that behavior ○ once you acquire that particular behavior then later on you can think and innovate the existing style of cultural behavior bit by bit over generation so you have strong advantage of accumulate a particular cultural skills if you pay attention model intention rather than pay attention to trial and error ○ That why imitative learning in long run has strong advantages compared to emulative learning I f one tries to understand the model’s intention through imitative learning then there is great room for imitator to modify and improve their original style later own ○ In that particular case you are loyal and fidelity but later on you can think and make it better … ○ B ut once the skill is acquired the children can consciously analyze and the relationship between the strategy the model’s intention and the necessary skills to do so ○ in the end they may be able to objectively see what is going on now and improve the skills later Here it has its strong advantage that culture accumulation can occur where that means is you can add new pieces of knowledge or skills bit by bit over generations ○ So Tamasello called this phenomenon called theratcheteffectwhich is critical advantage of human cultural learning So according to Tamasello imitative learning allows us to enjoy cultural accumulation T amasello used the metaphor of the Rachet to describe that humans knowledge is always has room to accumulate or go forward but not necessary slip backward where cultural accumulate without losing the higher information and you can learn on top of existing cultural knowledge and reuse it ○ Human are able to accumulate acquired knowledge and transmit to the next generation where the next generation imitate the previous knowledge so a variety can learn what the previous generation and you can imitate it if you are good at finishing alternative strategy then they can add new innovation to existing knowledge and accumulate Once you learn skills, then you don’t have to go back but move forward continuously ○ So you don’t have to start from scratch to invent new tools but you can learn something on top of existing knowledge of previous generation which is strong advantage that only humans can do I n human history genius people modify the knowledge and then everyone can enjoy the new invention by imitative learning ○ Generation 1 may invent something ○ Generation 2 after spending time with generation 1 they learn basic skills they can imitate ○ then generation 3 genius person can modify tool or device and transmit this skills to next generation ○ Then generation 4 learned the skills from generation 3 and among generation 4 there may be genius people that invent something new ○ Then generation 5 learns from generation 4 This graph show the fact that cultural transmission process is the foundation of the qualitative difference between animal and human learning ○ So you are using the exponential lines which the knowledge of the culturally shared skills is strongly improved over generations Animals case the story is different where among generation 1 some brave monkey jumped in the hot spring then other monkey may invent the way of washing potato using sea water ○ Around the genius chimps groups of chimps may imitate human behavior ○ But the second generation will not use imitative learning process where they use trial and error where that acquisition of cultural knowledge does not last longer ○ So therefore in just simple accident may lead them to not transmit such knowledge to the next generation where in this you might have to wait for another brave chimp to jump in hot spring or use sea water but that knowledge is not fully transmitted to the next generation so you have to wait a while for another genius chimp So even though they have nice skill they don’t have good way to convey to next generation and because of the chimps emulative learning skills you can’t accumulate so culture does exist in chimps but that is still rudimental compared to the highly advanced to human cultural knowledge ○ H uman knowledge is exponential over generation but animal learning is emulative so they won’t be able to accumulate the knowledge There are many example where they pick the Ratchet effect such as the evolution of hammer ○ Archaeological record show the primitive homosapien used stone to hit something But the primitive tool evolved through innovation at some point they put wooden part to the stone producing an ax to create a device and create electronic machinery as well ○ This evolution of the device which the type of human cultural learning where you accumulate existing knowledge and invent something new and make it better I n tokyo there is not much growing grass Where he was using a knife to cut the grass in edmonton but he bought a mower but he learned there is electronic mower with better to enjoy this device ○ Now mower are self moving too ○ This evolution of mower Human has a lot of room to innovate on top of existing knowledge but it's not the case for most animals ○ Eg. of cultural evolutions: technology like calculator or computer system, phones, transportation, media for saving information like now we use USB but in past generation they would use floppy disk where the size is big and you have to insert it We would have o type and press the button and take 15 min to get output TEST:list or think of some examples of cultural evolutionover cultural accumulation over ratchet effect so think of own example ○ Think of example of ratchet and cultural evolution ○ Some example of the ratchet effect would be the evolution of the phone where people initially people would have landline wired phones then it evolved to be being wireless flip phones and then human’s further innovated to produce touch screen phones T itle Why are humans able to learn shared cultural ideas? What factors allow us to possess these capacities? ○ Based on the size of the brain where we have large brains 4.6 times larger than other animals ○ Our brain consume 16% of basal metabolism but our brain constituents of 2% of our body weight So portion of our organ consumers a huge amount of energy Our brain consume a large percentage of our basal metabolism but it is a small and uses up a huge amount of energy only on small part of organ on your head I n animal it's more simplest where you have a certain amount of brain then you use certain amount of energy and large body consume a lot of energy I n hypothetical scenario where if you search up stegosaurus brain because size of brian is relatively small being chestnuts for they use 0.5% of energy and they might invest huge amount of energy to move large body like car Human brain size deviate from deviation/regression lines and of course there are animals that are larger than human but you see deviations from line to the human data ○ The human brain are quite large ○ Blue whales have very large brains ○ But function of the brain is also something related to the giving advantage for humans where they are able to good/up using the brian T here are two hypothesis Fruithypothesis ○ Several scholars discuss usage of the brain facilitates them to make larger brain evolutionary but one type of scholars say that many species primates and humans eat nuts and fruits ○ Fruit diet requires remembering where you found fruit tree so you know and return when they are ripe ○ S o memorizing the location of the fruits is a cognitive skill that facilitates large primate and human to develop memory skills which is why their evolutionary brian is large So this is one type of hypothesis where memorizing causes them to develop large brian Nutrient-Richhypothesis ○ Many species primates eat nutritionally rich food which difficult to extract termites and nuts --- solid shell for nut and termite mound so you need to crack the shell or fish for termites ○ So to receive food they will develop such large brian in large primate and humans Social Groups ○ Many species of primates live in social network so it require to keep track of social relationship and learn from each other such as who is alpha male or who is friend and knowing relationship between chimps If you are attentive behavior then you need to develop certain social skill which makes brains larges 3 competing hypothesis which correct ○ It's empirically testable, Dr. Robin Danber, has experimentally tested these there hypothesis and addressed one story ○ He is primatologist who test these hypotheses by examining the ratio of volume of the neocortex in the brain to volume to the rest of brain So if the body is large then you are likely to advancelarge neocortexcompared to the rest of the brain Neocortex is outermost layer of the brain concerned with higher information process or higher processing or more control or complex cognitive performance ○ prefrontal cortex PFC function for program solving and conscious thoughts so neocortex is one part of the brain which the outer layer of the brain R esearcher compared neocortex ratio across variety of primates and analyzed this variable and the percentage of the fruits in diets in each primates ○ Y axis is percentage of of fruit in diet ○ X-axis neocortex ratio (1 = small thin layer; 3 = thick layer) ○ In the graphs the individual primates species are scattered across the graph randomly which means there isno correctionor no patterns we canrejectfirst hypothesis As for the next graph is looks at neocortex species and style of forging method in primates ○ Y-axis is neocortex ratio ○ x-axis is 2 type of forging style Some primates are required to engaging inextractingforging style where if you have a nut then you learn to crack it and practice this so theyneed a skill to extract food When other primates can haveeasyaccess to by pickingthe fruit in the tree so thisnon-extractiveforaging method Based on this result it can be said that each dot indicate these type of species ○ If there is difference either one of the dot should be higher or lower than the others but here they are equally distributed vertically where the dots on the x-axis are supposed to be higher than other dots to see difference However there is no pattern ○ So second hypothesis can be rejected but its not a important part to explain the brian size or the neocortex ratio 50 1 A verage group size and the neocortex ratio of the various species of the primates hypothesis ○ p rimates that live in large social groups tend to have large neocortex ratio (there is some trend) Number of the individual groups get larges (y-axis) and the x-axis is neocortex ratio also gets larger 0.1 mean the species prefer to be alone while 1000 they live with other As the number of individual in a group become larger than social relationship becomes more complex vise versa ○ If the social relationship becomes more complex so the particular species are expect to have larger brain and those with high neocortex are able to survive longer evolutionarily and have offspring and overtime they have larger brains Why is social relationships necessary? ○ You have to care about alpha males emotional reaction where if you are weak and accidentally fight alpha males then you can be killed ○ You might have to compete with others to access the females partners so the revivals emotion reaction is important part By reading rival emotion reaction then you can build better ally or groups or friendship to fight against alpha male to access female or defend yourself from others reacting conspecific and aggressive to survive and understand their mind and emotion has it own survival values Social brain hypothesisis best explanation amongthese three hypothesis Primate brain evolution is driven by the highly social lifestyle ○ Based on group size data of many society and knowledge of prehistoric data Danbar's further estimated that average human groups size would be around 150 where 150 in one groups like small village with around 30-40 families According to him we can estimate that average size of human ancestral population for each groups should be around 150 people where he called it a magic number of 150 Some tribal people with less than 30 people while other places like NYC ○ there is clear difference in communities size but according to Danber our brain evolved to live in society which population is about150 in additionit seems that our brain function well if we deal with various social issue of 150 people Company and religious sects follow this rule where CEO build this plan where building branch with more than 150 would require it to split into two branches Religious sect also apply this theory where if your followers is 150 then new member join as different groups People without knowing this hypothesis think 150 is optimal We are quite social as we live in larger groups than primates ○ … Humans appear more interested in each other’s activities than do other primates … … ○ So we have larger brain size than primates He saw chimps and gorilla wheregorillado interactwith each other by justsittingtogether ○ Butchimpsthey prefer to beisolatedand not interact ○ But humans want to chat with others ○ Chimps don’t
