1. Title page
CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY
STEVEN J. HEINE

2. Chapter 1 Culture and Human Nature Chapter 1 Norton Media Library
STEVEN J. HEINE

3. Building the argument Psychological processes are shaped by culture
Constraints and affordances of our biological self
Same across culture

4. Key question
To what extent should ways of _____look similar around world because of basic brain structure, and to what extent should they look different because of divergent experiences (culture)
Universal vs. culturally variable psychologies.
Does evidence suggest a univeral or culturally variable experience?

5. What is culture? Can we define it? Shweder’s definition
“Culture is a reality lit up by morally enforceable conceptual scheme composed of values (desirable goals) and causal beliefs (including ideas about means-ends connections) that is exemplified or instantiated in practice”

6. Culture serves as a flexible learning system that transforms basic biological capacities into meaningful thoughts and behaviours shared by members of the cultural group (Shweder, 1995).

7. Cultural membership does not determine individual response
Within cultures there is extreme variability

8. Is culture uniquely human?

9. What is uniquely human? Imitation of prestige 2 capacities:
Ability to consider the perspective of others
Ability to communicate with language

10. Theory of mind
People understand that others have minds that are different from their own and others have intentions that are different from their own
When do we develop theory of mind?

11. Emulative learning: interested in what the model is doing, not what it is intended to do.
Imitative learning: the learner internalizes the model’s goals and behavioral strategies

12. Fig. 1.1

13. Fig. 1.2

14. Big brains allow for cultural learning
Encephalization quotient: ratio of the brain weight to that of a comparable animal with same body size:
4.6 (chimps 2.5)
16% of our basal metabolism

15. Three hypotheses Fruit Extractive food source Social world
Primates are some of the only animals that eat fruit. Fruit rippens for a short period of time so more cognitive ability is needed to remember when and where the fruit is……
Next is that our food is more complex like seeds and nuts that need more cognitive ability to eat.

16. Social brain hypothesis
The socialness of humans involved complex power struggles, relationships, nepotism, reciprocity.
The primates most successful at navigating the intricate web of social relationships more likely to attract mates, secure resources, and protect themselves.

17. Some evidence Neocortex ratio through fMRI
Looked at all species to test these three theories

18. Fig. 1.3 top

19. Fig. 1.3 bottom

20. Social complexity and group size
Child rearing
50,000 years ago we began to walk upright.
Our pelvis’ changed to do this.
Our babies needed to be born more altricial (vulnerable)
With upright walking, we began hunting in groups and living with larger clans.
Social relatedness needed to care for very altricial young.

21. 150
Dunbar (1993) used that data to plot and predict average human group size based on neocortex size
Surveyed ethnographic data and found historically we lived in overnight camps of 35-40, tribes of 1,500-2,000 and clans of 148.
150 is average number people produced from 4 generations of offspring. (what we might create in our lives)

22. Peer pressure and 150
Hutterites in south Dakota divide communities when they reach 150
Gor-Tex builds a new plant when employment reaches 150
Institutionalized structure needed for groups larger than this.

23. Is the mind independent from or intertwined with culture
What do you think?
Doctrine of original multiplicity

24. Original multiplicity
The unity of human beings is not to be found in that which makes us common and all the same, but rather in a universal original multiplicity, which makes each of us so variegated that others become accessible and imaginable to us through some aspect of our own complex self. (Shweder 1991)

25. http://video. search. yahoo. com/video/play. p=martin+luther+king+jr

26. Four famous papers
Harry Triandis (1989) cultural dimensions of the self concept that can be observed cross culturally
Jerome Bruner (1990) psychology can only be understood from the meaning we derive from our worlds
Rick Shweder (1990) mind and culture are intertwined
Markus and Kitayama (1991) psychological processes like emotions can be viewed cross culturally through self concept.