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Week 2: Cultural Change and Evolution

IKEA - Though founded in Sweden, IKEA is not de factor Swedish

o 332 stores in 38 countries - IKEA tries to keep costs down at the maximum

o Holes in screws o Disregard labor rights

2010 Sweatshop Hall of Shame (Labour Rights Forum) o Disregarded boundaries during the Cold War

Production in Poland Production in East German prisons

- IKEA is an example of globalization and cultural change

What Are the Sources of Cultural Knowledge? - Beliefs

o Self-beliefs o Religious beliefs

- Practices o Scientology E-meter o Dowry in India o House shoes in Canada vs. US

- External media o Architecture –east Asian gardens vs. Western gardens o Legal institutions o Mass media

- Institutions

Language - What does shi gu mean? (hint: personality adjective) –artistic - One can study culture through study of personality adjectives that don’t have an

economical equivalent in other cultures - Proverbs

Life Experiences - Experiences in every society are organized into certain loose patterns

o Kitayama et al. (1997) US cultural experiences afford self-enhancement Japanese experiences afford more opportunity to self-effacement

o Morling et al. (2002) Experiences of influencing others are more available in the US Experiences of adjusting to the environment is more available in

Japan

So Far… - Culture is in your mind

o Brain signatures o Beliefs and attitudes

- Culture is also “out there” o Practices o External realities

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Cultural Change –What, Why, and How Fast? How Fast –Culturanomics: Speed of Cultural Change

- Moore’s Law –the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years

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How Fast –Culturenomics: Speed and Magnitude of Cultural Change - Michel et al. (2011) examined the frequency of words in English language over

time o 4% of all American books o How fast do cultural icons (e.g., celebrities) get noticed?

Age of initial celebrity Doubling time

o How soon are they forgotten? Post-peak half-life

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What and Why–Suggestions for Recent Cultural Changes - Cultures have been changing and evolving in recent decades in several ways:

o Increasingly interconnected o Increasingly individualistic o People increasingly intelligent

Increasingly Interconnected Cultures

- Reduced costs of transportation and enhanced ease of long-distance communication are connecting cultures like never before

- Such interconnectedness has created a global culture –many large companies span national borders

- This globalization has been countered by increased tribalism –an urge to return to traditional cultures

- Why? o Interconnected

Marxist answer –consequence of capitalism (e.g., IKEA) Futurist answer –side-effect of technological advancement

o Tribal Evolutionary ingrained? Reactionary? –some recent nationalist sentiments may have

originated in the capitalist West itself Increasingly Individualistic Cultures

- Cultures often studied on an individualism/collectivism (I/C) dimension o Individualism –individuals encouraged to consider themselves as distinct

from others and prioritize own personal goals over collective goals o Collectivism –individuals encouraged to place more emphasis on goals

of one’s collective group/ in-group - Have people in the US become less socially engaged and less civically active

since the 1960s? - Putnam (2000) suggests that social capital has declined in the US

o Social capital includes in-person social intercourse Bowling alone vs. in leagues Less civic engagement Less social trust

- Why? o Television o Increased mobility o Re-potting o Urbanization

- What exactly is social capital? o Similar ideas prevailed since emergence of mass technologies (e.g.,

radio) o Is it decline or change?

Are there new forms of civic engagement and social ties?

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- Generation Me o Twenge and colleagues suggest that there have been substantial

increases in narcissism in recent decades - Narcissism Personality Inventory (NPI)

o 40 items o I have a natural talent for influence people vs. I am not good at

influencing people o I prefer to blend in with crowds vs. I like to be the center of attention

- Egos Inflating Over Time o Twenge et al., compared birth cohorts –all samples of the same age but

from different generations o Meta-analysis of the NPI scores from 1980 until late 2000s o Results:

US college students show progressively higher NPI scores Men showed higher NPI than women, but this difference

decreased over time Generational shift over 25 years twice the size of the current

gender difference - Why Is It a Problem?

o NPI scores are linked with many short-term positive emotional outcomes: Self-esteem, positivity, extraversion, life satisfaction Likeability

o In the long-run, NPI has a dark side: Distorted judgements about oneself Risky decision-making Higher potential for addictive disorders (e.g., alcohol abuse,

pathological gambling) Social consequences

Poorer romantic relationships

Aggression and assault - Critique and Counterpoint

o NPI lacks validity as a measure of individual ego-inflation NPI measure may reflect internalized societal expectations

Perception of societal expectations (rather than actual personality) of the youth may have changed

o Changing social norms o News media emphasizing (younger) celebrities o Rise of social networks that are perceived as

encouraging egocentricity NPI items do not reflect pathological traits

“I see myself as a good leader” o Evidence is based on WEIRD sub-samples o Different levels of analysis –Twenge et al. did not account for variability

within each generation o Trseznieski et al., did not find evidence for substantial changes in ego-

related factors in the last 30 years

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- Are cultures becoming increasingly individualistic? –an open question o Frequent claim:

Such a shift are especially noticeable comparing younger Americans with older generations of Americans

o Proposed reasons for this claim include: More pressures of time and money Increased suburbanization More electronic entertainment Living through a “transformational experience” like WWII

o Counter-claims: Such claims have been made throughout 20th century Confusion about societal views of younger generations?

Misattribution of changes in yourself to changes in the environment

- A Culturenomics Look on Cultural Change o A number of factors can be indicative of individualism

Practices –baby naming: packing a popular vs. unique name for your child

Since WWII, Americans prefer unique names at an increasing rate

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Role models –cultural content distributed by social leaders (e.g., presidents in the US)

Text analysis of narratives o % individualistic acts –get, prefer, differ o % collectivist acts –give, belong, share

Difference score –individualism vs. collectivism

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External culture –content of books

Google Books o Examine collectivist and individualist words in all

books published in the US o Individualist acts increased until 2000 o Interesting reversal thereafter

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- What Drives These Changes?

o Recall –urbanization, post WWII generation, technological changes o Other factors:

Changesin means of production lead to change in thinking habits Increasing education lead to a greater focus on the self

o Generational and technological explanations unlikely because of the patterns in the new data

o Preliminary results: Urbanization predicted changes in individualism Social class (education, income) independently explained

variance in the data The % of the US population with at least a bachelor’s degree has

steadily increased over the past century, with particularly notable increases among women

o Beyond the US

An increase in individualism in traditionally collectivistic cultures seem to have occurred as well:

Japan –it can be seen from increase in divorce rates, decrease in average family size, valuing more independence in children

HK –authoritarian parenting more practiced among older vs. younger parental generations

Mainland China and Taiwan –value of obeying parents and filial obligations has declines gradually over the last 30 years

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Increasingly Intelligent Cultures - Longitudinal data suggests the current generation to be more intelligent, with

higher IQ scores than earlier generations –known as “Flynn Effect” - Based on rate of IQ increase, someone scoring at cut-off for “mental retardation”

now on standardized IQ test would have score at cut-off for “gifted” a century ago - Most gains see in Raven’s matrices (answer: 2)

- Proposed reasons for increased intelligence include:

o More people receiving education than before Increased percentage of population has bachelor’s degree

o Pop culture has been increasingly more complicated Movies and TV shows have more complicated plots Video games have become highly complex

Rise of Education in North America US:

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Canada:

Question for Consideration: Which of These Trends Do You Think Will Continue?

- Some changes are also influenced by distal factors o Case of slave trade in sub-Saharan Africa

- Adaptations are constrained by previously existing structures o After effects of the slave trade (Nunn, 2008)

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- Those African countries that exported more slaves from the 15th to the 19th

centuries have lower GDPs than those that exported fewer slaves - The slave trade created a sense of mistrust that has persisted for centuries and

undermines their economy

Tsetse Flies - Tsetse flies carry a disease that is fatal in cattle - In Africa, tsetse flies limit the distribution of cattle

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Babies and Milk - Mothers feed babies their own milk without cattle milk - Long post-partum sex taboo –no sex with the husband for 3 years after giving

birth - What Do Men Do? –Polygyny –in animal kingdom prevalent in poorer territories - Consequences

o Children sleeping with their mother until quite old Attachment to their mother

o Don’t learn male roles very well o Separate child vs. adult roles through severe initiation ceremonies

Cultural Variation How Cultural Variation Emerged

- Characteristics of local ecologies have impact on cultural values and norms - Impact is exerted in different ways:

o Proximal Causes vs. Distal Causes Proximal causes: something that has direct and immediate

effects

E.g., conquistadors had guns and steel swords and armor, allowing them to quickly overcome Incans who lacked such technology

Distal causes: initial differences that lead to effects over long periods of time

E.g., Fertile Crescent’s abundance of easy-to-domesticate plants and animals spread across Eurasia, allowing for development of agriculture, which provided sufficient food for people to devote time to non-food activities such as creating tools and learning to work with steel; Americans had no such endowments

o Evoked culture vs. transmitted culture Evoked culture: the notion that all people, regardless of where

they are from, have certain biologically encoded behavioural repertoires that are potentially accessible to them, and these repertoires are engaged when the appropriate situational conditions are present

Certain environmental conditions evoke certain responses from people –such resources come to comprise culture

E.g., more emphasis on physical attractiveness due to greater parasite prevalence

Transmitted culture: cultural idea that is learned via social transmission or modeling

E.g., parents teach their children to pay attention to physical attractiveness

- Ecological differences not the only component determining emergence of cultural variation

- Edgerton (1971) surveyed communities from different East African tribes o Tribal affiliation trumped ecological pressures in predicting attitudes of a

community o Transmitted culture can play a more powerful role in cultural variation

than evoked culture

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Spread of Cultural Ideas How Do Cultural Ideas Spread and Evolve?

- At the most basic level: o Ideas need to be passed on to others o People must retain those ideas

- Cultural evolution is usually understood using biological evolution o E.g., replication of genes

- Biological evolution operates through 2 mechanisms: o Natural selection

In a given population, one should see increased proportion of a trait that confers survival advantage

Requires 3 conditions to be present:

Individual variability within a species for a trait

Variability associated with different survival rates

A trait that has a hereditary basis When ecological pressures favor survival of some variant of a

trait, proportion of that variant in the population increases over time

o Sexual selection Selection favors traits that confer reproductive advantages What gets sexually selected may go against what converses

survival advantage

E.g., brilliant tail feathers of a peacock may attract a lot of peahens, but they also make the peacock a much easier prey to spot and catch

Cultural Evolution vs. Biological Evolution

- Similarities: o Some cultural ideas persist for longer than others (higher survival rates) o Some cultural ideas are more prone to being passed along to others

(reproduced more) - Differences:

o Cultural ideas can be transmitted horizontally amongst peers Biological evolution is limited to vertical transmission from parents

to offspring

How Does Culture Evolve? - Based on biological evolution, 2 modes of cultural evolution have been proposed:

o Ideas as replicators (treats cultural ideas as genes) o Epidemiology of ideas (treats cultural ideas as disease)

Ideas as Replicators

- Makes use of analogy using genes as replicators in biological evolution - Successful replicators have 3 characteristics (i.e., measures of fitness):

o Longevity –successful replicators are stable long-lasting entities o Fidelity –successful replicators should be replicated with as few errors as

possible o Fecundity –successful replicators should be produced more than

unsuccessful replicators

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Memes - Similar to genes, memes are the smallest

unit of cultural information that can be faithfully transmitted (e.g., catchphrases like “I herd you like mudkipz” or “Just do it”)

- While genes are stored in chromosomes, memes are stored in brains (or computers) and replicated through communication

Limitations of Ideas as Replicators

- Biological evolution has roots in random mutations that cause genetic variability o Cultural evolution is based on consciously planned innovations, and not

only on random variation o Though some initially argued that random variation provided a basis for

cultural evolution (Campbell, 1965) - Cultural transmission does not have high fidelity; while gist of message may

survive, peripheral details usually lost - Hard to decide what classifies as a meme in the same way a gene can be

classified o Definition of genes is much clearer (proportions of DNA that encode

discrete proteins) - While adaptive genes become prominent and maladaptive ones are less likely to

survive, memes are not constrained by adaptability Epidemiology of Ideas

- Uses as an analogy, the branch of medicine concerned with spread of disease - Assumes no direct replication of ideas - Focuses on how an idea is distributed in a population and what helps/hinders its

ability to spread - Proposed mechanism for how ideas are spread:

- Note: generally, while gist of the idea is transmitted, likely the full idea is not

o Imitators’ representations likely coloured with own idiosyncratic biases

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Facilitating Spread of Ideas – 4 Key Concepts 1) Ideas must be communicable (passed form one person to another)

o Communicability may depend on factors such as: Simplicity Usefulness Informative value Social desirability

2) Ideas generally spread within social networks, leading to clustering of

attitudes o Dynamic social impact theory (Latane, 1996): a theory suggesting that

individuals influence each other through their interactions, which gives rise to clusters of like-minded people separated by geography

Group-level phenomena on how beliefs and ideas are transmitted through social systems

Consolidation –reduction in diversity that results from those with a minority opinion abandoning that view and adopting the opinion held by the majority

Clustering –subgroups will emerge, which while they may possess similar ideas to one another, they may hold different beliefs than the overarching population

Correlation –ideas that had not seemed related previously become connected in some way

Continuing diversity –because there is clustering that causes sub-groups to emerge, consolidation will not be able to wipe out the minority opinion

o E.g., Cullum and Harton (2007) tracked attitudes of students randomly assigned to different residences

Attitudes clustered according to residences, especially attitudes deemed more important

New subcultures formed on the basis of ideas people regularly communicated

3) Ideas with emotional impact, or ones that elicit strong emotional reactions

are more likely to be communicated o Such ideas comprise urban or contemporary legends o People can connect with others better when experiencing similar feelings o E.g., NASA predicts total blackout in Dec 2012

4) Ideas that have a minimal number of counter-intuitive components persist

longer o Such ideas violate our expectations but not too outlandishly o Characteristic of many religious works and myths o E.g., Norenzayan, Atran, Falkner, and Schaller (2006) found that the

more successful Grimm Brothers tales (e.g., Cinderella) had 2 to 3 counterintuitive elements

Less popular Grimm brothers tales (e.g., The Donkey Cabbage) had anywhere between 0 to 6 counterintuitive elements

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Persistence of Cultures - Despite some cultural practices changing over time, other cultural habits and

attitudes have become entrenched across generations - This persistence is due to the effect of some pre-existing structure

o Evolution of culture departs from and is based on some initial cultural state

o Such initial cultural states will limit the manner in which future cultural variation takes shape

E.g., Jacobs and Campbell (1961) study on persistence of experimental cultures of an autokinetic effect

- Pluralistic ignorance: tendency to collectively misinterpret the thoughts that’s underlie other people’s behaviours

o Another reason why cultures persist o When everyone (incorrectly) assumes that everyone else is in favor of

some cultural norm, they comply with the norm, thus perpetuating the culture