Download Chapter 3 Beyond Nature and Nurture Overview Nature and nurture

Chapter 3
Beyond Nature and Nurture
Overview
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Nature and nurture (often expressed as nature or nurture, as if all traits must be the result of one or the other) are not
opposed and mutually exclusive, but rather intertwined, processes.
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Right now, with the advent of the Human Genome Project, nature (biology) seems to be “winning” the argument over
nurture (culture and environment).
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Nature and nurture, biology and culture, work together to shape human lives.
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A full appreciation of the human condition requires that we explore humans as biocultural beings. Within each of us,
biological, psychological, and cultural processes interact in complex ways. From an anthropological standpoint, these
factors must be examined together to reveal many possible human natures.
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The claim that humans are biologically hardwired ignores crucial biocultural variation, which this chapter explores through
the dynamics of human cognition and the relationship between evolution and human lives.
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The biocultural model is very important, even as cultural constructions are examined. Why?
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Specific, learned cultural behavior is built upon biology.
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The biological aspects are general, innate, and species-wide.
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This should sound a bit like the nature-nurture discussion again because it is.
Biology of Brain 1
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The view that biology is responsible for a single “human nature” is deeply entrenched in American ideology—and has been
for over a century.
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We recognize our actions and behaviors as products of the brain but often take unwarranted assumptions too far.
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For example, one assumption is that biology (nature) is destiny that may only be minimally modified by culture
(nurture, or environment) throughout the course of a human life.
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This assumption has been challenged by several decades of research in the cognitive sciences indicating that our brains are
continually influenced by cognition and bioculturally variable phenomena that depend on our cultural environments. In
other words, when it comes to human behavior, culture matters.
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The adaptable human brain
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The adaptability of the human brain is best illustrated by comparing it to the brains of nonhuman primates.
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Most nonhuman primates are born with their brains largely developed.
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In contrast, human brains average only 25% of their eventual weight at birth—75% of our brain development
occurs after birth in a cultural environment.
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The formation of neural pathways during brain growth allows for the development of complex thoughts and cultural
behaviors.
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Human brains are mostly mature at puberty but continue significant development until the early 20s and beyond.
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This long period of postnatal development gives humans a unique degree of mental flexibility and dexterity.
Biology of Brain 2
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The adaptable human brain (continued)
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The mental abilities date back beyond the origin of anatomically modern Homo sapiens.
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Extinct human ancestors, such as Homo erectus, left traces of extraordinary behavioral versatility, problem-solving
abilities, and environmental adaptability.
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The human brain evolved to be a generalized learning and problem-solving device.
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Our brains, especially during the first five years of life, develop in the context of a particular culture, language, and
set of social relationships and norms. It therefore makes sense to refer to the human brain as a “cultured” brain.
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The flexibility of human brain structure is called neural plasticity.
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For example, we can acquire skills like reading, writing, and using mobile devices—recently acquired skills
that were unnecessary for the vast majority of our evolutionary past.
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Another example: we take two-dimensional media (like this PowerPoint) for granted, but people raised in
environments without such stimuli must learn to interpret information in two-dimensional representations.
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These, and other, cultural differences in perception suggest that mental development varies with cultural
practices.
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The mind and culture
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Anthropologists make a distinction between:
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The physical brain and its emergent qualities;
And the mind and its emergent qualities of consciousness and intellect that manifest themselves through thought,
emotion, perception, will, and imagination.
Biology of Brain 3
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The mind and culture (continued)
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Psychology is a general term (umbrella) for many human behaviors and mental processes that vary cross-culturally.
These mental processes include:
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Personality: A person's unique characteristics and behaviors.
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Cognition: Ways of thinking, knowing, problem solving and remembering.
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Perception: The organization and interpretation of sensory information.
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This is a particularly interesting example of the biocultural model.
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What did you see? Our brains can not notice everything.
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Emotion: The affects and feelings we feel as humans.
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Learning: The development of skills, capabilities and behaviors.
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Mental illness: Maladaptive or dysfunctional patterns of thinking and behaving.
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The human mind processes information and constructs cognitive models (operator’s manuals of the mind) to make
sense of the world around us.
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Cognitive models provide a framework for one’s own behavior and others. They fill in gaps in our direct
knowledge (data) to create meaning.
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Anthropologists have long recognized the importance of cognitive models, referring to them as cultural models,
because they are constructed by groups of people in cultural contexts.
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Cognitive anthropology studies how people think, learn, and organize knowledge. Examples:
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Different cultures see different groupings and give different names and meanings: color names, names for
body parts, or stars in the night sky.
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Forms of greeting, calendars, games, chants, conventional body postures, and rituals are examples of shared
social institutions that began as cultural models.
Biology of Brain 4
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Uniting mind and matter
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Anthropologists also identify personal models: an individual’s idiosyncratic way of making sense of things.
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For example, your mental map (model) of the town or city in which you live focuses on the features that matter to
you and differs from the mental maps of other individuals.
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Despite living in the same physical space, people may have very different personal models, or perceptions, of that
space.
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I remember when I first came to Everett; I told my admin that I am bad with directions.
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At first, she looked skeptical; now when I come in for directions she draws maps in the way I best understand
them (no east, west and such).
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The brain is part of the human nervous system, a complex neurological network that reads and regulates chemical and
biological conditions throughout the body.
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The whole nervous system is impacted by culturally conditioned mental stresses, which have well-documented
effects on blood pressure, immunity to disease, and levels of fatigue.
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Thus, biology (nature) and culture (nurture, our personal experience of stress) combine to affect physical health.
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These factors require us to rethink our assumptions about individual minds and how we can better understand the
psychology of culturally diverse peoples
Anthropology & Others’ Psychologies 1
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Until recently, the biocultural model was not as deeply embedded in cultural anthropology as in other subfields
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Cultural anthropology DOES build on a strong history of looking at connections between cultural/social contexts and
psychology.
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What is the individual person?
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Psychological anthropology is the subfield of anthropology that studies psychological states and conditions.
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It closely parallels and often intersects with cognitive anthropology and seeks to reconcile a psychological focus on
individuals with an anthropological focus on culture and society.
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Psychological anthropology grew out of the mid-twentieth-century culture and personality school, which analyzed
how childrearing, social institutions, and cultural ideologies shaped individual experience, personality
characteristics, and thought patterns.
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Most culture and personality studies began with the premise that environment (nurture) was a more important factor in
shaping individual psychology than biology (nature).
The culture and personality school
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Ruth Benedict, author of Patterns of culture (1934), was an influential proponent of culture and personality studies.
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Her work asserted that human behavior is fundamentally malleable and that people easily adopt the personality
characteristics that are considered “normal” within their societies—in other words, that individual thoughts and actions
are directed by culture, not biology.
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Anthropologists later learned that some assumptions of the culture and personality approach are inaccurate. For
example, societies include individuals with different personality types, and childhood enculturation does not
completely determine adult personality. It is now evident that nature combines with nurture in the development of
individual personality types.
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Anthropology & Others’ Psychologies 2
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The culture and personality school (continued)
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Ruth Benedict was a student of Franz Boas and embraced the concept of cultural relativism.
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In Patterns of culture she assumed each culture produces a dominant personality (what she called “culture as
personality-writ-large” or culture-as-personality).
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She illustrated this concept in her book using three cultures and she chose them because of their “primitiveness’, that
they were simpler cultures then those of the West.
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Zuni (a Pueblo culture of the SW of United States with who she studied).
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She described as aesthetic and mild
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She labeled as Apollonian (as drawn from Nietzsche’s use of Greek prototypes).
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Kwakiutl (a people of the NW Coast, today called Kwa Kwaka’ Wakw, which she based on work by Franz Boas).
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She described as aggressive and competitive.
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She labeled them as Dionysian.
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Dobu (a people of eastern New Guinea and involved in kula rings and studied by Margaret Mead and others).
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She described as fearful and paranoid
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She discussed the role of witchcraft in creating their fears.
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This concept came to be called national character. Want to read more, see this link.
Anthropology & Others’ Psychologies 3
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The culture and personality school (continued)
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National culture to cultural themes
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Many other attempts have been made to describe the general psychological make-up of a people. To bring these
studies into context, we need to look at both national character and national culture as concepts.
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National character studies grew out of an effort by anthropologists to make their discipline relevant to the World
War II war effort, helping the United States to understand its enemies, its allies, and its citizens better
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National culture remains a topic of discussion (unlike national character).
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It is the idea of that which is shared by most of the people of a nation, overarching regional culture, promoted
by radio and television.
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“Water cooler discussions” of latest popular TV show. So what happens with more channels?
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Sameness and othering
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In Cambodia, the Khmer were known as a gentle, friendly, artistic people.
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They were Theravada Buddhists who valued all life.
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When the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975-1979 they instituted a genocide wherein priests, intellectuals,
former government officials and the entire middle class was massacred.
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This was accomplished by murder, starvation and forced labor.
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An estimated 1.7 million people were killed.
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How did this massacre become validated by the Khmer Rouge?
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Othering: The process by which the basic principles of another culture (sub-culture or group) are demonized.
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The Khmer Rouge used the hierarchical aspects of Cambodian society to reinforce their message.
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Anthropology & Others’ Psychologies 4
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The culture and personality school (continued)
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Margaret Mead, was another influential contributor to the culture and personality school.
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Mead's construct: gender is culturally constructed (student of Franz Boas and of Ruth Benedict). She studied sex
and gender.
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Her first popular book, Coming of Age in Samoa, remains popular and was based on an investigation of cultural
construction of puberty among 68 girls on the island of Ta‘ū in American Samoa.
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Suggested that in Samoa there was no guilt attached to pre-marital sex.
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Previously, sex and gender were assumed to be purely biological. Mead disproves this concept.
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Conclusion: Many aspects of behavior at puberty are culturally constructed and not biological.
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On the topic of number of genders. How many are there?
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There is a longer discussion of this question in Chapter 12, but we do not get to this reading.
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In America we often mix-up the concepts of sexual orientation with gender. Or we mix-up sexual dimorphism with
gender.
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Many cultural groups see three genders (including the Samoans)
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Among the Bugis people of Indonesia there are 5 genders.
Anthropology & Others’ Psychologies 5
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The culture and personality school (continued)
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In her book, Sex and temperament in three primitive societies, Mead discussed the biological/cultural bases of sex-roles
(today called gender roles).
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She based the work on three cultural groups from the Sepik River region (Papua New Guinea).
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Found diversity in male/female roles.
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Concluded gender roles are culturally-constructed.
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Some of the data Mead found for dominant women’s roles had to do with the effects of a previous period of
warfare.
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Her work was challenged by Derek Freeman (after her death) in his Margaret Mead and Samoa: The making and
unmaking of an anthropological myth and his later book, The fateful hoaxing of Margaret Mead
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One of many responses to Freeman was this book: Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an anthropological
controversy.
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While she is well-respected it is important to note:
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Debate over whether she ever became fluent in any of her field site languages.
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The time spent in the field was short by modern standards.
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She missed some of the historical issues that affected her findings.
Anthropology & Others’ Psychologies 6
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The individual: Persons and selves
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In the twentieth century, French sociologists Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) and Marcel Mauss (1872–1950) also
explored cultural concepts of person.
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Person: the socially recognized individual.
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They made the generalized observation that “modern” societies value each unique individual (egocentric), while
“premodern” societies emphasize social solidarity (sociocentric).
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In contrast, in subsequent years, anthropologists have observed great cross-cultural variation in ideas about “full
personhood.” For example,
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In parts of Melanesia, individuals are only considered “persons” when they begin exchanging objects with
others.
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In many Zapotec Indian villages in Oaxaca, Mexico, individuals do not gain full rights until adulthood, when
they marry, take on adult social roles, and fulfill community duties.
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The Dinka of South Sudan think of the conscience (moral obligation) as an external spirit (i.e., nonperson)
named Mathiang Gok that seizes control of individuals and forces appropriate behavior. This differs from our
own view of conscience as a psychological property within the minds of individual persons.
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Contemporary psychological anthropologists use the term self to refer to an individual’s conception of his or her
fundamental qualities and consciousness.
Anthropology & Others’ Psychologies 7
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The individual: Persons and selves (continued)
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Privacy
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The emphasis on the emic (native) way of thinking about personhood as seen today is called indigenous
psychologies and ethnopsychology.
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One current arena of study is the boundary between self and others (what is defined as privacy).
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Two types of privacy norms, according to Ferdinand David Schoeman:
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1) Limits access to standard behaviors (elimination, sex and the like) as well as body parts (genitalia, face
and the like).
• 2) The other deals with access to behavior that is private, personal and expressive (freedom of expression).
“My house is my castle”.
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I remember when I learned that, among the Moli, one can never see a person of the opposite gender held to the
toilet area.
• This meant there were not to be any building of family latrines.
• The provincial government did not understand why the villagers were resistant to their health program that
promoted family latrines.
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People are not born with an ability to separate their selves from the environment.
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Not born to see their selves as an object.
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Not born to react to their selves.
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Not born to appraise or evaluate their selves.
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They learn this through development of self-awareness.
Anthropology & Others’ Psychologies 8
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The individual: Persons and selves (continued
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Childhood
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How do one’s early experiences shape one’s personality?
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Many studies have tried to answer this question and many of these studies have been ethnographic.
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One of these was undertaken by John Whiting and Beatrice Whiting.
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Their work is cross-cultural, including large samples from ethnographies and on-site ethnographic research
(field work).
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Their attempted to determine child-rearing practices that are linked to other cultural traits.
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One example is mother-infant contact. They found two basic patterns:
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In some cultures, they remain in close contact in the day and sleep together at night.
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In other cultures, most of the time is spent in cribs and/or cradles.
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Whiting suggests these different patterns affect the psychology of males.
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For the closely reared males, a rite of passage is needed to separate from mother’s influences.
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For males separated much of infancy, have a belief in high god or guardian spirits.
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This hypothesis is not meant to be deterministic, but a description of a statistical trend.
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Other anthropologists look at childhood to better understand economic and political implications or how
children learn languages.
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A particularly enjoyable film about babies is called just that “Babies”.
Anthropology & Others’ Psychologies 9
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Ethnopsychology
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The distinction between persons and selves spurred an anthropological analysis of world psychologies, sometimes
called ethnopsychology.
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The ethnopsychological approach explores how societies make sense of persons, selves, and emotions.
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Are emotions universal? Yes and no.
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Yes: Paul Ekman is famous for studying the universality of facial expressions.
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Ekman went to highlands of PNG in 1965 (most isolated from Westerners at the time)
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Ekman identified 6 universal expressions: anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happy, and sad. Others suggest
contempt.
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No: The emotions we experience, and assume to be universal, may not have an exact equivalent in other cultures.
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For example, the Ilongot of the Philippines describe liget, a concept similar to “anger” but which they identify
as distinctly different. They argue that passion and a “heavy heart” prompt them to engage in head-hunting.
206_Lectures Chapter 3 Page 5
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Rosaldo wrote the definitive study the Ilongots in his book Ilongot headhunting, 1883-1974: A study in society
and history.
Anthropology & Others’ Psychologies 10
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Culture and mental illness
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Studies of ethnopsychology indicate that the experience of emotional disturbances, and even mental illnesses, produces
different reactions and behaviors, depending on cultural context.
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Despite the many biological dimensions of mental illness, anthropologists must be careful to approach it in a culturally
relative way.
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Psychological abnormality is culturally interpreted because the difference between normal and abnormal is based
on socially accepted norms.
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Different societies recognize different mental illnesses, and some may even be described as culture-bound
syndromes (also called culture-specific diseases; mental illnesses unique to a culture). For example,
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There is a condition unique to Chinese and Southeast Asian cultures, called koro, in which a male believes his
external genitalia (or female nipples) are shrinking and even disappearing.
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American psychiatrists classified homosexuality as a mental illness until 1974, and homosexuality could be
cited as a justification for denying immigration into the United States until 1990. Today, sexual orientation is
not considered a disorder or an acceptable basis for discrimination in the United States.
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Along with culture-bound syndromes, societies may propose culturally specific treatments for mental illness. For
example,
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On the Indonesian island of Bali, healers are tasked with identifying specific causes of madness, which may
include spirits, deceased ancestors, and blessings or curses of gods.
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One consequence of globalization is that Western psychological terms, notions, and illnesses have rapidly spread.
Common mental illnesses such as depression, anorexia, and posttraumatic stress disorder are now diagnosed in
places where they were not recognized to occur before.
Anthropology & Others’ Psychologies 11
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Culture and mental illness
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Latah is another example of the validity of the biocultural
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Everyone can be startled, it is an autonomic reaction to sudden, unexpected stimuli
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It acts as a defense mechanism, causing the person to either expand in size or freeze.
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Watch this video clip: Car ride (scared my cat!)
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Latahs are persons who can be called hyperstartlers.
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In the US, we pay little attention to hyperstartling. One exception was during the 1880s in Maine among the
jumpers.
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In Siberia, this syndrome is called miryachit, among the Lapps, it is called Lapp Panic, in Burma it is called youngdah-hte, in Thailand it is Bah-tsche, among the Yemenese it is nekzah and in Japan it is imu.
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Westerners with anxiety disorders are often thought to be hypersensitive to startling.
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Incidents are brief, but frequent, and are shared between the different culture groups where they are seen.
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Nature/nurture: Are hyperstartlers born or made?
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Etic perspective on latah: A biological function is shifted into a more social role among the less socially powerful
according to the anthropologist.
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Emic perspectives on latah: In the film, one woman says it is biological, hereditary due to weak semangat (soul
matter), while another man says one can be created.
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