Lecture #3: Family, Society, and Culture

We are playing two games at all times

• Getting ahead (competitive human nature)

• Social game

Getting ahead (competitive human nature)

zero sum game - if you win it’s bc someone else looses

Social game

non zero sum game - outcomes of the game never add up to zero - we all survive together

Parenting Styles

Two fundamental dimensions - responsiveness and demandingness

Variety of parenting styles that blend these two together

Authoritative

high level of responsiveness + high level of demandingness - they are warm and respective - also set a reasonable and rational stance - Ex. “let’s talk about this”

Authoritarian

high demanding and rule enforcing without the understanding and warmth - Ex. “because I said so”

Permissive

nurturing and respecting - does not enforce that many rules - “you’re the boss”

Neglectful

not responsive or demanding - “you’re on your own”

Parental Correlates - Extraversion, Agreeableness

more of these traits - more responsive to their children

Parental Correlates - Emotional Stability

higher emotional stability - less demanding (neuroticism)

Childhood Correlates

• “Instrumental competence”: honest, cooperative, hard-working, dependable, rule-abiding, & autonomous (Baumrind, 1971) - these were the characteristics of value they hoped would be in children - literature claimed that the more authoritative children had these qualities 

• Academic success

Parenting Styles

• Children may inherit qualities from their parents through shared genetics (e.g., extraversion) that contribute to their instrumental competences

  • There are many third variables that can affect how children behave - nature + nurture - could be a phenotypic correlation  

• Findings apply mainly to White, middle-class American families in the years after WWII 

• Parenting styles differ w/ different kids - could be much different in different cultures 

• Children evoke different styles of parenting from their parents 

Birth Order Effects

Sulloway (1996): Born to Rebel - Siblings compete for parental investment by filling different “niches” within the family - kids had different ways to survive during childhood

Firstborns traditional niche: responsible & parent-pleasing

Firstborns should be higher in Conscientiousness (more disciplined, organized, and responsible), intellectual aspects of Openness, the dominance aspect of Extraversion, and Neuroticism (higher in negative emotions due to all of the responsibilities)

Laterborns rebellious niche: original, easygoing, & sociable

Laterborns should be higher in the unconventional aspects of Openness (more original, imaginative, easygoing), Agreeableness, and the sociability aspect of Extraversion

Confounding Variables

• Sibship Size (total number of siblings in family)

• Parental SES (education, income, occupational prestige)

• Family structure (two-parent, single-parent, blended, etc.)

• Participant Age

Sibship Size (total number of siblings in family)

Firstborns are more likely to be “found” in low-sibship families - when you find firstborn participants - they are more likely to come from smaller families - will more likely have a smaller number of siblings (sibs)

Parental SES (education, income, occupational prestige)

Firstborns are more likely to be “found” in high-SES families - tend to have fewer children - are the effects attributed to being first born or the social class of the family?

Family structure (two-parent, single-parent, blended, etc.)

In blended families, where younger siblings are more likely to be the genetic offspring of both parents, younger siblings are more likely to receive parental investment and act like firstborns

Participant Age

BOEs should be larger in childhood than adulthood - the differences would be more salient here

Damian & Roberts (2015)

• Project Talent, a longitudinal study w/ 5% of U.S. high-school students that started in 1960 (N = 377,000)

• Controlled for confounding variables (e.g., sibship size)

• As predicted, firstborns were more conscientious, less sociable, and more dominant; contrary to prediction, firstborns were more agreeable and less neurotic 

• Average BOE (controlling for all confounds): r = .02.- not meaningfully different

  •  “Birth order has little or no substantive relation to personality trait development”

Why do people become more conscientious, agreeable, and emotionally stable as they transition to adulthood?

As we get older - predictable changes that everyone takes - it speaks to how we mature over our life force - we get more consciousness, more agreeable, more stable

Two theories to explain how we change when we age

• Intrinsic biological maturation (McCrae & Costa, 2008)

• Social investment theory (Roberts & Wood, 2006)

Intrinsic biological maturation (McCrae & Costa, 2008)

• All of these are related changes biologically written to change overtime - therefore we all age this way 

• Prof does not find this compelling - I don’t either - changes that come along with puberty are more understandable 

Social investment theory (Roberts & Wood, 2006)

Complementary theory that imagines that we change the way we do since when we move into adulthood we move into adult roles - these roles pull more adult personalities from us - all of these roles demand you to be a certain way - having work and kids - you have to be responsible, dependable and stable

Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey (data collection: 2001 to 2011)

• Focus: participants ages 17-45 w/ no kids in 2005

• Nationally representative panel study (N = 2,469)

• Big-Five traits were measured in 2005 and 2009

  • Parents-to-be (n = 216): Children born 2009-2011 - are there anticipation effects? 

  • Parents (n = 556): Children born 2005-2009

  • Nonparents (n = 1,697): No children

Selection Effects - Does personality predict who becomes a parent?

High Extraversion, low Openness (both genders), high Consciousness (women)

Anticipation Effects - Does personality change before your first child’s birth?

Fathers-to-be: Increases in Openness

Socialization Effects - Does personality change following your first child’s birth?

No significant differences! - not really investing and internalizing that role - people do not seem to mature after becoming a parent

Which parenting style combines high levels of responsiveness with high levels of demandingness?

Authoritative

Hierarchies are pervasive and consequential

• in animals and humans

• in simple and complex societies

• in formal and informal social groups

Hierarchies serve organizational functions

• minimize the costs of intragroup competition

• facilitate cooperation and coordination

• maintain social order

Two distinct human ranking systems:

• Power hierarchies: individuals are ranked in terms of control over valued resources and outcomes

• Status hierarchies: individuals are ranked in terms of group members’ respect and admiration

Power hierarchies

• Individuals are ranked in terms of control over valued resources and outcomes

  • Power-based deference is controlled

  • Ex. Manager has control over you and your vacation time

  • Ex. Classroom - teachers control grades

Status hierarchies

• Individuals are ranked in terms of group members’ respect and admiration

  • Status-based deference is conferred

  • Newer profs (assistant professor) vs. profs that have tenure - just symbols their status and prestige 

Socioeconomic Status (SES)

Index of social position in terms of income, education, occupational prestige

SES combined aspects of power in terms of resources controlled (e.g., personal wealth) and aspects of

status in terms of resources conferred (e.g., degrees earned)

Marmot (2004): The Status Syndrome

• Can see a social gradient of health for every type of help 

• Manifests in societies that have more than abundant resources to help everyone - they just have less resources based on your SES

• Lower SES predicts greater risk of cardiovascular, respiratory, rheumatoid, and psychiatric disease as well as mortality from all causes - these findings cannot be attributed to:

  • absolute deprivation

  • inadequate healthcare

  • health-relevant behavior

absolute deprivation

there is more than enough resources

inadequate healthcare

lack of healthcare can not explain the abundance of illnesses

health-relevant behavior

the lower you are on the SES scale you tend to engage in more dangerous health relevant behaviour - only a third - can not explain the social gradients since it also appears in other primate species

Low social rank involves exposure to high rates of

physical and psychological stressors, chronic activation of the stress-response, and an increased risk of stress-related diseases - Ex. heart disease, diabetes etc.

The stress-response is triggered by: (psychosocial responses)

• (a) low levels of control and predictability

• (b) a lack of social support

• c) insufficient outlets for stress-induced frustration

Marmot’s psychosocial factors

People’s experiences of autonomy and control and opportunities for social participation

Ed Diener et al. (2010): The World Gallup Poll

• First representative sampling of the globe; surveys were collected from over 150 countries, sampling over 95% of the world’s population

• Across the globe - log income (proportional differences) -> life satisfaction - people never seem to be happy - graphs out to be the same 

• Partly explained through the fulfillment of basic needs (e.g., food or shelter) and psychological needs (e.g., being treated with respect - significant)

Anderson et al. (2012): Local Ladder Effect

• Local sense of subjective status - where you are against your friends or your neighborhood (more than SES) 

• There is more happiness across correlational (self- & peer-reports), experimental (comparing to high- & low-status others), and longitudinal (major life transitions) designs

• Status - powerful & accepted = happy

Wilkinson & Pickett (2009): The Spirit Level - “anti-hirarchy”

• Examine how hierarchies vary in how stratified they are (how vertical they are) 

• The more unequal people are in a given society - the steeper (more vertical) the health/happiness gradients become

• Income inequality -> less fairness and trust, more status competition and anxiety, particularly for lower SES individuals

  • Not exclusively true - income inequality causes everyone to suffer - these consequences are most experienced by low SES individuals 

  • Egalitrains - it’s a response to the hierarchy

  • When they tax the rich - we are all better off 

  • Traditional African tribe - hunter/gatherer society - hunt with bows and arrows - skills differences - also build their own bows and arrows to be distinguishable - randomly draw arrows before they hunt - the credit is given to the person who designs the arrow in order to not create a hierarchy of hunters 

Di Domenico & Fournier (2014):

• MTurk sample (N = 1,139) w/ 49 out of 50 U.S. states represented

• Measured day to day health experiences and need fulfillment - SES - income inequality 

• Need fulfillment was positively predicted by subjective SES and objective income and negatively predicted by income inequality

• Need fulfillment negatively predicted health complaints 

• The more resources you have, the more subjective sense of social standing - the less health complaints you have 

Social gradients in health are most likely a consequence of:

chronic stress-response activation

Individualist cultures prioritize the

•  individual’s goals, interests, and expressions over those of the collective (e.g., America, Canada, Europe)

  • Much more different than the rest of the world - made up of WEIRD populations 

Collectivist cultures prioritize the

• collective’s goals, interests, and expressions over those of the individual (e.g., China, Japan, Africa)

  • Collectivism may be linked to farming, which for the last 10,000 years has required humans to engage in large-scale cooperation - societal demand that a large group of people need to feed the masses 

Talhelm et al. (2014): rice vs. wheat farmers - different in different in different parts of China

• Rice farmer requires standing water for irrigation - if you are a villager of rice farmers you need to work together - higher cooperation - difficult to build irrigation systems - also work together with rice farmers 

• Wheat farmers work more by themselves (individualistic) 

• Han Chinese college students from rice-farming areas scored higher than students from wheat-farming areas on measures of collectivism

Measures of collectivism

• Emphasis on self vs. others

• Holistic vs. analytical thinking

• In-group vs. out-group favoritism

Collectivist social norms (e.g., conformity and reduced contact with out-group members) might have evolved as a

defense strategy in geographical regions with a historically high pathogen load

Rajkumar (2021): Individualism and collectivism might provide a framework for

•  understanding the variation in prevalence, mortality, and case fatality across countries (N = 94) as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic

  • All of these correlations on their own are statistically significant - showing more mortality and fatalities 

  • Varied based on individualistic and collectivistic - less deaths for collectivistic

• Role of culture plays a significant role in personality 

Layers of Personality (McAdams 2013)

• Layer I. Personality Traits / Dispositions (Person as Actor)

• Layer II. Characteristic Adaptations (Person as Agent)

• Layer III. Integrative Life Stories (Person as Author) 

Layer I. Personality Traits / Dispositions (Person as Actor)

• Term is a play on words - we are dramatic creatures and we act in the world 

• Born in the world like this - we are unaware of the audience watching 

• We behave in ways that are stylistically different in comparison to others

• How is your consistent behaviour from other people - how do you think, feel, and act

• Lots of predictability based on interacting with someone - you can learn a lot about people 

• General, internal, and comparative dispositions that account for the consistencies in people’s behavior (“Sketching an outline”) - you have a basic idea about a person

Layer II. Characteristic Adaptations (Person as Agent)

• To get to know more about a person - we need to get to know a person more through their agency - what are your goals, values, developmental stage, motivation, social role etc - you have an agenda 

• Adaptations to the motivational–cognitive–developmental challenges that people confront across the life span (“Filling in the details”)

• Around middle childhood - able to recognize goals in yourself and other people 

Layer III. Integrative Life Stories (Person as Author)

• To fully know how a person is - knowing their integrated life story - autobiographical author - by early adulthood - we have a significant amount of cognitive development - we think and self reflect on the choices from the past, present, and future - answering the question “why am i?” - answering this question through a story 

• This story provides you with a sense of unity and direction 

• Internalized self-narratives that integrate past, present, and future to provide life with a sense of unity and purpose (“Integrating a life”)

culture shapes the phenotypic expression of

traits, providing the demand characteristics and display rules for the behavioral expression of traits

Culture might also shape the structure and the content of traits

• For instance, recent work suggests that the Big Five traits do not replicate in African languages

• We should see the same basic personality traits across cultures - there may be different norms and expectations for particular traits to be manifested 

Different cultures may emphasize different patterns of characteristic adaptations

• Individualism

• Collectivism

Individualism

independent self-construals - view yourself as your own person

Collectivism

interdependent self-construals - your self view is embedded in your social relationships

Cultures provide a menu of stories for the life course and specify how stories should be told and lived

• In modern societies, many different stories compete with each other - we use scripts that have already been told around you 

• Each person must choose some stories and resist others

Master narratives

The most dominant stories that have been spouted and told by the most popular people in that society

Master narratives example

Ex. talked about gender - promoted very strong gender roles that we were expected to follow - forcing people into boxes - having people question or be forced to refrain questioning things

Counter narratives

often come out of minority groups to capture the complexity and diversity that the master narratives avoided

Narrative positioning

must position yourself with one of the two narratives - it is an integral part of the human experience

Cross-Cultural Universals? (Deci & Ryan, 2000) - 3 psychological needs

• The Need for Autonomy

• The Need for Competence

• The Need for Relatedness

The Need for Autonomy

• The need to feel volitional, the sense of personal endorsement

• Knowing that your behaviour is self determined - suggesting that you should feel a sense of authorship on your own behaviour 

• Cats do this too - Ex. when Coco is trying to get you to stop holding him - he meows and squirms to get down 

The Need for Competence

• The need to feel effective, a growing sense of mastery

• Spontaneous joy when children learn something 

The Need for Relatedness

• The need to feel connected to/valued by others

• All of us need to have intrinsic value - not based on our successes or sins - we are all deserving of love

On which aspect of personality does culture exert its strongest effects?

Integrative life stories