Class 2: Cultural Psychology Chapter 3

Cultural Evolution

Culture are fluid and dynamic and change overtime. Cultural ideals do not necessarily address a univeral issue. Rather they are result of a response to the envirionment and are learnt from others

Biology vs Culture

Changes are inheriented biologically and helped my natural selection to evolve over generations. Culture changes ideas, beliefs, and practices overtime. Changes due to soical learning, lanugage and catchy memes.

Four Factors for Spreading Ideas

Communicable, useful, emotional, and minimally counterintuitive.

Communicable Ideas

• Easy to remember (metaphors)

• Easy to communicate with others (e.g simple and socially desirable)

• Dynamic Social Theory: People influence each other through interaction which leads to clusters of similar attidues

Useful Ideas in Cultural Spread

Stories with useful info are memorable, gives people a good rep to be useful, humans are motivated to be helpful

Emotional Ideas

• Shared emotions allow us to connect through a strong reaction/impact (Heath, 2001)

• Post on X with more emotion are more likely to be reposted (Brandy et al 2017)

• Contemporary ledgends: Fiction told as truth (urban ledgends)

Minimally Counterintuitive Ideas

Statements that violate expectations only slightly, commonly found in religious texts and myths.

Three Major Cultural Trends

Increasing interconnectedness, individualism, and intelligence.

Interconnectedness: Globalization vs. Tribalism

Globalization connects the world. It is trending as a reult of low cost transportation easy long-distance communication and global culture (ikea) while tribalism is an urge to return to traditional cultures.

The two distictions found is every culture: Individualistic vs. Collectivistic Cultures

Individualistic emphasize personal goals over the collective goal of each in group vs collectivistic emphasize ingroup collective goals.

Global Individualism Trend

Cultures across regions (including the US, UK, China, and Japan) have become more individualistic. US has seen a decline since 1960s with more capitilism, urbanization, secularism, tech, class and in Japan with the break down of tranditional family norms.

Reasons for Increased Intelligence

Each generation is gaining a 5-25 pt increase of IQ. This can be bc of improved nutrition, increased world/pop-culture complexity, and broader access to higher education. But they are reading less and SAT is actually lower

Cultural Persistence

The continuation of cultural habits across generations due to past structures, early conditions, and pluralistic ignorance.

Pluralistic Ignorance

Collectively misinterpreting others' underlying thoughts, leading to compliance with unliked social norms.

Human vs. Animal Cultural Learning Speed

Human learning may require only a single exposure, whereas animal learning can take years.

Prestige Bias

The tendency to imitate individuals who possess skills and are respected by others.

Similarity Bias

The tendency to imitate people similar to oneself in gender, ethnicity, language, or accent.

Conformist Transmission

The tendency to imitate common or popular behaviors, especially during difficult or uncertain tasks.

Mentalizing (Theory of Mind)

Interest in the mental states, intentions, goals, and preferences of others.

Imitative Learning Trade-off

Less efficient short-term, but enables high-fidelity reproduction and cumulative cultural evolution.

Importance of Language in Culture

Enables complex idea communication without visual demonstration and ensures precise transmission.

Scaffolding

Simplifying a learning task by directing a learner's attention to relevant process steps.

The Ratchet Effect

Cultural information growing in complexity and usefulness as people add accumulated modifications.

Cultural Worlds

Human-made environments containing accumulated cultural ideas like schooling, markets, and the Internet.

The Social Brain Hypothesis

The theory that complex primate social living demands drove the evolution of larger brains.

Ultra-Social Humans

Humans live in larger groups and engage in significantly more social learning than other primates.