cultural final!!!

attraction and relationships

What are the 3 universals of attractiveness?

1. CLEAR COMPLEXION people are attracted to healthy mates, skin signals health more directly than any other visible aspect

• cosmetic industry provides people with ways to make their complexion look clearer

• people have strong aversive reactions to skin conditions

2. BILATERAL SYMMETRY when an organism develops under ideal healthy conditions it’s right and left sides will be symmetrical

• genetic mutations, pathogens, or stressors in the womb can lead to asymmetrical development

• on average, asymmetrical faces are viewed as less attractive - especially so in hunting-gathering societies where rate of infant mortality are higher (ovulating women prefer t-shirt scent of symmetrical men)

3. AVERAGE FEATURES faces with averagely proportioned features are more attractive than faces that deviate from average

• average features are less likely to contain genetic abnormalities, and are more symmetrical

example - those with more average features in a yearbook died later than those with deviations, proxy for health

• further, we can process any kind of stimulus that is closer to a prototype easier than one that is further from a prototype - easy processing is associated with pleasant feeling that gets interpreted as attractive

tweaking faces with editing and finding eventually people preferred altered faces

What is the effect of composite photos? Is this effect found on bodies?

Australian study made composite photos of caucasians, east asians, and eurasians

• then made further composites of the composites across races

Mixed average (caucasian, east asian, and eurasian) and eurasian average is typically most attractive → represent the average of all faces!

Bodies (weight, height, muscles, etc.) that depart from average are seen as more attractive

• 1951 anthropologists concluded that heavier women are universally more attractive than skinny women

• Today, average body weights are increasing while ideals have become thinner over the past few decades (attached to unconscious association to SES)

What are 3 examples of the Tyranny of the Beautiful?

The Tyranny of the Beautiful is the benefits given to those who are attractive, in North America, people spend more money on beauty products than on education and this may be driven by the cultural benefits of attractiveness.

• CANADIAN GOVERNMENT ELECTION CANDIDATES: physically attractive candidates received three times as many votes as unattractive ones

• MBA SALARY: were rated on a 5 point scale in terms of attractiveness + each unit of attractiveness was associated with an additional $2600/year salary for men, and $2151/year for women

• DEFENDANTS IN MISDEMEANOR CASES: those who are attractive are assigned less than half of the bail amounts as unattractive defendants

What is the Halo effect?

The Halo effect is that it is cognitively easier to assume someone who is physically attractive is also paired with positive features

Is the Tyranny of the Beautiful universal?

US and Ghanians participants indicated how satisfied they were with various life outcomes (career, abilities, friendships, romantic relationships)

• researchers took a photo of participants, which were rated for physical attractiveness - these were used to predict participants’ life outcomes

Physically attractive Ghanians were not more satisfied with their lives (negative or zero correlation), whereas attractive Americans were more satisfied with their lives in general - Tyranny of Beautiful may not generalize well beyond WERID contexts

What is relational mobility and what is its effect across cutlures?

Relational Mobility is the amount of freedom people have to move between relationships

HIGH RELATIONAL MOBILITY cultures have much freedom in deciding who they will have relationships with, free to associate with people who are not from their ingroups

• qualities that attract partners are more important and associated with better outcomes

• Tyranny of the Beautiful more prominent, as well as Similarity-attraction effect

• North America, Latin America, and Western Europe (more urban and historically herding communities)

LOW RELATIONAL MOBILITY cultures have less freedom in deciding who to create relationships with, and significant relationships come from ingroups (family, neighbourhood, school, etc.) that create natural relationships for you

• North and West Africa, the Middle East, and South and East Asia (more rural areas and historically farming communities OR regions with more environmental threat or high prevalence of pathogens/disease, due to mistrust in others and close-knit community)

Relational mobility effects the benefits of being physically attractive across cultures, as perceived strangers have HIGH or LOW potential of being relationship partners

What is the Similarity-Attraction Effect and what are 2 mediators for this effect?

SIMILARITY-ATTRACTIONS EFFECT reveals the ultimate egotism, we’re attracted in a wide variety of domains to those most similar to ourselves, such as attitudes, personality, demographics, and preferred activities

• largely WESTERN effect

JAPANESE + CANADIANS took a survey and then saw a survey completed by a researcher, such as that responses were either highly similar or not very similar,

• participants were evaluated on how much they thought they would like the other participant

Canadians showed a similarity-attraction effect, whereas Japanese didn’t show a reliable similarity-attraction effect: non-western effect is consistently weaker in magnitude than that found with Westerners

Higher Relational Mobility shows a stronger similarity-attraction effect, as well as the higher one’s self-esteem, the more one likes people who are similar to them

What is Residential Mobility? What are 3 effects of communities with high residential mobility?

Residential Mobility is the examination of the number of times people have moved, as an indicator of the number of possible new relationship opportunities

• Americans who have never moved, have an identity wrapped in their personality traits and the groups to which they belong - identity as tied to community

• Americans who move more frequently view personality traits to be a more central part of their identity than their group memberships

Residentially mobile American neighbourhoods have more:

“fair-weather” sports fans (winning team fans who travel to support)

higher crime rates and lower pro-community action (less commitment and feeling of impermanence)

more national chain stores per capita and more goods sold at those stores

more conditional loyalty to co-workers

What is the role of friendship in LOW RELATIONAL MOBILITIY CONTEXTS? How did this vary in American vs Russian parenting forums? How is this seen in Ghana?

GHANIANS:

In LOW RELATIONAL MOBIILTY CONTEXTS, you deal with friends regardless of how you feel towards them. - Ghanians report that having too many friends is foolish.

• Ghanians have more enemies than Americans (ingroups), as enermyship is a natural state of life, whereas Westerners avoid those they dislike

RUSSIANS:

Advice that is unsolicited can lead the recipient to feel threatened in their autonomy in North American culture

• Russian collectivistic culture see advice as supportive

Study investigated American and Russian parenting forums: one poster did not request advice, other asked directly for advice - researchers coded how many responses were received + whether responses made specific recommendations to the poster

• Americans only offered advice if it was explicitly requested, Russians offered more advice regardless of whether it was requested

• In interdependent contexts, advice is given more as the benefits of supporting others outweights the perceived threats to autonomy

What is simpatico?

SIMPATICO is a relational style in Latin American culture, emphasizing warmth, graciousness, hospitality, and maintaining harmony

Why are people less trusting of friendships in Interdependent (Ghanian) cultures than Independent cultures, despite expectations?

In Indepedent high-mobility societies, friendships are only formed from advantage (it would be fun, it would be productive, etc.)

• enemies are not a problem, as you can choose not to engage with them

In Interdependent, low-mobility societies, unavoidable friendships/relationships are formed which can persist despite one’s connectedness, developing into an enemy

• a greater desire to understand one’s enemy is found, compared to an objection of interaction

“A friend is someone who is ready to help you” - therefore having many friends is a “foolish” act of having many obligations

What is the evolutionary account of why we have romantic love? Is there evidence for universal capacities for romantic love?

Children require the care and and socialization deriving from loving parents, this acts as a strong incentive and selective advantage to support a child

• In ancestral environments, children of neglectful parents would not survive, the genes of those parents were not passed to future generations

An ethnographic review of 166 cultures, found that 89% of them had clear evidence of romantic love with the remaining 11% being problems with ethnographic oversight, not the absence of feeling

• ROMANTIC LOVE may be a human universal - at least a functional, if not accessibility universal

What are the 3 assumptions made by Western culture in understanding arranged marriages?

1. You only love someone you have chosen for yourself

Like buying a new puppy: you assume you will love it, so you learn to eventually love it

2. Love is an individualistic choice

Marriage can be a binding of 2 families, where a family is trusted to make a better judgement of idiosyncrasies than the self

3. Marriage without love is bound to be unhappy or unsuccessful

Positive correlation between culture’s belief in love marriage and divorce rates

• at least same satisfaction in arranged marriages as love marriages, BUT women seem to carry the costs of arranged marriage more than men in East Asian Culture

• love decreases in love marriages, compared to arranged marriages growing in love

What are the 4 relationship models from Alan Fiske?

Communal Sharing

Authority Ranking

Equality Matching

Market Pricing

What is COMMUNAL SHARING?

COMMUNAL SHARING is the emphasis, by members of the group, on common identity > idiosyncrasies - same rights and privileges among all members

• FAMILY: whole family gets same amount of cake to everyone’s benefit and enjoyment

• Common in India outside of families, and more prevalent in Lower Income families in US than Wealthier families

What is Authority Ranking?

AUTHORITY RANKING is the emphasis of hierarchal social dimension, where those who have a higher or more prestigious ranking have privileges that those lower do not - however, subordinates are entitled to protection from those above

• MILITARY: those in lower ranks earn less money, and have less prestige and benefits

What is EQUALITY MATCHING?

EQUALITY MATCHING is the emphasis on reciprocity, with the tracking of exchange in order to pay back in equivalent terms

• NON-WESTERN CULTURE/INDIVIDUALISTIC SOCIEty: every family takes turns to pool money for one family at a time, where each family has equal likelihood of enjoying a period of extra money

What is MARKET PRICING?

MARKET PRICING is the emphasis on ratios and proportionality, similar to EQUALITY MATCHING, there is an expected reciprocal exchange, but this exchange occurs at once as a TRANSACTION

• WESTERN CULTURE/INDIVIDUALISTIC SOCIETY: ceo of company vs new mailroom worker are both charged the same amount for an exchange of milk at the store, ebay exchange of a good for a set price as a transaction

What is Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love?

Consummate Love is made of intimacy, passion, and commitment.

ROMANTIC LOVE is passion + intimacy

COMPASSIONATE LOVE is intimacy + commitment

FATUOUS LOVE is passion + commitment

Empty love is only commitment, Infatuation is only passion, Liking is only intimacy

• High relationally mobile socieites weight more importance of passion and intimacy vs. Commitment having more weight in collectivistic societies

What is INTIMACY in Sternberg’s Triangualr Love Theory?

INTIMACY closeness and connection

Western couples develop more intimacy (especially in self-disclosure) than East Asian Couples

• Non-Westerners have interdependent selves with intimacy needs met across friendships and family alike

• High-relational mobility makes it so as more opportunity arises, it’s necessary to invest more into existing relationships to make them last longer with SELF-DISCLOSURE as a glue

What is PASSION in Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love?

PASSION sexual desire and physical attraction

Western couples value passion more than non-Western cultures, as with High-relational mobility, passion can be a GLUE that keeps couples together in an open relationship market

What is COMMITMENT in Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love?

COMMITMENT decision to maintain loving relationship

Asian couples value commitment more than Western couples, as LOW Relational Mobility and LOW divorce rates lead to honouring a relationship

• IDEALIZING A PARTNER is a Western notion that sustains commitment, not apparent in Non-Western cultures

What are the 3 phases of Marriage History in the United States? What is nuance of modern marriage?

INSTITUTIONAL ERA (1776-1850) households were corporations + primary function of marriage was to fulfill basic needs of food, shelter, and safety

COMPANIONATE ERA (1859-1965) family of husband breadwinner and wife as homemaker + marriage as a way to fulfill needs of being loved and experiencing passion

SELF-EXPRESSIVE ERA (1965-present) both partners work + marriage fulfills both love needs but also self-actualization to become a better individual

Americans turn more to romantic spouses for intimacy needs as they spend less time with others + irony is that as people who expect more from their marriages, become less happy within them

• best marriages of today are more satisfying than in the past, but we are asking a lot more than we once did in romantic love

What were Jonathan Haidt’s MORAL INTUITIONS?

Haidt expanded Schweder’s 3 Codes of Ethics into 5 MORAL INTUITIONS

ETHIC OF AUTONOMY

Avoiding Harm: moral intuition to avoid behaviours causing harm to others and Protecting Fairness: moral intuition to pay attention to whether resources or rights are distributed fairly

ETHIC OF COMMUNITY
Loyalty to ingroups: moral intuition to put interests of ingroups ahead of outgroups and Respecting Authority: moral intuition to admire superiors and behave to wishes of authority

ETHIC OF DIVINITY

Achieving purity: moral intuition that people should be disgusted by contamination or behaviours guided by sexual passions

What does Jonathan Haidt believe in relation to political views and their alignment with MORAL INTUITIONS?

How are Haidt’s principles applied to dietary choices in North America vs India?

North American populations who are vegetarian, are mostly doing it from a perspective of avoiding harm and protecting fairness

Indians who are vegetarian are more concerned with purity and authority

North Americans and Indians are making the same choices based on different moral foundations across cultures.

How do conservatives and liberals differ in their Moral Intuitions based on Haidt’s video?

LIBERALS feel stronger about protecting fairness and avoiding harm

CONSERVATIVES feel strongly about all five moral intuitions (avoiding harm, protecting fairness, loyalty to ingroups, respecting authority, and achieving purity)

• stronger feelings of disgust responses as moral emotions

What is the main takeaway from Haidt about our Righteous Minds?

Our righteous minds are designed to unite us into teams, divide us against other teams, and blind us to the truth

• everyone thinks they’re right so investigating someone’s moral intuition is more useful than the argument itself

How do Jimmy Carter and Sigmund Freud differ in their morality of thoughts?

JIMMY CARTER confessed his sinful thoughts of having an affair, growing up christian

SIGMUND FREUD thought many provocative, “sinful” thoughts and was an upstanding citizen

Christianity and Judaism differ in that private thoughts are moral domain for Christians, believing that:

Thoughts are under individual control

Thoughts generate the paths to actions and behaviours

Jewish people believe in actions/behaviours as seen through literal interpretations of the Bible and Keeping Kosher as a very structured maintenance of behaviour

How do the Yasawans from Fiji differ in their interpretation of intention of moral acts?

The Yasawans from Fiji believe it is frowned upon to speculate others’ behaviour, unintentional bad acts are therefore judged as bad as intentional bad acts

What was Weber’s Theory of Achievement Motivation?

WEBER believed that capitalism emerged from Protestant Reformation, where:

Individuals had a relationship with God

A Calling was meant to be fulfilled by everyone on earth

Predestination determined whether one was going to hell or heaven before they were born

German Protestants were more rich (higher literacy rates), stronger in achievement motivation, and more self-reliant at an early age than German Catholics - in study where people were primed with “salvation” they were more creative and hard working to cleanse themselves of sin

• taking a harder blow when unemployed

How do individualistic tendencies tie to the spread of the Western Church?

Kinship structures were changed in Medieval Europe as the result of policies of the Western Church - 9th Century: successive Popes issued new policies

Polygamy Banned

Marrying In-Laws and relatives was banned

Newly married couples were encouraged to set up independent households

Countries with longer exposure to Western Church developed less intensive kin-based relationships and a more INDIVIDUALISTIC PSYCHOLOGY

What is William Goode’s Theory of Romantic Love?

William Goode believed that romantic love would become more important as the strength of extended family decreased

• marriages of love are more common in cultures with nuclear family structures than in cultures with extended family systems

What are KOHLBERG’s Stages of Moral Development?

Kohlberg believed that cognitive abilities underlie moral reasoning + that these abilities progress over maturity and levels of education

LEVEL 1: THE PRECONVENTIONAL LEVEL
morality based on internal standards regarding the physical or hedonistic consequences of actions - will this action lead to negative consequences for myself or others?

LEVEL 2: THE CONVENTIONAL MORAL REASONING

morality based on external standards regarding self-identification with a particular group and social order - does this action disturb social order or disobey rules?

LEVEL 3: THE POSTCONVENTIONAL LEVEL
morality based on internalized stnadards of abstract ethical principles regarding justice and individual rights - morality not based on whether action is right or wrong but a larger ethical principle

What is Cross-cultural evidence for Kohlberg’s Model of Moral Development?

Researchers did META ANALYSIS of 27 CULTURES, looked at people’s REASONS for finding scenarios moral or immoral

All cultures had adults with conventional moral reasoning level, none at preconventional level

All cultures had more children in preconventional moral reasoning level than adults

All Urban cultures had at least some adults at the postconventional moral reasoning level, no tribal societies had adults at the postconventional moral reasoning level

• Seen by Kohlberg as less sophisicated with an ETHNOCENTRIC view

• people develop a moral framewoek best fitting their environment, and moral development theory is westernized/incomplete

What are Shweder’s 3 Moral Ethics?

ETHIC OF AUTONOMY - Western

morality in terms of individual freedom and rights violations, emphasizing liberty and personal choice - denying rights, acting unfairly, limiting others’ liberty

ETHIC OF COMMUNITY - Non-Western

morality emphasizing that people have duties to their roles in a community or social hierarchy - lack of loyalty, betrayal of a group, failing to fulfill one’s duties

• women are more likey to reason this way than men

• Chinese word for immoral pertains to incivility, inconsiderate behaviour, damaging public spaces, and disrespecting elders and parents

ETHIC OF DIVINITY

morality emphasizing obligation to preserve natural order mandadted by transcendant authority - if something violates standards of purity, cause the degradation of the self or others

• chicken man experiment - those of lower SES are more concerned with the harm principle - feeling that the man should be punished and that it is universally wrong even after knowing it was a cultural ritual

• those of Higher SES are less inclined to claim immorality when knowing it was a cultural practice

What are Moral Obligations, pertaining to Shweder’s 3 Moral Ethics?

MORA OBLIGATIONS are operationalized as objective and legitimately regulated moral situations

• OBJECTIVE means even if there was no official law requiring to do so, it would be followed

• LEGITIMATELY REGULATED means people should be prevented from engaging in this behaviour

Indians are more protective of COMMUNAL/INTERPERSONAL obligations and Americans are more protective of JUSTIC OBLIGATIONS

How do ORTHODOX vs PROGRESSIVE Religious believers differ in their Moral Ethics? (Shweder)

ORTHODOX refers to believers committed to the idea of transcendent authority that work above the individual - ETHIC OF DIVINITY

PROGRESSIVES refer to believers who emphasize the importance of human agency to form a moral code - ETHIC OF AUTONOMY and sometimes COMMUNITY

What is the Epidemiology Paradox?

The Epidemiology Paradox is that latinos have better health outcomes than many European-Americans, despite lower SES

• potentially driven by simpatico

• healthy migrant hypothesis is that only those fit to journey to North America are among the healthiest

• Salmon bias - many latinos leave the United States when older or in poor health, so deaths are not part of American data

How does poverty impair thinking? Seen in Poor and Wealthy Americans, and Indians farmers before and after harvest.

Long term poverty’s cognitive load is associated with REDUCED CORTICAL SURFACE AREA, thinking suffers

AMERICAN STUDY had poor and wealthy Americans think about a difficult financial problem or an easy one + poor Americans scored extremely lower in Raven’s IQ after thinking of DIFFICULT FINANCIAL PROBLEMS

INDIAN FARMERS were also tested before harvest (poor) and after (wealthy) and found similar results

Why may hypertension rates be higher in African Americans?

West Africans have similar hypertension rates as European-Americans living in the United States, but African Americans have an especially high rate.

• NOT GENETIC: Germans and Finns have higher rates than African Americans + Nigerians have lower rates than European-Americans

• Linked to stress, racial discrimination causing stress is a strong cause

• Education and Discrimination have a positive correlation in African Americans, meaning hypertension rates are higher in Higher SES African Americans than Lower SES African Americans

What are 4 examples of Cross-Cultural Medical Practices (Azande, Americans, French, Chinese)?

AZANDE OF WEST AFRICA believe that illness is caused by witchcraft, with a small, inherited organ causing some Azande to be witches

• acute illness means someone is casting a spell, whereas a slow illness is a witch slowly eating your organs

AMERICANS beleive that the body is healthy in its natural state, until interacting with an external bacteria or virus that leads to illness

• avoiding kissing family members with colds, sitting on public toilet seats, etc.

• strongest medication and surgeries than anywhere in the world

FRENCH prioritize rest, relaxation, and nurturing of the terrain

• longer hospital visits, more vitamins and elixirs, dirt as non threatening and sometimes healthy

CHINESE believing in the yin and the yang as balanced tools for health

• liver fire is a rush of headaches, anger, and a flushed face from too much yang

What happened in a study observing the cross-cultural differences in doctors’ understandings of health?

Doctors’ views of health are shaped by their cultural experiences.

Interviewing laypeoples and physicians, Doctor’s agreed the most with laypeople from their country than other physicans around the world about what constitutes as a healthy diet.

• agreed with physicians on diagnosis and treatment, but lasrgest correlation was between laypeople and physicians from the same country

Describe INNATE vs ACQUIRED biological variabilities in humans

INNATE - humans in various parts of the world were subject to different selection pressures over generations, resulting in human genome diverging across populations

ACQUIRED - humans living in diverse locations have experiences within their lifetimes that have an impact on biology

How and why does Skin Colour vary genetically across populations? How is altitude similar as a factor for diversity?

SKIN COLOUR is an adaptive response to climate, CLIMATE is a selective pressure

DIVERSITY of SKIN COLOUR is rooted in the body’s need to synthesize Vitamin D for bone health, which can’t be done without UVR (ultraviolet rays)

• First emerging in Africa, high UVR levels led to sufficient melanin (pigment) development to allow for UVR absorption

• Humans later in places with lower UVR levels had to develop fairer skin (less melanin) to absorb more UVR → greater risk for skin cancer

Skin colour variation is strongly correlated with how much UVR reaches different parts of the world

ALTITUDE is another geographical factor that influenced the human genome

• TIBETANS living at high altitudes have genetic adaptations to thrive despite LOW oxygen levels