APR 1

20: APR 1. Unit Five: Cultural Evolution

Assigned

• Henrich Prelude and C1 – “WEIRD Psychology” (21-58; 37) – literacy and neuroplasticity, Protestantism and literacy, WEIRD cultural psychology, individualism complex, guilt and shame, conformity, patience, impersonal honesty, passenger dilemma, trust, impersonal prosociality, intentionality, analytic thinking.

In-Class

• Joe Henrich [1]
• Cultural Evoluation as a layer of theory. What is culture?

Henrich, Prelude and C1 - "WEIRD Psychology," from The Weirdest People on Earth"

• Prelude: Your Brain has been modified by culture

• Example of how reading alters brains. "Literacy thus provides an example of how culture can change people biologically independent of any genetic differences."
• The ‘letterbox’ in your brain
• Literacy in Western Europe - a “cultural package” that includes abilities, but also attitudes toward education, technologies of literacy like printing.
• Note how a “culture of literacy” can cut across other cultures. Right hemisphere bias in facial recognition common to university students across cultures.
• 1517: Protestantism requires literacy. "sola scriptura"
• Showing causal relationship with "quasi-experimental" method "For every 100 km traveled from Wittenberg, percentage of Protestants dropped 10%. Like a "dosage". Also drove female literacy and public education.
• Also seen in literacy rates of Catholic and Prot missionaries to Africa: Protestant missions produce more literacy.
• Point of his book, “The WEIRDEST People in the World,”: WEIRD psychology is the result of a set of cultural adaptations promoted by the Catholic church.
• The movement of “sola scriptura” led to an explosion of literacy, which had numerous cultural effects, but the bigger story of how we became WEIRD starts with the Catholic Churches’ “Marriage and Family Plan” (Chapter 1).

• Chapter 1: WEIRD Psychology

• WEIRD: individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. Tends to look for universal categories, analytic. patient, takes plesure in hard work, sticks to imparial rules or principles, guilt vs. shame

• Major Claim: WEIRD psychology is a product of 600-1000 years of the Catholic Church's modification of our psychology through its "Marriage and Family Plan".

• Really, who are you?

• "Who Am I? task by culture
• Mapping the Individualism Complex vs. Kin-based institutions

• Might be obligated to avenge a murder,
• Prohibited from marrying a stranger / privileged to marry mother’s brother’s daughters.
• Responsible to carry out expensive ancestor rituals.
• Liable for family members crimes.
• Note the italicized moral terms. Moral culture changes with sociocentrism/individualism, as in Haidt.

• Contrast on p. 28. In the Industrial World "everyone is shopping for better relationships." Read specific contrasts.
• Hofstede's scale for measuring individualism/sociocentrism -
• Economic prosperity and Individualism may be in two way causal relationship.
• Note caveats to this research on p. 31. 1. As with physio-politics, not say one cultural package is objectively better than another. [Arguably, individualism and markets got us to the crisi of climate change.] 2. As with physio-politics, the categories mask numerous continuous differences.

• Cultivating the WEIRD self

• Research showing individualists cultivate "consistency across relationships" vs. kin-based "consistency within relationships”.
• Dispositionalism - seeing people's behavior as anchored impersonal traits that influence actions across contexts. The Fundamental Attribution Error (33) is a bias of WEIRD people, not a universal cognitive bias. WEIRD people suffer more from cognitive dissonance because of the type of consistency valued in WEIRD culture.
• Guilt vs. Shame
• Conformity - Solom Asch's experiments in which confederates give incorrect answers to test conformity. WEIRD cultures show lowest conformity. 37-38.

• Marshmallows Come to Those Who Wait

• "Discounting" as a measure of patience - "temporal discounting" widely researched through "choice" studies: "Would you rather X now or X+Y later?" Patience correlated with better socio-economic outcomes. Larger construct: "self-control" "self-regulation - Marshmallow studies. [2]
• Impersonal Honesty --

• UN Diplomats' parking violations research. Natural experiment on existing parking violations. Volume of tickets correlates with country's standing on "corruption index".
• Impersonal Honesty Game, like the Matrix research from Ariely, normed against probability of each die roll. Also correlates with corruption index. (results at p. 44). "quintessentially WEIRD experiment as there is no person affected by the dishonesty. In some cultures, you would be criticized for not taking advantage of the experiment to help your family.

• Universalism and Non-relationalism -- Research using the "Passengers Dilemma" -- does your friend have a right to expect you to lie to help him evade a parking fine? related results: willingness to give insider information, lie about medical exam to lower insurance rates, write a fake review of a friend's restaurant. Measures also importance of impartial rules
• Trusting Strangers - "Generalized Trust Question" (GTQ) survey instrument. measures impersonal trust vs. trust in relationship based networks. Norway: 70% Trinidad 4-5% Interesting variation in the US. Northern Italy 49% Sicily 26%. [Interesting discussion of forms of trust. Countries can report high trust on the GTQ, but it may not be impersonal trust. To get at that you have to ask specifically about trusting strangers.]
• Impersonal Prosociality roughly, "how we feel toward a person who is not tied into our social network" - correlated with national wealth, better government, less corruption, faster innovation.
• Obsessed with intentions -- Bob/Rob and Andy vignette research. The "Bob" condition involves intent. Barrett and Laurence research. Focus on intentional dishonesty correlates with WEIRD culture. Independent research on Japanese (less focused on intentions), suggests that other factors about Japan's culture affect outcomes.
• Analytic vs. Holistic thinking. Triad Task. (read 53) Abstract rule-based vs. Functional relationship. Analytics focus on rules, types, continuity. Example: Would you match "rabbit" with "carrot" or "cat"? Possible that even some of the Mapuche's "analytic" answers had holistic reasoning. pig/dog pig/husks. Also, attention and memory studies: East Asians remember background/context better that WEIRD people. Americans track the center of attention.
• WEIRD also have great endowment effect, overestimate our talents, self-enhance, enjoy making choices.
• Summary table on p. 56.

• Henrich's larger argument:

• The Catholic Church, through it "Marriage and Family Plan" (started around 600 a.d.), started the process that made us WEIRD. See Henrich, C14, "The Dark Matter of History" for summary of the book's argument. (In shared folder.)
• Movement from kin and clan based European culture, to "voluntary associations (guilds, charter towns, universities) drove the expansion of impersonal markets, and spurred the rapid growth of cities.
• Key elements of the Church's "Marriage and Family Plan"

• Monogamous marriages only
• No kin marriage
• No arranged marriage
• Neolocal residence (married couples move out of parents' house)
• Inheritance by testament
• Individual property
• No adoption

PP1: "What Do We Owe Strangers" Position Paper: 1000 words

• Stage 1: Please write a 1000 word maximum answer to the following question by Tuesday, April 8, 2025, 11:59pm.

• Topic: What do we owe strangers in our society, as a matter of justice? Consider the various approaches to justice we have been discussing and whether, why, and in what ways we should go beyond the "personal preference" we show friends and family and obligate ourselves to strangers in our society, in the form of a duty of justice. Consider theories of justice which focus on formal rights and liberty, as well as theories that argue for more substantive or material rights and more material conceptions of freedom, like capabilities, or well-being. Are structural conditions, such as stress and SES relevant to the discussion of justice? Be sure to develop your own view (with both a "what" and a "why") using course resources and examples. Show why some other views are not appealing to you.

• Keep in mind:

• You are answering this prompt in the "first person," but you are giving reasons for your view and, implicitly, recommending it as a standard. Give reasons that you feel should appeal to a wide range of people in your society and across political orientation.
• Your readers will not necessarily share your view, so you should say why your position should be acceptable to someone with a different point of view. You will not be assessed on which view (within a wide range) of justice you adopt, but on the quality of your writing and reasoning, and your focus on the prompt.
• You should assume that any obligations you have to strangers are contingent upon adequate resources (national wealth and personal wealth). You do live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but you may not be personally obligated to help strangers if you are struggling to survive. (Philosopher's generally believe "ought implies can" - you aren't obligated to do something you can't do.)
• For this prompt you are only considering Justice to strangers in your society, the US.

• Advice about collaboration: Collaboration is part of the academic process and the intellectual world that college courses are based on, so it is important to me that you have the possibility to collaborate. I encourage you to collaborate with other students, but only up to the point of sharing ideas, references to class notes, and your own notes, verbally. Collaboration is also a great way to make sure that a high average level of learning and development occurs in the class. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to NOT share text of draft answers or outlines of your answer. Keep it verbal. Generate your own examples.

• Prepare your answer and submit it in the following way. You will lose points if you do not follow these instructions:

1. To assure anonymity, you must remove your name from the the "author name" that you may have provided when you set up your word processing application. For instructions on removing your name from an Word or Google document, [click here].
2. Format your answer in double spaced text, in a typical 12 point font, and using normal margins. Do not add spaces between paragraphs and indent the first line of each paragraph.
3. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student ID number in the file. Always put a word count in the file. Save your file for this assignment with the name: "ObligationsToStrangers".
4. To turn in your assignment, log into courses.alfino.org, click on the "PP1 - What do we owe strangers" dropbox.
5. If you cannot meet a deadline, you must email me about your circumstances (unless you are having an emergency) before the deadline or you will lose points.

• Stage 2: Please evaluate four student answers and provide brief comments and a score. Review the Assignment Rubric for this exercise. We will be using the Flow, Content, and Logic areas of the rubric for this assignment. Complete your evaluations and scoring by Tuesday, April 15th, 2025, 11:59pm.

• To determine the papers you need to peer review, open the file called "#Key.xls" in the shared folder. You will see a worksheet with saint names in alphabetically order, along with animal names. Find your saint name and review the next four (4) animals' work below your animal name. If you get to the bottom of the list before reaching 4 animals, go to the top of the list and continue.

• Use this Google Form to evaluate four peer papers. Submit the form once for each review.

• Some papers may arrive late. If you are in line to review a missing paper, allow a day or two for it to show up. If it does not show up, go back to the key and review the next animal's paper, continuing until you get four reviews. Do not review more than four papers.

• Stage 3: I will grade and briefly comment on your writing using the peer scores as an initial ranking. Assuming the process works normally, most of my scores probably be within 1-2 points of the peer scores, plus or minus.

• Stage 4: Back-evaluation: After you receive your peer comments and my evaluation, take a few minutes to fill out this quick "back evaluation" rating form: [3]. Fill out the form for each reviewer, but not Alfino. You must do the back evaluation to receive credit for the whole assignment. Failing to give back-evaluations unfairly affects other classmates.

• Back evaluations are due TBD, 2025.