Culture, Cognition and Evolution
Contemporary
Issues in Psychology
Psychology 205
Winter
2007
Instructor:
Office: 2039 Kenny
Email: joseph.henrich@gmail.com
(604) 822-3007
Office Hours: T-TH 14:05-15:05 or by appointment (email me to set it up)
Teaching Assistant: Ryan McLaughlin
Office: 3506 Kenny
Email: rjmclgh@mta.ca
(604) 822-6789
Office hours
Meeting Time: T-TH
12:30-14:00pm
Final Examination: see
registrar
Course Description
This course introduces students to the rapidly expanding interdisciplinary area of culture, cognition and evolution. This approach to understanding human behavior and psychology explicitly integrates the study of culture (i.e., ideas, beliefs, values, behaviors, and practices) and human psychology within a broad evolutionary framework. Such a framework allows us to better understand how innate aspects of the human mind influence the transmission and dynamics of human beliefs, practices, preferences and decision-making, and how, in turn, emerging cultural patterns and culturally-constructed environments shape our minds, emotions, and cognitive processes. This course will emphasize a closely related set of theoretical approaches that allow us to transcend debates such as “nature vs. nurture” to examine human minds as joint products of three interactive processes: genetic evolution, cultural evolution (history), and ontogeny (development and learning). In studying these processes students will come to understand how culture and cultural evolution has shaped the course of human evolutionary history.
Organizing Questions for this Course?
1)
What is human
nature? What are the evolutionary foundations of human psychology and culture?
How and why are humans so different from non-human animals?
2)
How important
is culture for understanding human behavior and psychology? Are we really a
“cultural species”?
3)
Can human
psychology be understood apart from culture? And, can culture be understood
without reference to human biology and evolution?
4)
How do
individuals learn culture? What is learned, how is it learned, and from whom?
5)
What are the
implications of this understanding of our species for approaching such things
as child rearing, violence, ethnicity, religion, social change and economic
development of a cultural-psychological approach to human behavior?
Course Materials and Resources
WebCT: www.webct.ubc.ca
1)
Cosmides &
Tooby (1998) Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html
2)
Harris, Judith
Rich (1995) Where is the Child’s Environment? A Group Socialization Theory of
Development. Psychological Review, Vol.
102(3):458-489.
3)
Henrich,
Joseph & Gil-White, Francisco (2001) The Evolution of Prestige: freely
conferred deference as a mechanism for enhancing the benefits of cultural
transmission. Evolution and Human
Behavior, 22 (3): 165-196.
4)
van Schaik,
Carel P. et. al. Orangutan Cultures and the Evolution of Material Culture. Science, Vol. 299: 102-105.
5)
Henrich,
Joseph, McElreath, Richard, Barr, Abigail, Ensimger, Jean, Barrett, Clark,
Bolyanatz, Alexander, Cardenas, Juan Camilo, Gurven, Michael, Gwako, Edwins,
Henrich, Natalie, Lesorogol, Carolyn, Marlowe, Frank, Tracer, David, Ziker, John.
Costly Punishment Across Human Societies, Science, 312: 1767- 1770.
6)
Kay, Paul and
Maffi, Luisa. Color Appearance and the Emergence and Evolution of Basic Color
Lexicons.
7)
Atran, Scott,
Douglas Medin and Norbert Ross Evolution and Devolution of Knowledge: A Tale of
Two Biologies. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 10, 395-420.
8)
Boyer, Pascal
(2003) Religious thought and behavior as by-products of brain function. TRENDS
in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 7(3) 119-124.
9)
Boyer Pascal http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-03/religion.html.
10)
Ekman, Paul
(1999) Basic Emotions. In Handbook of
Cognition and Emotion. T. Dalgleish and M. Power (eds.). John Wiley &
Sons Ltd.,
This course has two mid-course examinations and a final exam. The weighting on the examinations increases over the semester. Attendance counts for 5%. The relative weight in grading breaks down as in the Table.
|
Grading Instrument |
Percentage
contribution |
|
Attendance |
5% |
|
Mid-course Exam 1 |
20% |
|
Mid-course Exam 2 |
30% |
|
Final Exam |
45% |
Attendance: Class
attendance will be non-randomly spot-checked approximately 5 times over the
course. Even I don’t know exactly when I’ll feel like doing it.
Exams: Bring a photo
ID to all examinations.
Mid-Course Exams:
These two 80 minute in-class examinations are meant to test your general
mastery of the course material, as well as your ability to integrate and apply
it. Due to the size of the class these will be in multiple-choice or true/false
format. These exams will be non-cumulative, and will cover only material since
the beginning of the course, or the previous exam.
Final Exam:
The structure of the final and the kinds of questions will mirror the other two
exams. However, the final is cumulative
over the entire semester. Students must be available for the final examination,
so do not schedule your departure until after our final. Check the registrar
for the date.
Extra credit: Students registered in 100- and
200-level Psychology courses are invited to participate in the Psychology
Department's Human Subject Pool: You can sign up to be a subject in some of the
many experiments that are done each year by researchers in the Psychology Department. It's an opportunity to learn first-hand about
the kinds of research that psychologists do, and the kinds of methods that
psychologists use when doing this research. It's also an opportunity to boost
your final grade a tiny bit: You may earn up to (but not more
than) 2 extra credit percentage points through this sort of research
participation (get 0.5 percentage points for each hour of participation).
Complete information about procedures for participating in research can be
found on the Psychology Department's Subject Pool website http://www.psych.ubc.ca/resguide.psy).
Scaling of Grades:
I would
like to give everyone A’s who gives their best effort. However: grades will be
scaled in order to maintain equity among sections and to conform to University,
Faculty, or Department norms. Here is an overview of the norms that guide the
grading for 100- and 200-level Psychology courses:
|
Class Performance |
Mean |
SD |
%A |
%(A+B) |
%Fail |
|
Good class |
67 |
14 |
18 |
47 |
11 |
|
Average class |
65 |
14 |
14 |
42 |
14 |
|
Weak class |
63 |
14 |
11 |
36 |
18 |
The
primary function of grades is to inform you (and other people) as to your
performance relative to other students taking the course. In order for
grades to serve this function, it's important that average performance is
reflected in an average grade (something in the C range), that
better-than-average-but-not-great performance is reflected in a
better-than-average-but-not-great grade (something in the B range), and so
forth. The Faculty of Arts is very concerned about "grade inflation"
and has set guidelines for appropriate distributions of grades in courses at
all levels. This is something we really pay attention to in the Psychology
Department. So, for this course, the
expectation is that the average final grade will be around 65 (that's a C+) and
will be normally distributed around that mean (producing just as many failing
grades as A's). I will scale the exams
in such a way to ensure that the distribution of final grades in this class
meets these guidelines. The Departmental Chair, however, reserves the right to
change any grades, so you don’t know our final grade until you hear from the
University.
Examination Re-Grading Policy
Any
specific questions about the grading of your examination must be
submitted in writing within one week after you receive your examination. Once
the question has been submitted in writing, an appointment with the instructor
may be scheduled.
|
Class # |
Day and Date |
Topics and Assignments |
|
Class 1 |
Tuesday January 9 |
Introduction to course, discussion of the syllabus, filling out of the questionnaire. First lecture on culture and psychology: Puzzles and evidence on how culture affects perceptive and cognitive abilities. Meet your instructor and TA lecture. |
|
Class 2 |
Thursday January 11 |
Film TBA. Instructor is away. Note the entire book Culture of Honor is due on January 16. Guns, Germs, and Steel. |
|
Class 3 |
Tuesday January 16 |
Culture is Deep and Relevant: Culture of Honor Questions: What is a culture of honor? Do
northerners and southerners in the |
|
Class 4 |
Thursday January 18 |
The Mind is a product of evolution by natural selection Questions: What is natural selection and can it really influence human brains? What does this approach suggest about distinguishing “instinct” from “reason” or “emotion” or “feeling” from “rational thought”? What is the standard social science model? What is a module? Why isn’t “generalized learning” a sensible approach to human cognition and behavior? What is the EEA? |
|
Class 5 |
Tuesday January 23 |
Culture is Real and Important Questions: What is culture? What is “population thinking”? What are ultimate vs. proximate causes of a phenomena? What does it mean to say that culture is part of human biology? What kinds of behavior does it influence? What examples best illustrate the importance of culture? If something like IQ is highly heritable within a population does this suggest high heritability between groups? How are languages like technologies? How do we know that differences between populations are cultural and not genetic? Is a kayak an adaptation? |
|
Class 6 |
Thursday January 25 |
Culture Evolves Questions:
Where is culture (mostly) stored? In what way is culture Darwinian? How can
we use evolution theory to think about cultural transmission and cultural
change? What are the forces that shape cultural evolution? Can natural
selection influence cultural variation? (and how to Mormons fit in here?)
What is a meme, and why are there problems with this idea? |
|
Class 7 |
Tuesday January 30 |
The Evolution of Human Development Questions: What is
phylogeny and ontogeny? What does ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny mean? What
is a core domain? How does an evolutionary approach alter our view of
“pregnancy sickness”? What is an exaptation? What is neoteny? What is the |
|
Class 8 |
Thursday February 1 |
Film, Discussion and Review of course material. Film on female circumcision and part of Ape So Human. |
|
Class 9 |
Tuesday February 6 |
Culture is both Adaptive and Maladaptive Questions: In what way is culture an adaptation? Isn’t
it just a byproduct of intelligence? What is cumulative cultural evolution?
If culture is an adaptation, how can it be maladaptive? What is the
demographic transition? Why spices are cultural adaptations? What does the |
|
Class 10 |
Thursday February 8 |
How to build a Cultural Species? What are these big brains for, anyway? Questions: How did
evolution make our brain so big and why? Why do we have such a long juvenile
period? (is it getting longer?) Where might culture fit into this? How can
culture drive genetic evolution? |
|
Class 11 |
Tuesday February 13 |
Prepared to Learn: Why are some things easy to learn and remembers than others? Questions: Do
infants know stuff when they first arrive on the seen? Do they already have
expectation about the world? If so, what are they? What is intuitive
ontology? Why might kids recall information about the dangerousness of
animals more than other kinds of information? What numbers do we understand
intuitively? Can play really be an adaptation? |
|
Class 12 |
Thursday February 15 |
Examination I (60 multiple choice questions) |
|
Class 13 |
Tuesday February 27 |
Cultural learning, but from whom? Do people learn a
lot from their parents? What is the most important thing parents transmit to
their children? What is our folk model of children’s socialization? |
|
Class 14 |
Thursday March 1 |
Evolved Mechanisms for Cultural Learning: Prestige and Conformity Questions:
What is prestige? Do non-human primates have prestige? Why do people care
what celebrities think? |
|
Class 15 |
Tuesday March 6 |
Cognition and Culture in Non-Human Primates Questions: Do
non-humans have culture? If so, how much? In what ways is human cultural
unique? In what ways is it not so unique? |
|
Class 16 |
Thursday March 8 |
Cultural Group Selection and the Evolution of Altruism Questions: Why is altruism such an evolutionary puzzle? What is cultural group selection and how might it influence human altruism? |
|
Class 17 |
Tuesday March 13 |
Human Sociality in Broad Spectrum Does human sociality vary across populations? How different are peoples in their notions of fairness, punishment, and altruism? Are people self interested? |
|
Class 18 |
Thursday March 15 |
Folkbiology and Colors Do societies the colors in the same way, and if so, why? How do people thinking about living kinds? Are there human universals in how people categorize the natural world? |
|
Class 19 |
Tuesday March 20 |
Folkbiology and Colors II Do societies the colors in the same way, and if so, why? How do people thinking about living kinds? Are there human universals in how people categorize the natural world? What has happened to our understanding of biology? |
|
Class 20 |
Thursday March 22 |
Folksociology: Why we think about human groups the way we do? Questions: Why do people to think about some human groups differently from other human groups? What is essentialism and how does it apply to thinking about human groups? How do people think about groups, and why ethnicity (and race) is salient? |
|
Class 21 |
Tuesday March 27 |
Exam II |
|
Class 22 |
Thursday March 29 |
Origins of Religion: Why religious concepts can really spread. Questions: Why do people believe this stuff? How ghosts, gods, superheroes, aliens and other mythic creatures are “easy to think”. The evolved universal structure of religious thought. How is religion like a chili pepper? |
|
Class 23 |
Tuesday April 3 |
Emotions, Feelings, Culture and Evolution Questions: What’s universal and what varies across cultures and individuals? Do people in different societies “feel” differently? Do all societies have the emotion we call “guilt”? |
|
Class 24 |
Thursday April 5 |
Origins of Religion II: The evolution of religious institutions Questions: How do religious institutions evolve? Might they evolve by cultural group selection? Does religious freedom cause more religious fundamentalism? |
|
Class 25 |
Tuesday April 10 |
Assessing Human Diversity |
|
Class 26 |
Thursday April 12 |
How
culture, cognition and evolution can help us explain food taboos Studying Cultural Transmission in |
Academic Dishonesty:
Cheating,
plagiarism, and other forms of academic misconduct are very serious concerns of
the University, and the Department of Psychology has taken steps to alleviate
them. In the first place, the Department has implemented software that can
reliably detect cheating on multiple-choice exams by analyzing the patterns of
students’ responses. In addition, the Department subscribes to TurnItIn – a service designed to detect
and deter plagiarism. All materials
(term papers, lab reports, etc.) that students submit for grading will be
scanned and compared to over 4.5 billion pages of content located on the
Internet or in TurnItIn’s own proprietary databases. The results of these
comparisons are compiled into customized “Originality Reports” containing
several, sensitive measures of plagiarism; instructors receive copies of these
reports for every student in their class. In all cases of suspected academic
misconduct, the parties involved will be pursued to the fullest extent dictated
by the guidelines of the University.
Strong evidence of cheating or plagiarism may result in a zero credit
for the work in question. According to
the University Act (section 61), the President of UBC has the right to impose
harsher penalties including (but not limited to) a failing grade for the
course, suspension from the University, cancellation of scholarships, or a
notation added to a student’s transcript.
All graded
work in this course, unless otherwise specified, is to be original work done
independently by individuals. If you
have any questions as to whether or not what you are doing is even a borderline
case of academic misconduct, please consult your instructor. For details on pertinent
University policies and procedures pertaining to academic dishonesty, please
see Chapter 5 in the UBC Calendar
(http://www.students.ubc.ca/calendar/), and visit the Academic Integrity page on
UBC Faculty of Arts website (http://www.arts.ubc.ca/index.php?id=89).
Special
Accommodations:
UBC accommodates students
with disabilities who have registered with the Disability Resource Centre (DRC). If
you have a disability that may affect your performance in this class, please
make sure you have contacted the DRC to arrange for
accommodations. Please let me know of these accommodations as soon as
possible.
UBC
also accommodates students whose religious obligations conflict with
attendance, assignments, or examinations. Please let me know as soon as
possible – and well in advance of any assignment or examination – if you will
require any accommodation on these grounds.
The university does not
have any formal policy on accommodating students who plan to be absent for
varsity athletics, family obligations, or other similar commitments. So, please do not assume that you will get
special accommodations for these sorts of absences. It is your responsibility to ensure that you
meet the course requirements as scheduled.
If you do plan to be absent during any time an assignment or examination
is scheduled, please discuss this with me as soon as possible (and make sure
you do so before the drop date.)