Psychological Anthropology

Growing Up Human

ANTH 3303. PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY Examines the interplay of culture and personality in various Western and non-Western societies.  Topics include perception, cognition, dreams, altered states of consciousness, gender role shifting, and psychological terrorism which are analyzed in cross-cultural perspective.  The question will be asked, is there a "national character" for a modern nation?  Meets Human Diversity co-requirement… (S.M.U. Course Description)

Old Psychological AnthropologyPsychoanalysis

Freud emphasized:

Biological processes

early developmental experience.

Developed by:

Sigmund Freud

and

Old Psychological Anthropology

Freud emphasized our animal nature: The IdThe ID operates on the pleasure principle and demands instant gratification but is held in check by:

The SuperegoSome of the psychic energy diverted from the ID by conflict with the SUPEREGO becomes:

The EGOEgo is the conscious self, operates with reality principle.

Old Psychological Anthropology

The Notion of Insanity

• A legal term with three meanings.

• Insanity as a criminal defense.– Can’t control behavior or understand its meaning.– Alternative: Guilty but Mentally Ill

• Insanity as incompetence to stand trial.– Not able to participate in own defense.

• Insanity as a condition of involuntary commitment.– A danger to oneself or others.

Old Psychological AnthropologyCulture Specific Disorders

windigo (Algonkian Indians, NE US and Eastern Canada): syndrome of obsessive cannibalism, now somewhat discredited. Windigo was supposedly brought about by consuming human flesh in famine situations. Afterwards, the cannibal was supposed to be haunted by cravings for human flesh and thoughts of killing and eating humans.

latah (Malaysia and Indonesia): hypersensitivity to sudden fright, often with echopraxia, echoLalia, command obedience, and dissociative or trancelike behavior. The Malaysian syndrome is more frequent in middle-aged women.

anorexia nervosa (North America, Western Europe): severe restriction of food intake, associated with morbid fear of obesity. Other methods may also be used to lose weight, including excessive exercise. May overlap with symptoms of bulimia nervosa.

Old Psychological Anthropology

Students of Franz Boas such as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict were interested in enculturation, especially the relationship between culture and personality.

Margaret Mead’s early work included Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) and Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935).

Ruth Benedict’s early work included Patterns of Culture (1934) and The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1945).

Old Psychological Anthropology

Nature versus Nurture: At the time Margaret Mead journeyed to Samoa in the mid-1920s, scientists and scholars were engaged in an ongoing dispute over the relative importance of biological versus socially-acquired determinants of human behavior, the so-called "nature-nurture debate." The question is still discussed today: To what extent are human personality and behavior the products of biological factors and to what extent are they products of cultural forces?

(Samoa: The Adolescent Girl.. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/mead/field-samoa.html)

Old Psychological Anthropology

Margaret Mead - a great popular writer, with tremendous contributions in fieldwork.

Mead’s first popular book Coming of Age in Samoa was a study of acculturation in which she addressed the questions:

Mead’s second popular book Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies was a study of the relationship between gender (biology) and sex roles (culture).

“are the disturbances which vex our [American] adolescents due to the nature of adolescence itself or to the civilisation? Under different conditions, does adolescence present a different picture?

Three societies she chose, the Tschambuli, Mundamore, and Arapesh occupied the same region of New Guinea, but were found to assign quite different roles to gender.

In summary, she found the Arapesh to be “feminine,“ the Mundugamore to be “masculine,” and the Tschambuli to have “role reversal.”

She found among the Arapesh a temperament for both males and females that was gentle, responsive, and cooperative.

Among the Mundugumor (now Biwat), both males and females were violent and aggressive, seeking power and position.

For the Tchambuli (now Chambri), male and female temperaments were distinct from each other, the woman being dominant, impersonal, and managerial and the male less responsible and more emotionally dependent.

Old Psychological Anthropology

Ruth Benedict - another popular writer who made important contributions to use of theory.Benedict’s first popular book, Patterns of Culture. Depended in part on a typology of culture types first proposed by Friedrich Nietzsche in his essay The Birth of Tragedy. The types, Apollinian and Dionysian, represent rational, controlled cultural values versus irrational, demonstrative values.

In Benedict’s second popular book, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946). A wartime study of traditional Japanese culture, she developed her concept of national character.

New Psychological Anthropology

Rethinking Psychological AnthropologyRethinking Psychological Anthropology: : Continuity and Change in the Study of Human Action, Continuity and Change in the Study of Human Action, Second EditionSecond Edition by Phillip K. Bock

Hunters and Gatherers in Modern Post-Industrial SocietyObject Permanence in childrenMental Maps

Human UniversalsLanguage - Williams Syndrome, “Motherese”Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

New Psychological Anthropology

Research themes:

Social Cognition

“Rationality” in economic theory

Studies of “wisdom” and other aspects of aging

Mental Health

Renee Baillargeon, U. Illinois

Tabula rasaThe Blank Slate has also served as a sacred scripture for political and ethical beliefs. According to the doctrine, any differences we see among races, ethnic groups, sexes, and individuals come not from differences in their innate constitution but from differences in their experiences. Change the experiences—by reforming parenting, education, the media, and social rewards— and you can change the person. Underachievement, poverty, and antisocial behavior can be ameliorated; indeed, it is irresponsible not to do so

Palimpsest

A palimpsest is a manuscript on which an earlier text has been effaced and the vellum or parchment reused for another. It was a common practice, particularly in medieval ecclesiastical circles, to rub out an earlier piece of writing by means of washing or scraping the manuscript, in order to prepare it for a new text. The motive for making palimpsests seems to have been largely economic--reusing parchment was cheaper than preparing new skin.

Evolution of Human Central Nervous System (CNS)

3.5 mBP Australopithecus - 600 cc Average skull capacity.

1.0 mBP Pithecanthropus - 900 cc Average skull capacity.

100,000 BP Mod Humans - 1500 cc Average skull capacity. (Includes Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, etc.)

Modern Human - 1500, Modern Gorilla - 500cc.

New Psychological Anthropology

Central Ideas (Leda Cosmides and John Tooby)

Our neural circuits were designed by natural selection to solve problems that our ancestors faced during our species' evolutionary history.

Consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg; most of what goes on in your mind is hidden.

Different neural circuits are specialized for solving different adaptive problems.

The brain is a physical system designed to generatebehavior that is appropriate to environmental circumstances.

Our modern skulls house a stone age mind.

Modules for language, sexual attraction, emotion, mapping, etc.Modules for language, sexual attraction, emotion, mapping, etc.

William James called this “instinct blindness.”William James called this “instinct blindness.”

In short, we are hunter-gatherers in a modern, post industrial world.In short, we are hunter-gatherers in a modern, post industrial world.

New Psychological Anthropology

New Psychological Anthropology

Social Cognition

The brain's social cognition systems are sufficiently complex and flexible to handle many novel circumstances. Most people (apart from some political extremists), for example, have the ability to see a situation from another person's point of view. Understanding the other person's thoughts is the key to appropriate social behavior. And the brain seems to have pieced together a clever system for doing so.

One part involves judging facial expressions. Mistaking a grimace for a grin can lead to a serious faux pas. Thus the amygdala, an almond-shaped clump of cells on each side of the brain, is tuned to signs of danger on someone's face. Amygdala activity goes up when people see faces expressing fear; people with damaged amygdalas fail to detect fearful expressions. Amygdalas are overactive in people with social

phobias.

New Psychological Anthropology

Social Cognition

Four models for coordination of interaction:Communal Sharing people treat group

members as equivalent and undifferentiated

Authority Ranking people have unequal

positions in a linear hierarchy

Equality Matching people keep track of the balance or difference among participants

Market Pricing relationships are oriented to

socially meaningful ratios or rates

Alan Page Fiske’s Relational models theory posits that people use four elementary models to organize most aspects of social

interaction in all societies.

Alan Page Fiske of the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development at UCLA. Faculty participants come from UCLA programs inPsychology, Anthropology, Psychiatry, Brain Mapping, Neuroscience, Applied Linguistics, and Education.

Communal Sharing Examples are people using a commons (CS with respect to utilization of the particular resource), people intensely in love (CS with respect to their social selves), people who "ask not for whom the bell tolls, for it tolls for thee" (CS with respect to shared suffering and common well-being), or people who kill any member of an enemy group indiscriminately in retaliation for an attack (CS with respect to collective responsibility).

Authority Ranking Examples are military hierarchies (AR in decisions, control, and many other matters), ancestor worship (AR in offerings of filial piety and expectations of protection and enforcement of norms), monotheistic religious moralities (AR for the definition of right and wrong by commandments or will of God), social status systems such as class or ethnic rankings (AR with respect to social value of identities), and rankings such as sports team standings (AR with respect to prestige).

Equality Matching Examples include sports and games (EM with respect to the rules, procedures, equipment and terrain), baby-sitting coops (EM with respect to the exchange of child care), and restitution in-kind (EM with respect to righting a wrong).

Market Pricing Examples are property that can be bought, sold, or treated as investment capital (land or objects as MP), marriages organized contractually or implicitly in terms of costs and benefits to the partners, prostitution (sex as MP), bureaucratic cost-effectiveness standards (resource allocation as MP), utilitarian judgments about the greatest good for the greatest number, or standards of equity in judging entitlements in proportion to contributions (two forms of morality as MP), considerations of "spending time" efficiently, and estimates of expected kill ratios (aggression as MP).