Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind

Mark Schaller, Ara Norenzayan, Steven J. Heine, Toshio Yamagishi, Tatsuya Kameda

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136950490
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

An enormous amount of scientific research compels two fundamental conclusions about the human mind: The mind is the product of evolution; and the mind is shaped by culture. These two perspectives on the human mind are not incompatible, but, until recently, their compatibility has resisted rigorous scholarly inquiry. Evolutionary psychology documents many ways in which genetic adaptations govern the operations of the human mind. But evolutionary inquiries only occasionally grapple seriously with questions about human culture and cross-cultural differences. By contrast, cultural psychology documents many ways in which thought and behavior are shaped by different cultural experiences. But cultural inquires rarely consider evolutionary processes. Even after decades of intensive research, these two perspectives on human psychology have remained largely divorced from each other. But that is now changing - and that is what this book is about.

Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind is the first scholarly book to integrate evolutionary and cultural perspectives on human psychology. The contributors include world-renowned evolutionary, cultural, social, and cognitive psychologists. These chapters reveal many novel insights linking human evolution to both human cognition and human culture – including the evolutionary origins of cross-cultural differences. The result is a stimulating introduction to an emerging integrative perspective on human nature.

1
Introduction

ARA NORENZAYAN, MARK SCHALLER,
and STEVEN J. HEINE

How and why does the human mind work the way it does? Consider two very different perspectives on this important question.

One influential perspective emerges from the study of human evolution: The basic psychological repertoire of the human species consists of adaptations, or their by-products, accumulated over the course of a very long evolutionary history. Key aspects of our emotions are adaptations, as are specific aspects of cognition. Many basic behavior patterns can also be conceptualized as adaptations, such that we respond to environmental cues with behaviors that, in ancestral environments, were associated with incremental advantages in reproductive fitness. In sum, the workings of the human mind—and the resulting psychological phenomena—must be considered the product of evolution.

There is a second influential perspective, provided by the study of culture: Our psychological experiences and responses to the world are fundamentally shaped by cultural learning. Other animal species may show evidence of some of the things that are commonly associated with the concept of culture (socially transmitted traditions, between-group differences that are independent of reproductive events), and there is lively debate over the extent to which chimpanzees, whales, and song-birds might be considered cultural species as well (e.g., Whiten, 2005), but there is no debate about whether humans are a cultural species nor is there any doubt that human life (and human reproductive fitness), compared to that of other species, is fundamentally connected to the complex sets of shared symbols, meanings, rituals, and behavioral norms that make up the cultures that we create, inhabit, and pass on to our descendents. The process of enculturation starts from birth, and the human brain develops in a cultural context. Abundant bodies of evidence document pervasive cross-cultural differences in psychological phenomena and thus attest to the many ways in which even our most basic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are culturally shaped.

These two perspectives, and the enormous amounts of scientific research that they have generated, compel two fundamental conclusions: The human mind is the product of evolution, and the human mind is shaped by culture. These conclusions are, we think, unassailable.

Given these two conclusions, it might be expected that psychological scientists would have invested considerable energies to understand exactly how these two perspectives fit together in a rigorous and conceptually coherent manner. But, no, that hasn’t been the case. For the most part, inquiry in evolutionary psychology has proceeded independent of inquiry in cultural psychology (Norenzayan, 2006). Evolutionary psychological research documents the many specific ways in which evolutionary adaptations appear to govern the operations of the human mind. But because an evolutionary approach compels researchers to focus on species-typical—and thus universal—elements of human cognition, these inquiries only occasionally grapple seriously with questions about human culture and cross-cultural differences. In contrast, research in cultural psychology has focused primarily on the many ways in which psychological phenomena are shaped by different cultural experiences. Because the focus is on cultural variability (rather than pan-human universality), these inquires rarely consider evolutionary processes. The upshot is that, even after several decades of intensive research on human evolutionary universals and on cross-cultural differences, there has been little in the way of rigorous theory and research linking these two perspectives together.

But that is now changing, and that’s what this book is about.

THE INTEGRATION OF EVOLUTIONARY AND CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY AND WHY IT MATTERS

The seed of this book was planted several years ago at a historic gathering that took place at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Supported by generous funding provided primarily by the University of Hokkaido and the American Psychological Association, dozens of scientists (primarily evolutionary psychologists and cultural psychologists, along with a smattering of biologists and anthropologists and other scholars from related disciplines) came together with the explicit goal of forging meaningful integrations between evolutionary and cultural perspectives on the human mind.

Doing so isn’t easy. The difficulty arises not because of any inherent incompatibility between these different perspectives but because these two different perspectives typically imply two distinct sets of questions, and these sets of questions don’t necessarily overlap in obvious ways. Forging coherent integrations requires scientists to step outside of the comfort zone of the research questions that they are accustomed to addressing with empirical data and instead to ask a broader, more ambitious, and less wieldy set of questions altogether: Exactly which psychological phenomena are universal and which are culturally variable? How does culture itself fit into an evolutionary perspective on human nature? What specific evolutionary pressures gave rise to the human capacity for culture? Did this capacity alter the processes of natural selection itself, and if so, how? What is the cognitive architecture of this capacity, and what are its consequences? How exactly can substantial cross-cultural differences in psychological functioning arise from evolutionary adaptations that are, at some level, universal across human populations? And so on. These questions pose substantial challenges, both conceptually and empirically. But there are also substantial benefits to be gained by rising to these challenges.

First, this integrative program of inquiry may help put an end to the common and troubling misconception that there is some inherent epistemic gulf between evolutionary and cultural perspectives on human psychology. This persistent misconception has its roots in the hoary myth of “nature versus nature”—a false dichotomy that continues to haunt the psychological sciences, to the intellectual detriment of the discipline. It will be valuable to any enthusiast of the psychological sciences to think in deeper, more sophisticated ways about evolutionary and cultural perspectives on the human mind and how they complement each other.

Rigorous psychological research of this sort also stands to make a substantial contribution to broader scientific conversations about evolution and culture. Although it has been largely overlooked within the psychological sciences, the complex relationship between evolution and culture has been an important topic of inquiry in other social and biological sciences (e.g., Richerson & Boyd, 2005). There is considerable scientific interest in adaptations for culture, and their specific cultural consequences, and the ways in which these consequences alter the process of natural selection itself. Psychological scientists are perfectly poised to contribute in novel and exciting ways to these multidisciplinary research programs. After all, evolutionary processes operate on the phenotypic traits expressed by individuals, including individuals’ cognitions, decisions, and actions. Moreover, cultural norms (which guide individual behavior) are themselves the collective consequence of individuals’ cognitions, decisions, and actions (Schaller & Crandall, 2004). Individuals’ cognitions, decisions, and actions are exactly the sorts of things that psychologists are especially adept at studying. In short, as it has become increasingly clear that a complete articulation of the complex relations between evolution and culture demands attention to the human mind, it has also become clear that psychological scientists must contribute more fully to this conversation.

And, of course, this is just flat-out exciting intellectual territory. There is a great deal we do not yet know about how the pieces of the puzzle—evolution, culture, and the human mind—fit together. The topic is fertile ground for novel theories and new empirical discoveries. These discoveries will contribute importantly to the psychological sciences and will be of considerable interest across a broad range of social and biological sciences as well.

OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK

We begin with a set of five chapters that, in various ways, show how cultural and evolutionary perspectives can fit together within the psychological sciences. Rozin explains why there is no incompatibility whatsoever between evolutionary and cultural perspectives on the human mind. Baumeister discusses a variety of ways in which evolutionary processes created the psychological building blocks necessary for human culture to exist. Chiu, Kim, and Chaturvedi summarize the continuing relevance of Donald Campbell’s seminal contributions to the simultaneous study of evolution, culture, and cultural evolution. Dutton and Heath address the topic of cultural evolution. They show how selection, transmission, and retention mechanisms can explain why some knowledge structures become and remain culturally popular while others don’t. Kirkpatrick draws on recent advances in evolutionary psychology to describe how a focus on psychological adaptations is necessary to forge connections between the mechanisms of genetic evolution and cultural transmission.

Whereas the first set of chapters emphasizes basic processes that are relevant to understanding culture in all its many manifestations, the second section of this book highlights specific ways in which an evolutionary perspective can help us understand particular prototypic aspects of human culture. Gangestad describes how an adaptationist framework can help frame questions about the many specific things that are central to any definition of human culture. This is followed by two chapters that employ evolutionary frameworks to understand human religions and religious beliefs. Solomon, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Cohen, and Ogilvie locate one particular theory of cultural origins (terror management theory) within an evolutionary perspective and, in so doing, suggest that supernatural beliefs may arise from specific adaptations. Shariff, Norenzayan, and Henrich show how moralizing religions and cooperative tendencies in large groups might have coevolved. Nesse also focuses on human cooperation as a defining feature of human culture and suggests that it may result in part from a specific form of natural selection: social selection. Kameda, Takezawa, Ohtsubo, and Hastie describe an adaptationist perspective on egalitarian beliefs and discuss its implications for social justice and for cultural variability in justice systems.

In the third and final section of this book, we turn our attention to the fact of cultural variability and speculations about the evolutionary roots of cross-cultural differences. Roberson describes a line of research that documents important cross-cultural differences in color vision. These findings underscore the point that even the most ostensibly “pure” psychological phenomena are influenced by culture. Yamagishi and Suzuki summarize an approach to thinking about culture as a self-sustaining system of beliefs and illustrate this approach with many examples that reveal how culture governs individual preferences, decisions, and actions. Kitayama and Bowman draw further attention to one fundamental dimension of cultural difference (the individualism–collectivism dimension) and its psychological consequences and offer one perspective on why these cross-cultural differences might exist. Daly and Wilson focus on another paradigmatic dimension of cultural variability (differences in a “culture of honor”) that has important implications for aggression and violence. They reinterpret the cross-cultural evidence within an evolutionary frameworK. Schaller and Murray describe how different attitudes, values, and behaviors may have different consequences on reproductive fitness depending on the prevalence of pathogens in local ecologies. This evolutionary analysis successfully predicts a wide range of important cross-cultural differences in traits, values, and belief systems (including differences along the individualism– collectivism dimension). Finally, Kenrick, Nieuweboer, and Buunk show how cultural variability in mating systems can reflect deeper evolutionary universals. They use this example to illustrate how an evolutionary analysis is essential to the simultaneous articulation of cultural similarities and cross-cultural differences.

ENVOI

The successes of cultural psychology and evolutionary psychology have fundamentally altered the landscape of the psychological sciences. But these successes create potential traps as well. By amassing large (and largely independent) literatures, and by creating conferences and journals that are specific to their subdisciplines, cultural psychologists and evolutionary psychologists have perhaps found it too easy to ignore each other’s worK. This book shows a way out of that trap.

Evolutionary and cultural perspectives on the human mind aren’t incompatible or irrelevant to each other. Quite the contrary. The origins of human culture (and cross-cultural differences) cannot be fully understood in the absence of evolutionary considerations. Evolutionary psychologists cannot fully explain individual psychological responses without considering the fundamental “cultureness” of human behavior. Genes and culture are mutually necessary for a complete scientific understanding of the human mind.

REFERENCES

Norenzayan, A. (2006). Evolution and transmitted culture. Psychological Inquiry, 17, 123–128.

Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2005). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Schaller, M., & Crandall, C. S. (2004). The psychological foundations of culture. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Whiten, A. (2005). The second inheritance system of chimpanzees and humans. Nature, 437, 52–55.

Section I
How Evolution and Culture Fit Together

2
Towards a Cultural/Evolutionary Psychology

Cooperation and Complementarity

PAUL ROZIN

We start with the assumption that individual men possess authentic properties distinctive of Homo sapiens and that their actions in society alter them in authentically distinctive ways. (Asch, 1952, p. 119)

In about the past two decades, psychology has been blessed by the development of two new subfields, evolutionary and cultural psychology. Each has provided an important perspective and corrective to what has come before. Evolutionary psychology brings to bear on the phenomena of psychology one of the greatest scientific theories of all time. It introduces the important idea of domain specificity into a psychology previously dominated by general process theories, enriches psychological understanding with evolutionary and adaptive explanations, and places human behavior and mind in their natural context. Cultural psychology calls the attention of psychology to one of the most powerful forces, perhaps the most powerful force, that shapes human beings, challenges universal principles of psychology from a direction different from evolutionary psychology, and also emphasizes that humans must be studied in context. Both bring important new questions to the forefront of psychology. We should celebrate these accomplishments and recognize that the two together can do much more than either alone, not just because each can add to our understanding but because there is an interaction effect: They can each improve the other.

Consider the following scenarios. There are important problems to be solved. X has some of the tools to solve them, and Y has the materials to apply the tools to. Should X and Y cooperate? Of course.

In more detail, imagine two sets of researchers working within differe...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• Section I How Evolution and Culture Fit Together
• Section II Evolutionary Bases of Cultural Phenomena
• Section III Evolutionary Universals and Cross-Cultural Differences
• Subject Index
• Author Index