Difference between evolutionist and relativist approach in morality
Evolutionist: development of a trait follows a progressing trajectory
•later stages are deemed more advanced/better
•idea that moral reasoning progresses in stages
•ex: Kohlberg
Relativist: development of a trait depends on local demands
•the outcome is a cultural solution to a cultural problem
•no trajectory/hierarchy - all are solutions
•ex: Shewder’s Big 3
Various levels of Kohlberg’s model of moral development (evolutionist)
Kohlberg’s model: most influential model in moral reasoning, proposing universal progression through three levels:
*cannot reach next level without passing previous level
- Pre-conventional: morality is some sort of calculation of what provides the best return, taking into account one’s needs/being punished
•egocentric moral reasoning
Stage 1: fear of punishment is primary motivator for moral reasoning
*shouldn’t steal because Heinz will get in trouble
Stage 2: not one view is completely right, and different people have different perspectives
*should steal because Heinz needs it more than the druggist needs money - Conventional: morality is thought in terms of emphasizing rules/maintaining social order
Stage 3: live up to expectations of close others
*should steal because his family will be happy with him
Stage 4: it’s important to uphold wider rules of society
*shouldn’t steal - he should uphold the law because the law is right - Post-conventional level: morality is considered abstract, universal ethical principles that emphasize individual rights
Stage 5: recognize that social rules may run against interests of individuals, so need to set rules that benefit most people
*should steal because keeping the mother alive will benefit more people
Stage 6: appeal to one’s own set of individual moral principles that may run against the law
Is this universal?
•meta analysis shows that all urban societies had at least one adult engaging in post conventional levels
•BUT folk/tribal societies show no evidence of post conventional thinking
•SO moral reasoning ability surpasses these societies
Criticisms:
•some cultures encourage different kinds of moral reasoning
•too much focus on western moral reasoning, prompting the relativist approach
Codes of ethics associated with Big three and the 5 moral foundations (relativist)
Shewder’s Big 3: three primary moral codes that different cultural groups emphasize
*no one is better than the other ethic
Individualistic cultures:
1. Ethic of autonomy: associated with concerns about issue of harm, rights, and justice
Must protect freedoms of individuals, concerning:
•if someone was harmed, suffered emotionally, acted unfairly, or was denied their rights
*ex: stick a pin into the palm of a child you don’t know
Collectivist cultures:
2. Ethic of community: tied to individual’s interpersonal obligations
Must protect social order by fulfilling one’s obligations to others, concerning:
•if someone’s actions show a lack of loyalty, affected your group, conformed to traditions of society, showed disrespect for elders
*ex: marrying someone against the wishes of your family
- Ethic of divinity: concerning sanctity and natural order
Must preserve standards mandated by transcendent authority, concerning:
•if someone did something disgusting, acted in a way the God(s) would disapprove of, or acted in indecent ways
*act like an animal for 30 minutes
Shweder’s model later received more attention/got expanded
•ethic of autonomy: avoid harm, protect fairness
•ethic of community: loyalty to in-group, respect hierarchy
•ethic of divinity: achieve purity
Three principles of fairness check slides
- Principle of need: resources directed to those who need them most (lower class)
- Principle of equality: resources shared among all members of the group
•collectivist societies - Principle of equity: resources distributed based on peoples individual contributions
•individualistic societies - Individualistic societies: more emphasis on work for rewards (get out what you put in)
•supposed to increase motivation/breed competition especially in people that think if they get more others will get less (works in both ways)
•associated with the principle of equity - Collectivistic: everyone gets the same raise, but reward those who have been in the workplace longest
•weakens link between individual output and reward, decreasing motivation
•promotes harmonious relations by removing intragroup competition
*associated with the principle of equality
Describe different economic games and the different forms of punishment that can occur while playing them
Go over with gill
Fairness in economic games: seeing what people do with the money they’re given
- Dictator games: one player determines a fair distribution of resources (norm is that player would get 50% and the other would get 50%), but the best option for the player would be to give 100%
•USA: we see 45% on average (close to fair)
•much less strong in other populations
•shows cultural variability - Ultimatum games
•more complex perspective of fairness by looking at proposer AND receiver, because now proposer has added pressures
•proposer gives offer to receiver, receiver can accept the offer or reject it and nobody gets any money
•expected that receiver would accept any amount because they’re receiving money so why would you reject it, BUT we find that proposer often gives 40-50%, and the minimum offers accepted were around 30%
*we are vindictive people
explanations for prosocial behaviour
1. Kinship: small societies had kinship, so as societies grew, we are forced to expand this kinship/foster cooperation
•leads to reciprocity
•humans are sensitive to fairness even in large/unrelated groups
- Maket integration: measured as the percentage of purchased calories (how much food you eat from the marketplace)
•more market integration = more fairness, trust and cooperation with anonymous groups
•lower transaction costs increases long term reward - Public goods game:
•multiple players where everyone contributes some amount of a shared resource, taking multiple turns
•at the end of each turn, the pot gets multiplied by a certain amount, then decided evenly among everyone
•individual hope is that everyone contributes a lot without you having to contribute much
•BUT, others will know who doesn’t contribute (free rides) and those people will be punished (altruistic punishment)
Outcome:
•the less that people pay, the more money the punisher is willing to spend to punish them
•antisocial punishment (punishing people who pay too much)
*the more altruistic someone is being, the more someone is going to spend to punish the altruistic person
*we don’t really know why this happens
•altruistic punishment: pay a cost to encourage prosocial behaviour/punish freeloaders, likely triggered by negative emotions from violation of fairness norms
BUT some cultures show anti-social punishment: punish people who cooperate too much
•underlying mechanism for anti-social punishment correlated with civic cooperation and negatively predicted by rule of law (how much you are willing to trust that law enforcement will enforce the law)
•more civic cooperation (people voting, considering others) and rule of law (trust in the system) = less antisocial punishment
What are moral foundations (developing new moral theories)
Criteria for moral foundation
1. Culturally widespread
2. Provides an adaptive advantage
•some sort of survival advantage
3. Evidence of innate preparedness
•ex: maybe kids without being taught are able to think about these kinds of concerns
4. Automatic affective evaluations
5. Common concern in third-party judgments:
•Harm, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity
•check slides for examples
Associated with Big 3:
•Autonomy: harm/fairness
•Community: loyalty/authority
•Divinity: purity
Moral foundations theory
- Moral foundations of harm
•womens’ brains are wired to pay attention to pain in offspring
•but generalized beyond mother-child relationship - Moral foundations of fairness
•alliance formation/cooperation led to emotions that helped motivate cooperation and prevent cheating - Moral foundations of loyalty
•especially true for animals in pacs and small kin based societies
•broadened our definition a lot more in the present day
•different kinds of in-groups/out-groups (sports fans, social groups) - Moral foundation of authority
•having authority members are helpful, these members have experience to give structure where structure is needed/teach when teaching is needed etc.
•brains have been shaped to learn how to navigate within a hierarchy of who belongs where
•ex: to parents, teachers, elders, etc - Moral foundations of purity
•has its basis in concerns about getting sick (physical purity)
•developed to guard against disease transmissions/pathogens
•natural order (are you doing something really wrong/gross)
•ex: blow up sex doll that looks like student
Application examples
•gun control: any of the same issues can be thought of in terms of difference moral values
•increasing levels of political polarization: people tend to place emphases on different moral foundations
•political differences: americans who identify as strongly liberal identify with harm and fairness values but conservatives are invested in all 5
Personal and social predictors of attraction
Predictors of attraction
- Physical attractiveness (discussed later)
- Personality traits
- Socially oriented processes
Personality traits that are universally attractive:
•(in order) emotional stability, dependability, kindness, intelligence
Romantic or platonic, human attraction is a social process
•ex: determining suitability of partner
1. Propinquity effect: tendency to form interpersonal relationships with people we encounter more often (romantic or not)
•occurs due to mere exposure effect: more exposure = greater attraction to it
•primarily works for people who we had slightly negative, neutral, or positive first impressions
- Similarity-attraction effect: tendency to become attracted to others if they share similarities to us
•similarity plays bigger role for important issues than less imprint issues
•tends to be associated with independent self construal
*ex: we want to engage with people who can affirm our ideas/interests
Different physical predictors of attraction
Physical attractiveness has both universal and cultural components (lots of correlations cross culturally)
Universals: based in evolutionary psychology - perceived physical health = more attractive
- Clear complexion
•showing physical health
*ex: photo-shopping/makeup
•Studies find clear faces > less clear faces
•most robust predictor of physical attractiveness - Billateral symmetry
•high asymmetry suggests health issues
*ex: genetic mutations, pathogens, stressors in womb
•much smaller effect size than clear completion - Average features
•large deviations from the prototype are less attractive, as average features are less likely to contain genetic abnormalities
•morphing allows for averaging of facial features across faces - more faces used to morph, the more attractive the face
*ex: irregularities, more extreme features, asymmetries
Study: Eurasian faces generally seen as most attractive/healthiest, while asian males are seen as less attractive
Genetic fitness explanation:
•Immune system has genetic component
•more heterozygosity (variations of genes) is associated with more resistance to infections, greater survivability –higher attractiveness
Types of groups/relationships
All relationships are based on one or more of the basic elements of sociability
Make this into a square thing
1. Communal sharing: group members emphasize common identity based on something socially meaningful
•strongest communal sharing groups are ones that are created via consubstantial assimilation: members of the group see everyone as sharing some aspect of each others’ bodies
*ex: family/blood rituals
•strong communal sharing groups = high level of compassion for each other’s suffering (attack on one is an attack on all)
•pooled resource for everyones use and track for quality matching
- Authority ranking: members of a group in a hierarchical social dimension leading to asymmetrical relationships
•status differentiation: command and obedience relationship (slides for visual)
•higher ranking - more privilege/entitled to more resources
•lower ranking - entitled to care and protect people above them - Equality matching: relationships are based on reciprocity and balance (equality)
•unlike communal sharing, contributions are tracked, high need for reciprocation
*ex: turn taking, equality entitlements (voting)
*ex2: if you give someone a xmas present u should expect a similar one back - Market pricing: also emphasizes balance and reciprocity guaranteed by monitoring, but not direct reciprocity
•not turn taking (don’t give the same thing in return), but a transaction
•relies on arbitrary symbols (price) to facilitate interactions (commonly currency) on the same turn
*ex: giving someone food, getting $10
All relationships encompass at least one (or more)
•all are universal, but vary in the extent to which each operates
•individualistic cultures: more market pricing
•traditional subsistence societies: more equality matching
various non western approaches to organizations
- Chaebol: south Korean form of business organizations where the collection of corporations in different domains falling under one name and controlled by one chairman (and often family)
*ex: samsung makes fridges, computers, life insurance, med centres, and cars
•runs as a hierarchy
*ex: encouraged to think of chairman like a father, and superiors are suppose to act fatherly to workers (loving but stern) to create sense of family
•results in a mix with life inside and outside of work (all going for drinks) - Guangxi: Chinese approach to conducting business based on developing relationships and dense personal networks
•mix business networks with social networks (“I have a friend who’s an engineer)
•dense networks come from networks within network
•networks are transitive (individuals can directly access another network without using intermediates) because they assume indirect links are trustworthy because of the accountability from direct links
*ex: doing business with someone with their own network means you now have access to their network
•business decisions based on relationships rather than objective measures (price)
3.Sympatia: approach to interactions common in Latin cultures (primarily latin american countries, but similar to east asian culture)
•emphasizes social harmony, interpersonal attention (how much attention you pay to others vs self), and making smoother social interactions
•simpatico: someone who is demonstrating sympatia
Sympatia in east asian cultures differ because
- Positive (loud/positive emotion) vs negative affect (neutral emotion)
- In group vs out group: less distinction in sympatia (try to be inclusive)
- Bosses from latin cultural environments pay more attention to goals and aspirations
- Workers from latin cultural environments pay more attention to emotional states of other workers and cooperate more
the evolutionary role of love and how the perception of love has changed
Romantic love: evolutionary advantageous (because it leads to reproduction) and universal
•love is needed for humans to stay together and raise the child
•marriage traditionally was a contract for decedents, family, and property
•love traditionally was associated with negative consequence in renaissance literature
Changes over last century: seen as a necessity for marriage but is not universal
•very few people in individualistic cultures marry not for love
•more common in collectivist cultures (but this pattern has also been changing)
Study: love songs in Hong Kong, China, and US
•Chinese: negative outcomes associated with love/indicate suffering as consequence of loving relationship (69% vs US’s 37%)
different marriage systems
- Monogamy
•husband wife relationship (or gay versions) but is between two people - Polygamy
•one husband and multiple wives
•allowed in most preindustrial societies, but monogamy is still way more common - Polyandry
•one wife and multiple husbands
•occurs in few societies where there is a lack of resources
•fraternal polyandry: marrying brothers - Polygynandry
•many husbands and many wives
•extremely rare
•occurs in religious enclaves (indian himalayan region)
How independent and interdependent self construals impact group relations/the nature of interactions
Review:
In group: share a sense of belonging
Out group: lack of familiarity
Independent: more fluidity between in group and out group, fewer demands on individuals, more focus on personal groups and less committed to in group
Interdependent: less fluidity between groups, higher demands on others, more focus on goals of group (suppressing their individual goals)
Differences in group relations between self counstrals seen in two domains
- Day to day interactions
•independent environments: more interaction partners, more interactions in general, and spend more time in their interactions
•interdependent environments: seek fewer people, and have their day to day interactions with their in group - Attitudes towards in groups vs out groups:
Studied looking at nature of interactions with in/out group members, conformity with in/out group members, and cooperation with in/out group members having 3 potential outcomes: - Subordination: showing deference to interaction partner, not asserting self over interaction partner
*demonstrates cooperation - Superordination: wanting to assert oneself over interaction partner
*demonstrates superiority - Dissociation: wanting to repel interaction partner (avoiding the other person, being rude, stealing resources from that person)
*showing negative attitude
Study: social distance and dissociation
US very little difference in social distance showing subordination (relates to their independent self construal), some super ordination, and some dissociation
Chinese: the more social distance, the less time they spend with that person, the less close they feel to someone the more likely to engage in super ordination, and will engage in dissociation much quicker (interdependent self construal)
Culture and Conformity
Conformity with in/out group members: social influence - individuals change to match the perceived norms
•Asch line test: how conformity was traditionally studied where one participant surrounded by confederates who answer the line question wrong to measure participant’s
conformity (75% conform)
•number of people + higher consensus = higher conformity rates
Universality of conformity: some argue that individualism promotes resistance to conformity while collectivism promotes conformity
•meta analysis: anti conformity usually seen more among non-western participants where confederates were out group members than in group, and collectivism had higher conformity rates (??)
•US recent study: less conformity with overall decline over time
WHAT DOES THIS PROVE
Cooperation with in/out group members: the ability to work together toward a common goal - essential for efficient functioning and survival of social groups
•assumption: individualism is associated with competitiveness while collectivism is associated with cooperation
•often studied using economic games (prisoner dilemma)
*you and friend both get arrested, taken into separate interrogations. You didn’t plan what you would say if you got caught - need to make decision to betray or stay silent
•best strategy: cooperate (stay silent) because betrayal is making the competitive choice
•can be applicable to other things (resource achievement)
Look at slides for cultural priming study
•using cultural priming: people will cooperate with friends
•using neural priming (default): the neutral amount
ASK
Trust
Coperation and trust: different cooperation levels reflect underlying expectations about partner’s likelihood of cooperation
•similar patterns of cooperation among chinese children and euro american children (also found when comparing mexian americans and euro americans)
•culture plays important role in interactions, conformity, and cooperation
Trust: extent to which one is confident that the interaction partner will cooperate, involving two different processes
Interdependent self construal
1. personalized trust: trust that you give to partner because they directly or indirectly are connected to your network
•trust is not given to people who you don’t know and is driven by ability to monitor directly or indirectly
*ex: plumber referral
Independent self construal
2. depersonalized trust: trust is given to anyone who belongs in the same category
•trust isn’t given the same way to people who aren’t in your category, applies to even arbitrary categories •monitoring unimportant
*ex: random assignment with labels in studies
Biggest clue between the two: Monitoring
Different ways biological differences emerge across environments
Biological variation: result of selection pressures
Global distribution of skin tones
•skin tone matches level of UV rays the region gets exposed to
*lots of exposure to UV radiation requires a development of a different kind oh phenotype to adjust
Exceptions
•Inuit in Arctic: skin tone of Inuit is fair, but historically their skin tone is pretty dark
•because their diet consists of fish blubber of sea animals (high in vitamin D), they don’t need to absorb much sunlight
Culture-gene coevolution: as culture evolves, it places new selection pressures on the genome which also evolves in response to those pressures
•ex: lactose intolerance - people stared having milk for survival so these people developed a mutation to digest lactose
Acquired biological differences: proximal cultural effects on one’s biology that are independent of genes
•ex: pupil restriction - Moken people live primarily on water and rely on diving in for food (extreme pupil restriction can be learned with effort and training)
Cultural nature of medicine
Despite medical training, doctors still grow up in heritage culture
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM): restore body balance
*ex: certain foods have heat and cold qualities, acupuncture (idea that certain illnesses come from blockages)
American medicine: metaphor of body is a machine
•Doctors more likely to do surgery and have higher doses of antibiotics
•lots of variability in physicians and medical options
How is sleep a cultural process
Sleep has changed thought history
•biphasic sleep seen in subsistence societies: two periods of sleep
•industrial revolution push sleep time further and further back
People in different cultures sleep different lengths due to local norms (not genes because people have different beliefs about sleep)
•children in east asian countries sleep for shorter time than western counties (this pattern persists throughout adulthood)
•Japan: sleeps the least (1.5 difference in babies, 1 in adults)
•Euro and asian canadians are pretty similar
Defining heath
def: state of complete physical mental and social wellbeing
Problems:
•who gets to define this
•”can cope with normal stressors”: what are normal stressors? some can handle while others can’t
Psychological disorders: psychological states that are statistically rare and cause subjective distress or impaired social functioning
•universal syndromes: psychological disorders that are found cross culturally
•cultural bound syndromes: psychological disorders that are only found in certain cultures
MDD: needs 5/9 symptoms: depressed mood, inability to feel pleasure, changes in weight/appetite, changes in sleep, psychomotor change, fatigue/no energy, feeling worthless, poor concentration, suicidality
•found in all environments studies, but prevalence varies
•China has 1/5th of what US does
•linked to neurasthenia: insomnia, poor concentration, poor appetite, headaches
*many chinese psychiatric patients diagnosed (seems like the physical/somatic symptoms of depression without psychological issue)
Exploring western models of mental health:
- Must learn about local culture’s needs and customs
- Insistence on western therapy harms effective cultural systems/indigenous ways of healing
- Psychological conditions contain cultural meaning embedded in cultural systems
