Human Nature and Culture: What is the Human Mind Designed For

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Human Nature and CultureWhat is the Human Mind
Designed For?

• Roy F. Baumeister

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Evolutionary Psychology

• Similarities (between humans and animals)

Cultural Psychology
Differences (among cultures)
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Evolutionary Psychology

• DIFFERENCES between humans and animals

Cultural Psychology
SIMILARITIES among cultures
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Focusing only on cultural differences
underestimates the power and importance of
culture.
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Different cultures speak different languages
but all cultures have language (and languages
have much in common)
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Different cultures cook different foods, in
different styles
but all cultures cook
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Different cultures use different clothing styles,
materials, and fashions
but all cultures use clothing
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Different cultures have different units of money
but nearly all cultures use money (and other
forms of exchange)
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So

• Lets think (also) about culture per se, and not
  just cultural difference, in order to understand
  human nature.

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What is the Human Psyche Distinctively Designed
to Do?

• Complex social systems
• CULTURE

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Brains Costs and Benefits

• Very costly organ, consumes many calories
• Human brain is 2 of body mass, consumes 20 of
  calories
• Must therefore pay for itself
• What benefits?
• Some kinds of food?
• Keeping track of territory?
• Outsmarting predators?

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The Social Brain

• Comparing different species of animals, Dunbar
  found that bigger brains went with bigger (and
  more complex) social networks
• The brain is for understanding each other
• The evolved purpose of the relatively giant human
  brain is for advanced social interaction
• Inner processes serve interpersonal functions

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Culture is a better way of being social.
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The Cultural Brain

• Culture increases power of human brain
• Brain may have evolved to do culture
• Analogy to computers and internet

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What is culture?

• Learned behavior
• Shared information
• Transmission to the next generation
• Beliefs
• Practices (how to)
• Guides for behaviors (norms, rules)

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What is culture?

• An information-based system to allow people to
  live together in organized fashion and satisfy
  biological, social needs

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Can culture shape biology?
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Why Culture?

• Humans developed culture as a new, better form of
  social life
• So culture can do things that simpler social
  systems cannot
• These things improve survival, reproduction
• Culture as biological strategy
• Culture per se, not cultural differences
• The human mind evolved to take advantage of these

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Advantages of Culture1. Language

• Need a group (culture) for language
• Improves communication
• Improves sharing, storage of information
• Improves thinking (manipulating information,
  rationality, morality)
• Can think beyond the here and now
• All other animals just respond to their immediate
  stimulus environment

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Advantages of Culture2. Accumulation of Knowledge

• Knowledge resides in the group
• Passed on to new generations
• Allows for PROGRESS

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Advantages of Culture3. Division of Labor

• Different people perform different tasks
• Allows for specialization, expertise
• Everything gets done better, more efficiently

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Advantages of Culture4. Network of exchange

• Marketplace, trade
• Enables people to interact with strangers in ways
  that benefit both
• Trade increases wealth
• Life gets better overall

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Advantages of CultureBottom Line

• The whole is more than the sum of its parts
• That difference (increase) improves survival,
  reproduction for members

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Explaining the Psyche

• Nature selected us for culture
• Culture (though not cultural difference) is in
  our genes

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Adaptations for Culture

• Inner processes serve interpersonal functions!
• The main features of human psychology (cognition,
  motivation, emotion) are there to enable people
  to sustain this new improved kind of social
  behavior culture

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Adaptations for Culture

• One of us
• Theory of mind
• Joint attention tasks
• Shared assumptions for language, trade, etc.
• Empathy (promotes prosocial behavior)
• Need to belong
• Participation in community

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Adaptations for Culture

• Intelligent thought
• More better information processing
• Not all-purpose reasoning machine
• Understands hidden causes
• Detects cheaters, free riders
• Solves problems without trial error

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Adaptations for Culture

• Self
• Between animal and social group
• Seeks acceptance by group
• Roles (identity, group tasks)
• Finding unique niche
• Public self-consciousness
• Connects biological organism to social group and
  cultural system

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Adaptations for Culture

• Consciousness
• Purpose brains inner cross-talk
• For processing social information
• Simulating nonpresent realities
• Decision making
• Understanding others
• Simulating past, future events

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Adaptations for Culture

• Self-Control / Self-Regulation
• Overrides incipient responses
• Can bring self, states, behaviors into line with
  groups rules, standards
• Can follow abstract rules made by far-off others

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Adaptations for Culture

• Free will
• Self-control
• Override response to follow rules
• Rational, smart choices
• Enlightened self-interest amid culture
• Planned action
• Initiative
• Active instead of passive responder

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Nature Against Culture?The Case of Self-Interest

• Nature made us selfish
• The selfish gene
• Culture demands sacrifices from individuals
• Taxes
• War
• Waiting your turn
• Respecting property of others
• Restrain sexual, aggressive impulses

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Too Positive a View?

• Human culture has produced
• War
• Pollution
• Genocide
• Social Inequality, Injustice
• Disco
• Economic Depressions
• Global Warming

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But still

• Culture has advanced far beyond what natural
  selection created
• Survival Human life expectancy has nearly
  tripled
• Reproduction From one woman to 8 billion humans
  in 200,000 years

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ConclusionSocialor cultural animal?

• Humans are not the only, or even the most social
  of animals
• Humans are the most cultural of animals and are
  the only ones who rely utterly on culture in most
  aspects of life

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The End