Psychological Anthropology

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Psychological Anthropology
Growing Up Human
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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)
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Old Psychological Anthropology
Psychoanalysis
Developed by
Freud emphasized
Biological processes
and
Sigmund Freud
early developmental experience.
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Old Psychological Anthropology
The Id
Freud emphasized our animal nature
The ID operates on the pleasure principle and
demands instant gratification but is held in
check by
The Superego
Some of the psychic energy diverted from the ID
by conflict with the SUPEREGO becomes
The EGO
Ego is the conscious self, operates with reality
principle.
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The Notion of Insanity
Old Psychological Anthropology

• A legal term with three meanings.
• Insanity as a criminal defense.
• Cant 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.

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Old Psychological Anthropology
Culture Specific Disorders
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.
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.
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.
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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 Meads early work included Coming of
Age in Samoa (1928) and Sex and Temperament in
Three Primitive Societies (1935).
Ruth Benedicts early work included Patterns of
Culture (1934) and The Chrysanthemum and the
Sword (1945).
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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)
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Old Psychological Anthropology
Margaret Mead - a great popular writer, with
tremendous contributions in fieldwork.
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.
Meads first popular book Coming of Age in Samoa
was a study of acculturation in which she
addressed the questions
Meads 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.
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Old Psychological Anthropology
Ruth Benedict - another popular writer who made
important contributions to use of theory.
Benedicts 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 Benedicts second popular book, The
Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946). A wartime
study of traditional Japanese culture, she
developed her concept of national character.
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New Psychological Anthropology
Rethinking Psychological Anthropology Continuity
and Change in the Study of Human Action, Second
Edition by Phillip K. Bock
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New Psychological Anthropology
Research themes
Human Universals Language - Williams Syndrome,
Motherese Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Hunters and Gatherers in Modern Post-Industrial
Society
Object Permanence in children
Renee Baillargeon, U. Illinois
Mental Maps
Social Cognition
Rationality in economic theory
Studies of wisdom and other aspects of aging
Mental Health
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Tabula rasa
Palimpsest
The 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 experiencesby 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
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.
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New Psychological Anthropology
Evolution of Human Central Nervous System (CNS)
Modern Human - 1500, Modern Gorilla - 500cc.

100,000 BP Mod Humans - 1500 cc Average skull
capacity. (Includes Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon,
etc.)
1.0 mBP Pithecanthropus - 900 cc Average skull
capacity.
3.5 mBP Australopithecus - 600 cc Average skull
capacity.
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New Psychological Anthropology
Central Ideas (Leda Cosmides and John Tooby)
The brain is a physical system designed to
generate behavior that is appropriate to
environmental circumstances.

Modules for language, sexual attraction, emotion,
mapping, etc.
Our neural circuits were designed by natural
selection to solve problems that our ancestors
faced during our species' evolutionary history.
William James called this instinct blindness.
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.
In short, we are hunter-gatherers in a modern,
post industrial world.
Our modern skulls house a stone age mind.
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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.

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New Psychological Anthropology
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).
Social Cognition
Four models for coordination of interaction
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).
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
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).

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.
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).
Alan Page Fiskes Relational models theory posits
that people use four elementary models to
organize most aspects of social interaction in
all societies.