Charles Darwin and the age-old search for cultural universals
Stop a random selection of passers-by anywhere on earth and a fair proportion of them will be able to tell you what John Lennon did for a living, that Mahatma Gandhi was a pacifist and that Charles Darwin wrote a famous book about evolution. A smaller proportion will be able to take you through the main arguments of On the Origin of Species. Fewer still will be able to reel off the names of Darwinâs other bestsellers.
When he was researching one of these lesser-known works, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), Darwin posed a number of questions that still occupy psychologists today. These questions revealed Darwin as not only a biologist and natural historian, but also a student of the human mind. Notably, this was happening around 1850, twenty years before psychology itself set up its first laboratory to study mental life, in Leipzig.
KEY TERMS Natureânurture debate. Dispute about the relative contributions of biological inheritance (nature) and environmental influence (nurture) to our behavioural repertoire. Cultural universals. Aspects of behaviour and experience that are common to all cultural settings. Global psychology. A branch of psychology with a special interest in placing psychology in a global context. |
One thing that interested Darwin about emotional expression was the question of its universality. He wondered whether pleasure, anger and confusion looked the same on the faces of Scots as on those of Egyptians. Take smiling, for example. Does this mouth-broadening, tooth-bearing contortion mean the same thing worldwide? If so, he reasoned, then perhaps emotional expression is a physiological response, universally shared among humans irrespective of upbringing. If, on the other hand, frowning in Jakarta and Kentucky mean two different things, then perhaps emotional expression is a learned response, determined by our cultural background. As you may recognise, this line of enquiry relates closely to what we now know as the natureânurture debate (a dispute about the relative contributions of biological inheritance (nature) and environmental influence (nurture) to our behavioural repertoire).
By the turn of the twentieth century, when psychology had well and truly stirred itself into action, questions like Darwinâs about the cultural universals of various aspects of human behaviour and psychological functioning were shooting up the agenda. In particular, for a branch of psychology with a special interest in placing psychology in a global context (known as global psychology), searching for human universals became a driving force for formulating research questions.
For example, in 1972 Deregowski asked:
In 1966 Piaget asked:
Even into the twenty-first century the search for universals goes on. For instance, Van de Vliert (2006) asked:
Many more examples of research inspired by the quest for cultural universals will feature during the course of this book.
KEY TERM Cross-cultural psychology. A branch of global psychology that compares the behaviour and experience of people from different cultures in order to understand the extent of cultureâs influence on psychological functioning. |
Introducing cross-cultural psychology
Cultural universals are aspects of behaviour and experience that are common to all cultural settings. For example, Deregowski (1972) was interested in whether the ability to perceive drawings as representations of three-dimensional objects is common to all humans, irrespective of culture. Pursuing such questions requires you to uproot yourself and relocate (with laptops, cameras, notebooks, etc.) to various cultural locations. But searching for cultural universals isnât just about travelling into the field to conduct research (though this is part of it).
If you think universal psychological phenomena are out there waiting to be discovered, youâre also likely to make certain assumptions about what global psychology is and how it should be carried out. These assumptions underpin an approach to global research known as cross-cultural psychology: a branch of global psychology that compares the behaviour and experience of people from different cultures in order to understand the extent of cultureâs influence on psychological functioning. In other words, cross-cultural psychologists try to find out what aspects of behaviour and experience are common to all human cultures â and thus what aspects are unique to certain places. Cross-cultural psychology is an approach that is favoured by a large proportion of global psychologists, though as we will learn it is not the only approach (see Chapter 5). As I have just hinted, cross-cultural investigations into cultural universality are underpinned by two key assumptions; one theoretical, one methodological.
Assumption 1: psychic unity
Central to cross-cultural psychologyâs search for cultural universals is an assumption of psychic unity (Shweder, 1991). In everyday terms this dictum states that despite outward appearances, human diversity is only skin deep. Put more technically, it proposes that any differences in psychological functioning (personality traits, performance on perceptual and memory tests, and so forth) and in social behaviour
KEY TERM Psychic unity. A set of psychic structures (mind, memory capacity, perceptual processes) that all humans share. |
(courtship, attitudes, values, obedience levels) across cultures are limited by certain universal psychological capacities. So if children in Mozambique remember details from stories more accurately than Welsh children do, this is regarded as a âlocal differenceâ. It doesnât mean that their underlying psychological capacities to remember and tell stories are different from each other.
According to the assumption of psychic unity, while researchers may report diverse behaviours in diverse cultural settings, these local differences are seen as no real challenge to the idea that deep down, all humans have an internal, global mind, or pure being, directing thoughts and actions (Shweder, 1991). In essence, psychic unity asserts that underlying our cultural variations is a set of psychic structures (mind, memory capacity, perceptual processes) that all humans share.
The assumption of psychic unity portrays a rather remote relationship between the human mind, on one hand, and behaviour in the outside world, on the other (Shweder, 1991). Mind and psychological capacities are seen as internal, universal, unaffected by culture. Meanwhile behaviour in the world is seen as external, diverse, under cultureâs influence. You could say that the cross-cultural psychologistâs job is to work out how much of our behaviour is down to psychic unity (universals) and how much is down to our cultural background (variations).
Assumption 2: cultural equivalence
Cross-cultural research could be described as âquasi-experimentalâ since in its basic form it mimics the experimental method in psychology. Two conditions of participants, separated by an independent variable (IV), are tested under otherwise equivalent conditions to find out whether the IV influences an aspect of their behaviour. In short, if participants in the two conditions behave differently it is assumed to be down to the IV.
Cross-cultural research simulates this scenario, where the IV is culture. Participants from differing cultural backgrounds are compared on a single, selected psychological ability or capacity. For example, Zambian adults might be compared with South African adults on their ability to perceive three dimensions in simple line drawings. Apart from the IV of cultural background, all other variables are held constant: this is the nub of cultural equivalence. So we have a research scenario where two (or more) groups are treated in an equivalent manner
KEY TERM Cultural equivalence. Where two (or more) groups are treated in an equivalent manner throughout the study and are drawn from equivalent populations that differ only with respect to their cultural background. |
throughout the study and are drawn from equivalent populations that differ only with respect for their cultural background. This is the basic research scenario used by cross-cultural research when investigating the possibility of cultural universals. As we will learn, it may not be the only type of research that is conducted cross-culturally, but it is the most popular.
As the definition in the previous paragraph implies, two kinds of equivalence are involved here. First, participants are exposed to equivalent testing conditions. Second, they are drawn from equivalent populations (in terms of factors like gender, age, income, literacy and...
