Psychology 3228 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Dual Inheritance Theory, Franz Boas, Margaret Mead

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 3228
• Professor: Caroline Strang

Document Summary

In 10,000 years we moved from a stone age hunter-gatherer society to the technological information age: 400-600 generations. Culture is a part of human nature not a competing theory for human nature. Much study of culture is focused on cultural differences. Boas"s students: alfred kroeber, posited that culture is superorganic, autonomous from biology, margaret mead, documented wide variety of cultural practices that differed from. Approach to culture as omnipotent dominated social sciences and popular culture: sssm and cultural relativism. But brown"s universal people" documented cultural universalities. Cultural universals: may reflect human predispositions based on genetic inheritance or really good ideas. Evolutionary theories of culture: evoked and transmitted culture, dual inheritance theory, gene culture co-evolution, memetics. Cultural differences may result from cultural relativism transmitted culture. Tooby and cosmides: found that phenotypes exhibit reaction norms, produce different cultural norms in different environments, ex: language parameters, phonemes. There are two interacting models of inheritance: genetic inheritance biological evolution.