Exam 15: Culture

Henrich and McElreath (2007) suggest that there are three key concepts that can be used to consider human culture from an evolutionary perspective. Which of the following is NOT one of these key concepts?

Cultural content is transmitted by _____ processes (i.e., cognitive information transfer) and not by the transfer of genetic materials. Hence, culture appears to be a separate inheritance system, uncoupled from genetics.

Writing was developed some _____ years ago by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, and it is assumed to have independently developed in Egypt, China, and Mexico in the following centuries.

Dawkins (1976) coined the term _____ to denote the unit of cultural information, which can be passed on from one generation to another, just like genes.

Human societies utilize social institutions for transmitting information; these social processes range from parents and kin imparting information to more formal religious and educational institutions. This kind of transmission of information through social means is referred to as _____.

What is the Standard Social Science Model? Explain how Tooby and Cosmides' (1992) concepts of metaculture, evoked culture, and transmitted culture help us move beyond the limitations of the SSSM.

As scientists have performed a variety of compelling studies that have reaffirmed Darwin's description of the close connection between an organism and its environment, a new focus has emerged related to culture and the brain; some refer to this field as _____.

Gelfand and colleagues (2011) found that cultures that had present-day or historical threats such as territorial conflicts, resource scarcity, or exposure to high levels of pathogens tended to

Boyd and Richerson (2005) suggest that cultural change can be viewed in the same manner as _____ changes. That is to say, we can ask why one idea survives in a culture and others do not.

In the 1930s, the Kelloggs co-reared their 10-month-old son Donald with a 7-month-old chimpanzee named Gua. As a result,

Humans in their early years ______ what is around them to an even greater degree than other animals, and this is the likely beginning of culture.

Ambady and Bharucha (2009) describe three possible mechanisms underlying the differences described in cultural mapping. Which of the following is NOT one of them?

_____ has to do with the manner in which societies place value on various aspects of human existence; we often see these values reflected in the ways in which a society works and what is available to individuals.

Discuss the four themes of cultural neuroscience as presented by Ambady and Bharucha (2009).

_____ is the process of understanding what mechanisms underlie the differences in cultural mapping.

When Henrich and McElreath (2007) talk about cultural capacities as adaptations, they are referring to the evolution of _____ that could be used in the service of developing and maintaining culture.

Discuss the five propositions in Boyd and Richerson's (2005) theory of cultural evolution.

A variety of researchers from various fields have begun to study how organisms can modify their environment and how this changes evolutionary selection pressures. This approach has been referred to as the _____ perspective, and it suggests that humans may be more active in sharing their own evolution than traditionally thought.

In a variety of social science disciplines including anthropology, sociology, and psychology, there has been a mind set commonly called the _____, which is a model of human behavior emphasizing experience as the major factor in determining our behavior.

According the Flinn (2005), culture (or its effects) is partly _____; that is, cultural traits (e.g., stone points, political monuments) exist outside the soma (physical body) of the culture-bearing organism.