The most important legacy of evolution for human beings is not the way it constrains behavior but rather the great flexibility it allows for adaptation to different circumstances. The enormous range of behaviors that people exhibit is associated with the fact that humans, together with rats, are the most successful of all mammals in our ability to live in virtually every type of ecosystem. Our adaptability and the range of environments in which we have evolved have resulted in extraordinary differences among human cultures. Depending on the prevailing culture, humans may be more or less likely to cooperate with each other, to assign different roles to men and women, or to try to distinguish themselves as individuals. Moreover, different cultures vary in what they deem morally wrong and how they punish transgressions.
Until fairly recently, psychologists regarded cultural differences as being limited to differences in beliefs, preferences, and values. Some cultures regard the world as having been created by a supernatural force, some believe it was shaped by impersonal natural forces, and some don’t ponder the question much at all. The French like to eat fatty goose liver, the Chinese like to eat chicken feet, Americans like to eat cotton candy—and each group can have trouble appreciating the tastes preferred by the other groups. These differences, while interesting, don’t really require deep psychological theories to understand.
Recent research, however, shows that cultural differences go far deeper than beliefs and values. In fact, they extend all the way to the level of fundamental forms of self-conception and social interaction and even to basic perceptual and cognitive processes that give rise to new thoughts and beliefs (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). Many of these differences are discussed throughout this book, but one set of interrelated tendencies is particularly central, and we introduce it here.
To get a feel for this set of tendencies, think about the following propositions. How plausible do you find each one?
Hundreds of millions of people are reasonably well described by these propositions, but those people tend to be found in particular parts of the world—namely, Western Europe and many of the present and former nations of the British Commonwealth, including the United States, Canada, and Australia. These societies tend to be highly independent (or individualistic) cultures (A. P. Fiske et al., 1998; Henrich, 2020; Hofstede, 1980; Hsu, 1953; Markus & Conner, 2013; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, 1995). Westerners think of themselves as distinct social entities, tied to each other by bonds of affection and organizational memberships to be sure, but essentially separate from other people and having attributes that exist in the absence of any connection to others. They tend to see their associations with other people, even their own family members, as voluntary and subject to termination once those associations become sufficiently troublesome or unproductive (Table 1.2).
TABLE 1.2 INDEPENDENT VS. INTERDEPENDENT CULTURES
|
Independent Cultures |
Interdependent Cultures |
|
Conception of the self as distinct from others, with attributes that are constant |
Conception of the self as inextricably linked to others, with attributes depending on the situation |
|
Insistence on ability to act on one’s own |
Preference for collective action |
|
Need for individual distinctiveness |
Desire for harmonious relations within the group |
|
Preference for achieved status based on accomplishments |
Acceptance of hierarchy and ascribed status based on age, group membership, and other attributes |
|
Conviction that rules governing behavior should apply to everyone |
Preference for rules that take context and particular relationships into account |
But these characterizations provide a poor description of most of the world’s people, particularly the citizens of East Asian countries such as China (Triandis, McCusker, & Hui, 1990), Japan (M. H. Bond & Cheung, 1983), and Korea (Rhee et al., 1995), as well as people from South Asian countries such as India (Savani, Markus, & Conner, 2008), people from the Middle East (Greenberg et al., 2012), people from many Latin American countries (de Oliveira & Nisbett, 2017; Gabrielidis et al., 1997), and people from Eastern Europe (Grossmann & Kross, 2010). These societies represent more interdependent (or collectivistic) cultures. People in such cultures don’t have as much freedom or personal control over their lives, and they don’t necessarily want or need it (Sastry & Ross, 1998).
Such differences between people in independent and interdependent societies have important implications for the nature of their personal goals and strivings, values, and beliefs, as Box 1.2 illustrates. For instance, success is important to many East Asians in good part because it brings credit to the family and other groups to which they belong, not because it merely reflects personal merit.
Personal uniqueness is not very important to interdependent peoples and may in fact be undesirable. In an experiment by Kim and Markus (1999), Korean and American participants were offered a pen as a gift for being in a study. Several of the pens were of one color and one pen was of another color. Americans tended to choose the unique color and Koreans the common color. Being unique and being better than others are not so important for interdependent people to feel good about themselves; moreover, feeling good about themselves is itself not as important a goal as it is for Westerners and other independent peoples (Heine et al., 1999).
Interdependent people tend not to expect or even value mutuality and equality in relationships; on the contrary, they’re likely to expect hierarchical relations to be the rule (Hsu, 1953; Triandis, 1987, 1995). They tend not to be universalists in their understanding of social norms; instead, they believe in different strokes for different folks. Justice should keep her eyes wide open, paying attention to the particular circumstances of each case that comes before her.
To the extent that culture influences deep patterns of thinking and feeling—a central theme in this book—we would expect these influences to be reflected in differences in a person’s brain—for example, the density of neurons in a region that supports culture-related thought. And indeed, culture shapes the human brain. In one recent study, 265 Chinese participants had images of their brains taken and then completed measures of how independent (“I do whatever I believe is right”) or interdependent (“I regularly sacrifice for the group”) they were (Wang et al., 2017). Those participants who were more independent actually showed denser gray matter (increased cell bodies of neurons) in a region of the cortex that supports thought about the self (the ventromedial prefrontal cortex) and a region of the brain that is believed to support thoughts of self-agency (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex).
The first page of a reader for American children from the 1930s shows a little boy running with his dog. “See Dick run,” the primer reads. “See Dick run and play.” The first page of a Chinese reader from the same era shows a little boy sitting on the shoulders of a bigger boy. “Big Brother loves Little Brother,” reads the text. “Little Brother loves Big Brother.” The difference between what the American child and the Chinese child of the 1930s were exposed to on the first day of school says much about the differences between their worlds. The American child is taught to orient toward action and to be prepared to live in a world where control and individual choice are normal. The Chinese child is more likely to be taught to be attuned to relationships. To Westerners, it makes sense to speak of the existence of the person apart from any group. To East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people, for example) and to many of the world’s other peoples, the person exists only as a member of a larger collective—family, friends, village, corporation. People are related to one another like ropes in a net, completely interconnected and having no real existence without the connections (Munro, 1985).
Much of the early research on the distinction between independence and interdependence focused on comparing Western countries with East Asian ones, but there appear to be variations of interdependence and independence in other cultures as well. For example, in Hispanic cultures more than in Asian American cultures, interdependence involves what is called familialism, a social value defined by interpersonal warmth, closeness, and support (Campos & Kim, 2017; Sabogal et al., 1987). Latinos who feel a great sense of familialism enjoy greater well-being and stronger relationships, but they also experience greater stress, particularly when faced with moving away from family—for example, to attend a faraway college (Campos et al., 2014).
Recent research has also extended the independence/interdependence framework to the understanding of another kind of culture—social class—which captures the degree of wealth, education, and occupational prestige a person enjoys (Kraus, Piff, & Keltner, 2011). Within many cultures, there are social class differences in independence versus interdependence (Kraus, Côté, & Keltner, 2012; Markus & Conner, 2013; Stephens, Markus, & Phillips, 2014). Working-class or lower socio-economic status (SES) people in modern societies are more interdependent than middle-class individuals (Markus & Conner, 2013). Working-class people have more interactions with their families than middle- and upper-class individuals do (Allan, 1979), their parenting styles emphasize conformity and obedience more than those of middle-class individuals (Kohn, 1969), and they value personal uniqueness less than middle-class individuals do.
A study by Nicole Stephens and her colleagues provides a striking example of the different values placed on uniqueness (Stephens, Markus, & Townsend, 2007). The researchers asked people how they would feel if a friend bought a car just like one they had recently bought themselves. Middle-class people were likely to report that they would be disappointed because they like to be unique; working-class people were more likely to say they would be very happy to share that similarity with a buddy. Middle-class people also appear to care much more about exercising choice than do working-class people. Middle-class people were found to like an object that they had chosen better than one they were given; the reverse was true for working-class people (Stephens, Fryberg, & Markus, 2011).
Bear in mind that it’s probably not accurate to put any society entirely in one box or another, to say that some are independent in all respects and others are interdependent in all respects. The American South, for example, is more interdependent than much of the rest of the country in that family connections and community ties tend to be more important (Vandello & Cohen, 1999). However, the South has also been described as more tolerant of character quirks and various kinds of social deviance than other regions of the country (Reed, 1990). These are clearly individualistic tendencies.
As a final qualification, researchers have found that the same person can have a relatively independent orientation in some situations (such as competing in a debate tournament) and a relatively interdependent orientation in others (such as singing in a choir; Gardner, Gabriel, & Lee, 1999; Kühnen & Oyserman, 2002).
Why should cultures, and individuals within a given culture, differ in their degree of independent versus interdependent social orientation? There are two broad factors that seem to be important. The first is economic: How is income earned? In cultures where earning a living depends on cooperation with others, such as large-scale agriculture, people tend toward interdependence. In cultures where many people can earn a living in solitary ventures, such as trading, herding, and keeping small “kitchen” gardens, people tend to be more independent. Even within a given nation, differing economic conditions may lead to substantial differences in social orientation (Uskul et al., 2008). For example, agriculture in the south of China is based primarily on rice cultivation, which depends on intense, sustained cooperation among many individuals, whereas agriculture in the north of China is generally based on wheat, which can be farmed with much less reliance on cooperation. Southern Chinese are more interdependent than northern Chinese (Talhelm et al., 2014).
A second factor that drives differences in social orientation is the degree to which complex social relations are based on associations with kin, which is typically found in societies organized along the lines of extended families, clans, and tribes. Social relations of this kind are common in East Asia and the Mediterranean basin (Henrich, 2020). Interdependence is the norm in such societies, whereas independence is characteristic of societies where there are few strong ties to people outside the nuclear family. Whereas differences in social orientation can be found even within a society if there are differences in the degree of organization on the basis of kin relation. Kin relations are central in southern Italy, which is relatively interdependent, and much more limited in northern Italy, which is relatively independent (Knight & Nisbett, 2007).
Recently, important work by Michele Gelfand and her colleagues (Gelfand, 2018; Jackson & Gelfand, 2017) has uncovered another major dimension that differentiates societies. Some societies are relatively “tight,” in that there tend to be strict rules governing behavior, and conformity to those rules is demanded. Other societies are relatively “loose,” in that rules are fewer and less strictly enforced. Germany and China are examples of tight cultures, and the United States and Australia are examples of loose cultures. There is actually substantial variation within the United States on this dimension. In general, the southern states are tightest and the northeastern and western states are loosest (Figure 1.6). Gelfand and her colleagues maintain that societies tend to become tighter when they are under threat from sources such as frequent invasion, natural disasters, and chronic food scarcity.
Earlier, our discussion focused on some aspects of gender roles that seem to be universal. But gender roles vary greatly around the world and, as already noted, can even vary within subcultures in the same country. Male dominance is one of the most variable aspects of gender roles. In hunter-gatherer societies, the predominant male role is to hunt; the predominant female role is to gather plants. Despite the sharp demarcation of gender roles, such societies are relatively gender-egalitarian. In fact, hunter-gatherer social structures are characterized by generally weak hierarchies in which leaders have little power over others. Many Western cultures are also relatively gender-egalitarian, especially northwestern European countries and most especially Scandinavian countries. For example, women constitute almost half the membership of the parliament in Sweden. The relative status of women in the rest of the world ranges from the Scandinavian extreme of equality to near-slavery conditions for women in other parts of the world.
The kinds of sexual relations that are considered normal and appropriate also vary enormously. Overwhelmingly, polygyny (one man with several wives) and serial monogamy are the most common practices among the world’s subcultures—and that may have been the case for thousands of years. The traditional American ideal of lifetime monogamy is a rarity. The United States is considered decidedly prudish by many Western Europeans, for whom extramarital affairs are commonplace. On the other hand, in certain cultures, women (and sometimes men) who are suspected of having extramarital affairs are put to death. Indeed, a woman who is raped might be expelled from the family circle or even killed. Gay and lesbian people in some societies may be put to death. Until just a generation or so ago, gays and lesbians in certain European countries were routinely sentenced to prison. In contrast, in some Native American cultures, “two-spirit” people, who are considered a distinct gender that is neither male nor female, are admired. And in yet other cultures, same-sex relations are so unremarkable that there is no term for them or for people who engage in them.
It’s a matter of some disagreement among social scientists whether the different sexual mores (norms) that characterize various cultures are merely arbitrary or whether most of them have economic or other practical roots. An example of an economic explanation concerns farmers in Nepal and Tibet who practice a form of polyandry: one wife with many husbands who are brothers. This system serves the economic goal of keeping scarce agricultural land in one family and produces just one set of related heirs per generation. A similar purpose was served by primogeniture, a common rule in Western Europe that only the firstborn male could inherit land. Otherwise, estates would be broken up into ever-smaller units, and the original power of the landowning family would dwindle away until it reached the status of ordinary peasants.
In this book, we frequently return to discussions of gender. Research has found that women and men differ in how they understand themselves as well as in their emotions and motivations. But there are many ways of constructing gender, and these diverse patterns are far from being constant across cultures.
The kinds of cultural differences described in this book alert us to the fact that many of the findings of social psychology have been obtained from a very limited range of people—namely, mostly middle-class individuals living in what Henrich and his colleagues (2010, 2020) refer to as societies that are WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic). If a given finding is known to obtain more widely, we report this, and if research shows that the finding is not obtained in some societies we report that as well. But for most findings we report we simply do not know how widely they obtain. As research continues in other communities, we will have ever more knowledge about generality. And research is continuing apace, as scientists from a larger range of backgrounds contribute to our knowledge.
Both evolution and culture affect how people see the world and behave within it. The two together are complementary ways of understanding social relations. For the first hundred thousand years or so of human existence, our ancestors were largely concerned with the necessities of surviving, reproducing, and nourishing their young in a fundamentally social environment. Such challenges may have resulted in the evolution of prewired inclinations toward certain behaviors and ways of thinking. But such inclinations are tools that can be applied flexibly or not at all. And many, if not most, of these tools are highly modifiable by culture (Sperber, 1996). Different ecologies and economies placed people in situations that varied markedly from one another and in turn produced different social systems and practices.
Evolution has given us the capacity for an astonishingly wide range of behaviors. Whether a society develops a particular prewired inclination or not may depend on how adaptive the behavior is for the ecological, economic, and cultural circumstances in which people find themselves (Sperber, 1996). Far from making us rigidly programmed automatons, evolution has equipped us with a large repertoire of tools for dealing with the enormous range of circumstances that humans confront. Our circumstances and our high intelligence determine which tools we develop and which tendencies we try to override.
LOOKING BACKPeople in some cultures are characteristically independent or individualistic, whereas people in many other societies are more likely to be interdependent or collectivist. Independence involves defining the self as having attributes that exist apart from one’s relations with other people. Those who are more interdependent define themselves in terms of their relations with others. These differences have important implications for many of the most important phenomena of social psychology. Gender roles and sexual mores are examples of behaviors that differ widely from one culture to another. Evolution and culture both make important contributions to understanding human social behavior. Evolution predisposes us to certain behaviors, but culture determines which behaviors are likely to be developed in particular situations.