No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Culture as an aggregate of individual differences
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 June 2014
Abstract
We question Smaldino's argument that culture plays the active role of maintaining and transmitting social organizations of differentiated individuals. Culture is an aggregate of individual differences in psychological variables within and between groups; it was not designed by group-level selection to maintain the structured organization of individuals. We conclude that Smaldino fails to present the crucial mechanism by which group-level traits are maintained, transmitted, and evolve.
- Type
- Open Peer Commentary
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014
References
Fincher, C. L. & Thornhill, R. (2012) Parasite-stress promotes in-group assortative sociality: The cases of strong family ties and heightened religiosity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences
352:61–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fincher, C. L., Thornhill, R., Murray, D. R. & Schaller, M. (2008) Pathogen prevalence predicts human cross-cultural variability in individualism/collectivism. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B
275:1279–85.Google ScholarPubMed
Heine, S. J., Buchtel, E. E. & Norenzayan, A. (2008) What do cross-national comparisons of personality traits tell us? The case of conscientiousness. Psychological Science (Wiley–Blackwell)
19(4):309–13. doi: 10.1111/j.1467–9280.2008.02085.x
CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kim, K. & Markman, A. B. (2006) Differences in fear of isolation as an explanation of cultural differences: Evidence from memory and reasoning. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
42(3): 350–64.Google Scholar
Nisbett, R. E. & Miyamoto, Y. (2005) The influence of culture: holistic versus analytic perception. Trends in Cognitive Science
9:467–73.Google Scholar
Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I. & Norenzayan, A. (2001) Culture and systems of thought: Holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychological Review
108:291–310.Google Scholar
Oyserman, D., Coon, H. M. & Kemmelmeier, M. (2002) Rethinking individualism and collectivism: Evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analyses. Psychological Bulletin
128(1):3–72.Google Scholar
Peng, K. P. & Nisbett, R. E. (1999) Culture, dialectics, and reasoning about contradiction. Americal Psychologist
54(9):741–54.Google Scholar
Schaller, M. (2011) The behavioural immune system and the psychology of human sociality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences
366:3418–26.Google Scholar
Weber, E. U. & Hsee, C. K. (2000) Culture and individual judgment and decision making. Psychologie Appliquee – Revue Internationale (Applied Psychology – An International Review-
49(1):32–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Target article
Culture as an aggregate of individual differences
Related commentaries (1)
The cultural evolution of emergent group-level traits