01:830:101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Gender Role, Sexual Maturity, Cultural Neuroscience
6 Jun 2018
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Module 13: Culture, Gender, and Other Environmental Influences
Gene and scene
▪ Identical twins
▪ Same genes + seek and create similar experiences that express their shared genes
▪ Evocative interactions could explain why identical twins raised in different families recall
paet’s ath ~ the sae
▪ Not so of fraternal twins even raised in same family!
▪ Also, we select environments well suited to our nature
▪ Talkative children ➔ salespeople
▪ Shy kids➔ lab techs
EXPERIENCE AND BRAIN DEVELOPMENT (experiment)
• In 14 of 16 repetitions of this basic experiment, rats in the enriched environment developed
sigifiatl oe eeal ote elatie to the est of the ai’s tissue tha did those i the
impoverished environment.
• Results influenced improvements in environments for animals and for children in institutions.
Experience and Brain Development
▪ Nature and nurture interact to shape synapses.
▪ “hadled aies deelop faste ad gai eight
▪ Youngsters can easily master skills
▪ To make well-used brain pathways work ette, uused oetios ae pued aa.
▪ This means that if certain abilities are not used, they will fade.
▪ Brain development does not end with childhood.
▪ Plasticity allows neural tissue to change and reorganize in response to new experience.
Blame or Credit?
▪ Parents
▪ Freudian psychiatry, psychology, and society blame a host of negative child behaviors on
ad otheig
▪ shizopheegei othe
▪ The largest parenting effects occur at the extremes
▪ In personality measures, shared environmental influences from prenatal development
onward account for less than 10 percent of child differences
▪ 2 children in the same family are as different (except from their genes) as pairs
of children selected randomly from the popn
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Peer influence
▪ Preschoolers will eat an un-liked food if put at a table with peers eating it
▪ Children adapt accent of peers, not parents
▪ Teens who smoke typical model friends who smoke
▪ Put 2 teens together and their brains become hypersensitive to reward
▪ Explains why they take risks when with friends
Blame or Credit?
▪ The degree of peer influence is hard to trace.
▪ Apparent conformity could be a selection effect.
▪ Interaction with peers can teach new social skills.
▪ Gardner (1998) concluded parents and peers are complementary.
Parents Vs Peers
Cultural Influences
▪ Nature of culture
▪ Culture refers to the patterns of ideas, attitudes, values, lifestyle habits, and traditions
shared by a group of people and passed on to future generations.
▪ Culture is not just an influence on our nature, but it is also part of our nature. Humans
form not only relationships, but culture.
▪ Human culture—beyond that of animals (chimps invent customs) but humans enjoy
preservation of culture via mastery of language—transmission of learned behaviors that
give us an edge
▪ Variation across cultures
▪ Each culture has norms--standards for acceptable, expected behavior beneath which is
shared similarity
Parents have more influence
on:
•Education and career path
•Cooperation
•Self-discipline
•Responsibility
•Charitableness
•Religion
•Interaction style with authority
figures
Peers have more influence on:
•Learning cooperation skills
•Learning the path to popularity
•Choice of music and other
recreation
•Choice of clothing and other
cultural choices
•Good and bad habits
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▪ Culture transmits customs & beliefs that enable us to communicate, exchange $ for
things, play, eat, drive with rules and generally behave
▪ Culture shock: feeling lost about what behaviors are appropriate
▪ Punctuality? Warmth? Pace of life?
Examples of Cultural Variation Over Time
▪ Cultural variation can occur even within one culture
▪ Language changes in vocabulary and pronunciation
▪ Pace of life quickens
▪ Gender equality increases
▪ People sleep less, socialize in person less, stare at screens more
▪ People marry more for love, but then expect more romance
▪ Work more, spend fewer hours with friends/family/sleep less
▪ Depression and divorce
▪ These cultural changes occur too fast to be rooted in genetic change.
Cultural Influences on Development
▪ Culture and the self: Individualism and collectivism
▪ Individualist cultures value independence. They promote personal ideals, strengths, and
goals, pursued in competition with others, leading to individual achievement and finding
a unique identity.
▪ North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand
▪ More divorce, depression, homicide & stress related ilnesses
▪ Collectivist cultures value interdependence. They promote group and societal goals and
duties, and blending in with group identity, with achievement attributed to mutual
support.
▪ Asia Africa
▪ Group identifications– In China--Parents over 60 can sue adult children
fro not providing them care!
Cultural neuroscience
▪ Copaiso of olletiists’ ad idiidualists’ ai atiit hile ieig othes i distess
» Cheon et al, 2011
▪ Collectivists experienced greater emotional pain as indicated by activation of brain
regions than individualists
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