1
Interpersonal and intercultural
communication
Why does interpersonal and intercultural communication matter?
• “Racism and xenophobia have increased during the outbreak of the coronavirus” (Elias et al.,
2020, p.1)
• “Racism may be defined as thoughts, attitudes and practices that create hierarchies of
superiority and inferiority based on characteristics such as “race”, ethnicity, and nation”
(Elias et al., 2020, p.6)
• “The people most negatively impacted by COVID-19 are those who already face numerous
social, economic and health vulnerabilities, and who are now encountering intensified
exclusion and marginalization." (Elias et al., 2020, p.2)
Why is racism increasing?
1. Fear: “Fear affects how people think, feel and react towards perceived out-groups.
Sometimes, fear associated with the spread of infectious disease can trigger attitudes and
behaviours including prejudice, racial intolerance and xenophobia” (Elias et al., 2020, p.3-4)
2. COVID-19 amplified what was already there
• Inequalities
• Increasing nationalism
All interactions are guided and influenced by ...
• your personal/individual background
• your education • nature
• your cultural heritage • Nurture This defines who we are
• your friends • Culture
• society
• societal turbulences
• ...
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION
1 Nature – Nurture: An introduction to evolutionary psychology
1.1 Key figures in evolutionary psychology
1.1.1 Richard Dawkins
“To fully understand human behavior we need social and evolutionary sciences.”
Proximate and Ultimate explanations for (human) behavior (Mayr 1961 ; Tinbergen, 1976)
• Proximate (direct - causal) level
• How it operates
• Direct – causal effects of behavior in society
• E.g. Obesities
• How? Due to sugar-rich diet
• Ultimate (evolutionary - historical) level
• Why it operates
• Evolutionary explanations
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• E.g. Obesities
• Why? Sugar preference is an evolved adaptation; increased chances of
survival and reproduction in environments were sugar was scarce
Evolutionary psychology looks at how & why of such questions
1.1.2 Leda Cosmides & John Tooby https://www.cep.ucsb.edu/primer.html
Tooby & Cosmides: A primer 5 principles
Principle 1: The brain is a physical system. It functions as a computer. Its circuits are designed to
generate behavior that is appropriate to your environmental circumstances.
• All your thoughts, dreams, hopes etc. are produced by chemical reactions in your head
• What is the brain?
o The brain is comprised of cells: mainly NEURONS
• The circuits of the brain are designed to generate motion -- behavior -- in response to
information from the environment
Principle 2: Our neural circuits were designed by natural selection to solve problems that our
ancestors faced during our species' evolutionary history.
• What kind of problems did our ancestors face?
• Finding food
• Finding shelter
• Facing/dodging predators
• Facing/dodging other tribes, individuals, ...
• But what is natural selection?
• There is a population of individuals that makes copies of themselves
• The copying process is not perfect
• The copying ‘errors’ lead to differences in the ability of offspring to survive and
reproduce
• Those with ‘errors’ that are best adapted to the environment will thrive
• E.g., Darwin’s finches
• Charles Darwin: the founding father of natural selection
• 3 main principles
1. Variation: Individuals within a population differ
2. Heredity: The differences are (partly) passed from one generation to another
3. Selection: Those with successful differences will thrive and survive
• Selection: Those with successful differences will thrive and survive
• Natural Selection
• Survival
• Relates to problems/success of survival May reinforce or work against each
• Social Selection other.
• Survival dependent on others E.g.; while a trait may be
• Relates to problems/success of group living beneficial in attracting mates
(sexual selection), this trait
• Sexual Selection might be a liability to surviving
(natural selection)
, 3
• Reproduction
• Relates to problems/success of reproduction
Example 1: The peacock’s tail
• The peacock's tail has advantages in the mating game
• Peahens choose their mates by the size and shape of his tail.
• The largest tail would indicate a healthy bird and a better chance for healthy offspring.
• But bigger is only better up to a point.
• If peacock trains become too big or too colorful over time, they may no longer confer a selective
advantage.
• Exaggerated trains might attract a new kind of predator or become too heavy to carry around.
Example 2: The deer’s antlers
• The deer’s antlers has advantages in the mating game
• The doe prefers deer with bigger antlers
• But bigger is only better up to a point.
• It's not unusual for male deer and their antlers to get stuck in trees or fences -- or to each other in a
fight -- and die.
• Selection: Those with successful differences will thrive and survive
• Selections eliminates what doesn’t work and keeps what is working in a certain
environment
• Blind process
• !!!: Eliminates the bad, but does not create “the optimal”
• Always a step behind: passes on to the next generation what is working for the
current generation
• Charles Darwin: the founding father of natural selection
3 main principles:
1. Variation: pink & green
2. Heredity: pink will be pink
3. Selection: birds love green, hate pink
But remember:
Selection is blind
Does not design the super-bug
Only keeps what is working in a certain
environment
Principle 3: Consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg; most of what goes on in your mind is
hidden from you. As a result, your conscious experience can mislead you into thinking that our
circuitry is simpler that it really is. Most problems that you experience as easy to solve are very
difficult to solve -- they require very complicated neural circuitry
• You are not, and cannot become, consciously aware of most of your brain's ongoing
activities.
• The only things you become aware of are a few high level conclusions passed on by
thousands and thousands of specialized mechanisms: some that are gathering sensory
information from the world, others that are analyzing and evaluating that information,
checking for inconsistencies, filling in the blanks, figuring out what it all means.
• E.g.; Vision. You have circuits specialized for ...
• analyzing the shape of objects;
• detecting the presence of motion;
• detecting the direction of motion;
• judging distance;
• analyzing color;
• identifying an object as human;
• recognizing that the face you see is Mom's face, rather than someone else's.
Principle 4: Different neural circuits are specialized for solving different adaptive problems.
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• Adaptative problems E.g adaptive function: The function of the moth’s color of wings is to
disguise his bearer. Moths that lack this disguise device are less likely
o Selection leads to adaptations to survive and have offspring
o Adaptations have functions
o Adaptive Function = effect that caused the trait to evolve
o The effect that enhanced the survival/reproductive success of the trait’s bearers over
others lacking the trait
• Other examples of adaptive problems:
o Sugar intake
The function of loving sugar and fat is to secure calorie intake of the bearer
Ancestors that did not like sugar and fat lost a lot of opportunities to get
calories and were less likely to survive and have offspring
!!! Current societies have too much sugars and fats available
o Love
The function of loving other people is to secure offspring
Ancestors that did not like any single human being and lived solo are not our
great-great-great-great-…-grandparents
• Evolutionary Psychology is the branch of the Adaptationist Program whose goal is to discover
and describe the adaptations that make up the human mind.
• Not everything is an adaptation, natural selection results in:
o Adaptations
Solve adaptive problems
o By-products
We can solve problems today that are not adaptive problems
Math, driving cars, etc.
o Noise
Features that do not solve problems
Random effects
E.g., White color of our bones
• Adaptations are scarce (G.C. Williams, 1966)
o You need lots of evidence before you can call a trait an adaptation!
o Some necessary conditions
Trait must have a complex design…
…to solve a very specific problem that reoccurred in the evolutionary past…
… and the trait cannot be a by-product of an adaptation
• 2 features of adaptive problems
1. Recurred over the course of a species’ evolutionary history
2. Problems whose solution affected the probability of survival / reproduction
• E.g.,
• Selecting a habitat
• Finding food
• Avoiding predators/disease-causing agents
• Form alliances/friendships
• Finding/guarding a mate
• ...
1.1.2.1 Forming alliances/friendships: Can race be erased?
• Throughout our history we’ve always categorized the social world into us versus them
• When people are divided into two social groups, we are predisposed for ingroup
favoritism.
• People discriminate against outgroups even when they are assigned to groups
temporarily and anonymously by an experimenter.
