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Culture and Nature
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Study Notes for Chapter 2- culture and nature- SLK 220 (psychology, semester 2, second year)
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SLK 220 – Chapter2 Culture & Nature
Nature, nurture & Social behaviour
Explaining the psyche
The psyche is a broad term for mind, including emotions, desires, perceptions and
indeed all psychological processes.
To understand something, you must know what it was designed to do
To understand and explain how it works, it is useful to know what the psyche or
human mind is designed for – we turn to nature and culture as those are what made
the psyche what it is
If the psyche was designed to do something in particular, then nature and culture
designed it for that purpose
If we can learn what the purpose is, then we can understand people much better
The answer to why people are they way they are, why the human mind is set up as it
is and why people thin, want, feel and act in certain ways lies in nature and culture
Nature explanations – people are born a certain way: genes, hormones, brain
structure and other processes dictate how they will choose and act
Cultural explanations- focus on what people learn from their parents, society and
from own experiences
In recent years, researchers have stressed that both nature and culture have real
influences, but the most common resolution favours nature as more important, as
nature is indispensable
Nature vs culture is not a fair fight because without nature you have noting – Frans
de Waal
→ Argument should be whether a particular behaviour is the direct result of
nature or comes from a combination of nature and culture
→ Your body must perceive what is happening, your brain has to understand
events, and your body has to carry out your decision – brain and body are
created by nature
→ Nature comes first, culture builds on what nature provides
Nature and culture have shaped each other
Nature has prepared humans specifically for culture – the characteristics that set
humans apart from other animals including language, a flexible self that can hold
multiple roles, and an advanced ability to understand each other’s mental states
These characteristics are mainly there to enable people to create and sustain culture
, SLK 220 – Chapter
2 Culture & Nature
This interaction between nature and culture is the key to understanding how people
think, act and feel
Nature Defined
Nature – the physical world around us, including its laws and processes
→ Includes the entire world that would be there even if no humans existed
→ Includes trees, grass, insects, animals, gravity, the weather, hunger, thirst,
birth, death, atoms, molecules and all the laws of physics and chemistry
Those who explain human behaviour using nature invoke the sorts of processes that
natural sciences have shown
The advocates of nature in psychology turn to evolutionary theory to understand
behaviour patterns
Evolution, and doing what’s natural
The theory of evolution – proposed by Charles Darwin (British biologist) in the 1800s,
focuses on how change occurs in nature
Humans may be different from all other animals, but we are animals nonetheless –
we have many of the same wants, needs and problems that most other animals have
(food and water on a regular basis, preferably a couple of times every day; sleep;
shelter and warmth; air; suffer illnesses and injuries and must find ways to recover
from them). Our interactions with others are sometimes characterised by sexual
desire, competition, aggressive impulses, family ties or friendly companionship.
Important feature of most living things (humans and animals), is the drive to prolong
life
→ Two ways to do this
1. To go on living - Death has always been a disturbing threat, and beliefs
that death is not the end but merely a transition into a different kind of
life, whether as a ghost, a spirit in heaven, or a reincarnated person,
have been found all over the earth since prehistoric times
2. Reproduction – life makes new life (you could say that nature was
unable to create an immortal being and therefore settled on
reproduction as the only possible strategy to enable any form of life to
continue into the future)
Change is another common trait of living things
Each living thing changes as it grows older, but more important forms of change
occur from one generation to the next: children are different from their parents
, SLK 220 – Chapter
2 Culture & Nature
Nature cannot plan ahead and design a certain kind of change – nature produces
changes that are essentially random
→ That is the complicated processes that mix the genes of two parents to
produce a unique set of genes in the baby sometimes produce novel
outcomes in the form of new traits
→ Powerful forces react to these random changes
→ Result = some random changes will disappear, whereas others will endure
→ The process of natural selection decides which traits will disappear and which
will continue
Natural selection has 2 criteria: survival and reproduction
A trait that improves survival or reproduction will tend to last for many generations
and become more common
A trait that reduces one’s chances for survival or reproduction will probably not
become common
These are crucial themes because the biological success of any trait is measured in
those terms
An unusual trait that makes someone happier or gives the person higher self-esteem
or fosters a weird sense of humour will not necessarily be passed on to future
generations, unless those changes can translate into better survival or better
reproduction
Survival means living longer
Darwin’s contemporary, Herbert Spencer, created the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’
to describe natural selection – animals compete against one another to survive, as in
who can get the best food or who can best escape being eaten by larger animals
Survival depends in part on the circumstances in your environment
Biologists have changed their emphasis from survival to reproduction as the most
important factor in natural selection
Survival is mainly important to achieve reproduction
Reproduction means producing babies that survive long enough to reproduce
Reproductive success consists of creating many offspring who will in turn create
many offspring
Much of recent work in evolutionary theory has focused on gender differences
Example, evolution would likely select men to want more sex partners than women
want. A woman can only have about one baby a year no matter how many men she
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