Culture and the Individual

1. Culture and the Individual Kimberly Porter Martin

2. Personality -characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of genetics, socialization, enculturation and life experience.

3. The Big Five • The Five Factor Model (FFM) • Conscientiousness • Persistence and reliability • Goal directedness • Agreeableness • Compassion, warmth • Gentle and sensitive • Openness to Experience • Curiosity and imagination • Extraversion • Positive attitude • Seeks stimulating social interaction • Neuroticism • Emotional instability • Anxiety and hostility http://ipip.ori.org/new2413Items.htm

4. Bronfenbrenner Ecological Systems Theory

5. Cole • Culture as mediator • Stages emerge within complex social interactions • Culture provides “tools of intellectual adaptation”

6. Biology and Adolescence • Hormonal changes, secondary sex characteristics • Brain changes • Emotional self-regulation • Delayed gratification and inhibition • Planning and goal setting • Remodeling of dopamine system • Rewards and pleasure • Sex, drugs, food and possibly aggression • Concentration • Risk taking and novelty seeking

7. Socialization Patterns • Narrow socialization – specific expectations that limit and control behaviors Vs. • Broad socialization – few restrictions, allow self expression and expect autonomy • For teenagers, the latter means more exploration and/or risky behaviors.

8. What Influences Maturation? • Biological maturation • Environmental contexts? • Socioeconomic status • Birth order • Parental ethnotheories • Cultural expectations

9. Menarche as Test Case Sensitivity to pre-pubertal childhood context is genetically programmed. Menarche as a measure of puberty Two factors: Socioeconomic Stress Birth Order and Number of Siblings Conflicting results: East and West Germany – no younger siblings = earlier menarche (Orangutang example of epigenetics-sensitive response to environmental circumstances American Female athletes – no younger siblings = later menarche Why might this be? Lurking Variable = athletics

10. Variables Associated with Early Menarche • Low birth weight • Not breast-fed • Were only children • Childhood obesity and/or lacked exercise in childhood. • Were exposed to smoking • Absence of father from the home from early childhood (lack of contact in home with adult men?) • Analogy with marriage and incest avoidance • High-conflict family relationships

11. Transition Rites • Three aspects to transition rites: • Separation, liminality, reentry • Cultural rituals are environmental signals that guide timing and content of role changes • Child to adult • Single to wife or husband • Wife or Husband to Widow or Widower

12. Adulthood • Gender role rules • Marriage patterns • Polygamy • Polygyny • Monogamy • Polyandrt • Reproductive patterns • Mate choice • Arranged marriages • Personal choice marriages • Family size

13. Parenting Patterns Parenting patterns • Differential parental investment in children • Sibling rivalry • Parent-offspring conflict • Tension between parents and children attempting to get more parental investment than siblings.

14. Kagitcibasi’s Three Family Styles Independent family • Afluent, educated, middle class • Nuclear family units • Smaller families • Independence, self-sufficiency, uniqueness training Interdependent family • Agrarian, • Children help w/ subsistence, care for aging parents • Intergenerational closeness, extended families • Obedience training Psychological interdepence family • Emotional interdependence between family members • Socialized for family loyalties • Childrearing for a combination of autonomy within the context of family loyalty • Compromise between the other styles • Obedience training

15. Old Age • Less ability of elderly to adapt to cultural change (cognition, memory) • “grandmother hypothesis” • Help with raising children’s children (maternal grandmothers especially) • Paternal grandmothers in context of daughter-in-law as “servant” in husband’s parents’ househole • Stable, oral tradition societies (Nestor Effect) lead to respect for the elderly as “cultural libraries”