Culture and Decision/Reasoning

1. Culture and Decision/Reasoning

2. What is culture for? • Culture as software • How do humans survive in complex information landscapes? • We are not programmed by evolution for our niche • Culture • We have relatively general-purpose computational abilities • We have a long childhood training period • Tomasello argues that ability for empathy is critical

3. Influences of culture • Culture creates our cognitive makeup. • How? • Provides us with a language • Provides us with important background knowledge (theories) • Provides us with habitual ways of thinking about the world • Provides us with tools • Provides social and cognitive structures • Provides us with ways of solving problems

4. Effects of language • We transmit culture through language • Does language also affect the way we think? • The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis • Early versions were too strong • Ongoing research on this topic • Thinking for Speaking (Slobin)

5. Culture and Knowledge • Cultural education provides information • Mental models of how the world works • Recall cultural differences in category-based induction • Micronesian navigation (Hutchins) • Myths, legends, and rituals • How to deal with situations for which each individual has only limited experience • Life-cycle events • Problem solving within a culture

6. Culture and tools • Culture gets ever more complex • Each generation need not start fresh • Don’t need to re-invent the wheel • Tools can be adapted for the tasks to be solved • Tools can be adapted for human cognition • Tools can be adapted for culture

7. Culture and social structures • Culture tells us how to distribute cognition • Individuals take roles within society • We know where to go for types of services • Individuals take on cognitive roles • Cultural knowledge is preserved and advanced through individuals • Decision making and preference can be provided in part through these roles