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; Northern China <-> Southern China; Milieu <-> Culture
(1) Perspective: Joseph Henrich, Rice, Psychology, and Innovation. Science, 344: 593-594 (May 9, 2014).
www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6184/593.summary
My comment:
(a) Perspective presents both the context (or background) and the research article in a way a layperson can understand.
(b) The summary, which is free, for the Perspective, is in fact paragraph 1 of the Perspective.
(c) Read Perspective; there is no need to read the article itself (listed below as (2)).
(2) Talhelm T et al, Large-Scale Psychological Differences Within China Explained by Rice Versus Wheat Agriculture. Science, 344: 603-608 (May 9, 2014).
www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6184/603.abstract
`````````````````````````I will delete the following in a week
```````````````````Science Perspective (starting with paragraph 2)
Decades of experimental research show that, compared to most populations in the world, people from societies that are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) (4) are psychologically unusual, being both highly individualistic and analytically minded. High levels of individualism mean that people see themselves as independent from others and as characterized by a set of largely positive attributes. They willingly invest in new relationships even outside their kin, tribal, or religious groups. By contrast, in most other societies, people are enmeshed in dense, enduring networks of kith and kin on which they depend for cooperation, security, and personal identity. In such collectivistic societies, property is often corporately owned by kinship units such as clans; inherited relationships are enduring and people invest heavily in them, often at the expense of outsiders, strangers, or abstract principles (4).
Psychologically, growing up in an individualistic social world biases one toward the use of analytical reasoning, whereas exposure to more collectivistic environments favors holistic approaches. Thinking analytically means breaking things down into their constituent parts and assigning properties to those parts. Similarities are judged according to rule-based categories, and current trends are expected to continue. Holistic thinking, by contrast, focuses on relationships between objects or people anchored in their concrete contexts. Similarity is judged overall, not on the basis of logical rules. Trends are expected to be cyclical.
Various lines of evidence suggest that greater individualism and more analytical thinking are linked to innovation, novelty, and creativity (5). But why would northern Europe have had greater individualism and more analytical thinking in the first place? China, for example, was technologically advanced, institutionally complex, and relatively educated by the end of the first millennium. Why would Europe have been more individualist and analytically oriented than China?
Talhelm et al. hypothesized that different combinations of environments and technologies influence the cultural evolution of different forms of social organization. Under some techno-environmental conditions, only intensely cooperative social groups can endure, prosper, and spread. Although potentially applicable to many situations, including territorial defense and whale hunting, Talhelm et al. focus on the different labor requirements of paddy rice and wheat cultivation. By demanding intense cooperation, paddy rice cultivation fosters and reinforces the social norms that govern patrilineal clans. Growing up in strong clans creates a particular kind of collectivistic psychology. In contrast, wheat cultivation permits independent nuclear households and fosters more individualistic psychologies.
To test these ideas, Talhelm et al. used standard psychological tools (see the figure) to measure analytical thinking and individualism among university students sampled from Chinese provinces that vary in wheat versus rice cultivation. Focusing on China removes many of the confounding variables such as religion, heritage, and government that would bedevil any direct comparison between Europe and East Asia. The prediction is straightforward: Han Chinese from provinces cultivating relatively more wheat should tend to be more individualistic and analytically oriented.
Sure enough, participants from provinces more dependent on paddy rice cultivation were less analytically minded. The effects were big: The average number of analytical matches increased by about 56% in going from all-rice to no-rice cultivation. The results hold both nationwide and for the counties in the central provinces along the rice-wheat (north-south) border, where other differences are minimized.
Participants from rice-growing provinces were also less individualistic, drawing themselves roughly the same size as their friends, whereas those from wheat provinces drew themselves 1.5 mm larger. [This moves them only part of the way toward WEIRD people: Americans draw themselves 6 mm bigger than they draw others, and Europeans draw themselves 3.5 mm bigger (6).] People from rice provinces were also more likely to reward their friends and less likely to punish them, showing the in-group favoritism characteristic of collectivistic populations.
So, patterns of crop cultivation appear linked to psychological differences, but can these patterns really explain differences in innovation? Talhelm et al. provide some evidence for this by showing that less dependence on rice is associated with more successful patents for new inventions. This doesn't nail it, but is consistent with the broader idea and will no doubt drive much future inquiry. For example, these insights may help explain why the embers of an 11th century industrial revolution in China were smothered as northern invasions and climate change drove people into the southern rice paddy regions, where clans had an ecological edge, and by the emergence of state-level political and legal institutions that reinforced the power of clans (7).
Cultural evolution arises from a rich interplay of ecology, social learning, institutions, and psychology. Environmental factors favor some types of family structures or forms of social organization over others. Honed and refined over generations, these institutions create the conditions to which children adapt developmentally, shaping their psychologies and brains. Long after their ecological causes have become irrelevant, these cultural psychologies and institutions continue to influence rates of innovation, the formation of new institutions, and the success of immigrants in new lands. As such, wheat farming may contribute to explaining the origins of WEIRD psychology and the industrial revolution.
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发表于 5-9-2014 17:45:12
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