Picture of the week: Rebuilding a house among the Zafimaniry… and rethinking cognitive approaches
[PHOTO]
This photograph shows the preparations for the rebuilding of a house in 2006 in a Zafimaniry village in Madagascar. The Zafimaniry exemplify what Lévi-Strauss has called "house based societies" since it is the material house, often richly decorated, which symbolically represents the nub ...
Cartoon Faces
In Jonathan Franzen's latest book, The Discomfort Zone [1] (highly recommended), I found a nice couple of paragraphs dwelling on the psychology of cartoon faces. Franzen is reminiscing on his fascination for Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts. Here's what he writes:
Our visual cortexes are wired to ...
Why do we sometimes de-humanize our fellow humans? Some preliminary reflections
(This post has been jointly written by Harvey Whitehouse and Justin Barrett)
Whatever else it may entail, de-humanizing involves the de-activation of our capacity to empathize. There is now a substantial body of research in experimental psychology showing that humans have highly developed capacit...
Has anyone else enjoyed Love and Sex with Robots?
Has Anyone Else Enjoyed Love and Sex with Robots?
No, I guess I thought not. It's actually not too bad. But for those of you who are thinking about it, a warning before getting too invested: you have to get through the boring, mushy stuff before you get to the juicy stuff. Normal, you ...
How social status shapes race
In PNAS December 16, 2008 vol. 105 no. 50, an article by Andrew M. Penner and Aliya Saperstein: "How social status shapes race"
Here is the abstract:
"We show that racial perceptions are fluid; how individuals perceive their own race and how they are perceived by others depends in part on their ...
Experimental evidence for the Broken Window Theory
In the late 80's, New York experienced a high rate of violence and crack was everywhere. In 1985 when George L. Kelling, coauthor of the article "Broken Windows", was hired as a consultant to the New York City Transit Authority, the subway was awfull. Kelling implemented new measures. He made every ...
Into the dynamic of hot topics
"Have you heard about the subprime crisis?" A few days before I was first asked that question I did not even know what a subprime was, but just in a week or so subprimes had become a major topic for news, conversation, rumors and even jokes. 'Subprime crisis' is an example of the successful spread, ...
Is a universal Michelin Guide possible?
Michelin is preparing a Hong-Kong edition of its world renowned guide (Michelin Guide Hong Kong and Macau 2010). Michelin started as a French gastronomic guide, but went out of France 30 years ago, first in the UK and now in more than 30 countries. However, so far (apart from a recent Tokyo ...
Scots, Birds, and Names
On Strange Maps, I found the following piece of concrete poetry: A Chaffinch Map of Scotland, by Edwin Morgan.
"The chaffinch is "a most common of European finch species is noted for its powerful and typical song. Chaffinches have an innate ability to sing, but also adapt to the songs of ‘tea...
Culture and sex ratio in China
In PNAS (Prodeedings of the National Academy of Science), December 9, 2008 vol. 105 no. 49 19171-19176.
An article by Mikhail Lipatov, Shuzhuo Li, and Marcus W. Feldman : "Economics, cultural transmission, and the dynamics of the sex ratio at birth in China"
Here is the abstract:
"In rural China, ...
The Wisdom of Whores
I realize it may be a bit late, but I'm just discovering the wonderful 'The Wisdom of Whores’ by Elizabeth Pisani (and this is her blog wisdomofwhores.com). She's an epidemiologist working on AIDS and the book is full of information on the virus, the way it spreads and the way it is being dealt ...
Did Settlement Have Cognitive Consequences?
While reading Colin Renfrew’s new book Prehistory: The Making of the Human Mind (Weidenfeld, 2007 - Random House, 2008), I was struck by his observation (taken in turn from Wilson, The Domestication of the Human Species) that permanent, or even semi-permanent, settlements fundamentally changed ...
E-Curator project: 3D scan of artifacts
Hands-on teaching about material culture used to be part of the anthropology curriculum. From a cognitive anthropology point of view, this made good sense: artifacts are outputs an inputs of individual cognitive processes and directly involved in extended and distributed cognition and in cultural ...
Is Saint Nicholas a god?
Today is 6 December - for those living in Belgium and the Netherlands, Saint Nicholas will come to distribute gifts and candy to young children. Saint Nick has been the predecessor of Santa Claus in the US (as you can still see in his red costume, although the bishop's mitre is replaced by a red ...
The view from afar
An essay, "The Psychology of Transcending the Here and Now," by Nira Liberman and Yaacov Trope in last week's Science (downloadable here) reviews evidence for a remarkable kind of cognitive bias: it seems that the further away from yourself you think of something as being -- in time, in space, in ...
Cutting and breaking across languages
A nice cross-cultural (or cross-linguistic) study appeared in the last Cognition (see abstract below). Asifa Majid, James Boster, and Melissa Bowerman have studied the variations in the use of words for "cutting and breaking" actions across 28 (very) different languages. The principle of the ...
The prehistoric road to modernity
In ScienceNOW Daily News (1 December 2008) an interesting short article by Michael Balter entitled "The Long Road to Modernity" begins:
"Most experts agree that Homo sapiens arose in Africa about 200,000 years ago and had more brainpower than earlier hominid species. But it's a matter of debate ...
4 Stone Hearth 54: marriage and Japanese toys
This is the 54th issue of the Four Stone Hearth Anthropology Blog Carnival. The next issue will be hosted by The Greenbelt (thegreenbelt.blogspot.com).
Anthro-bloggers this fortnight have written countless posts celebrating the 100th birthday of Claude Lévi-Strauss (here [1] is a review at ...
Heated debate on cognition and religion in the Guardian
If you like it hot, there has just been a heated exchange at the Guardian webpage, started by Andrew Brown reporting in his blog on a talk by Justin Barrett (whom we are proud to have as a member of this Institute) on the evolved cognitive basis of religion and agreeing with him that "the idea of ...
Culture and Perception
While taking a break, we are happy to republish some of our favorite 'oldies but goodies'. This one was first put online in December of last year (2008). It was the first installment of a series of posts on Richard Nisbett's theory of culture and perception. Enjoy!
In a lively account published ...