The Semantic Drift of Quotations in Blogspace: A Case Study in Short‐Term Cultural Evolution

We present an empirical case study that connects psycholinguistics with the field of cultural evolution, in order to test for the existence of cultural attractors in the evolution of quotations. Such attractors have been proposed as a useful concept for understanding cultural evolution in relation with individual cognition, but their existence has been hard to test. We focus on the transformation of quotations when they are copied from blog to blog or media website: by coding words with a number of well‐studied lexical features, we show that the way words are substituted in quotations is consistent (a) with the hypothesis of cultural attractors and (b) with known effects of the word features. In particular, words known to be harder to recall in lists have a higher tendency to be substituted, and words easier to recall are produced instead. Our results support the hypothesis that cultural attractors can result from the combination of individual cognitive biases in the interpretation and reproduction of representations.     

When Extremists Win: Cultural Transmission Via Iterated Learning When Populations Are Heterogeneous

How does the process of information transmission affect the cultural or linguistic products that emerge? This question is often studied experimentally and computationally via iterated learning, a procedure in which participants learn from previous participants in a chain. Iterated learning is a powerful tool because, when all participants share the same priors, the stationary distributions of the iterated learning chains reveal those priors. In many situations, however, it is unreasonable to assume that all participants share the same prior beliefs. We present four simulation studies and one experiment demonstrating that when the population of learners is heterogeneous, the behavior of an iterated learning chain can be unpredictable and is often systematically distorted by the learners with the most extreme biases. This results in group‐level outcomes that reflect neither the behavior of any individuals within the population nor the overall population average. We discuss implications for the use of iterated learning as a methodological tool as well as for the processes that might have shaped cultural and linguistic evolution in the real world.     

Cultural Studies Methodologies and Narrative Family Therapy: Therapeutic Conversations About Pop Culture

Therapists recognize that popular media culture is an influential force that shapes identities and relationships in contemporary society. Indeed, people have serious relationships with the commodities and practices that emerge from pop culture. However, they often lack the conceptual and conversational resources to engage meaningfully with clients about pop culture's influence in their lives. Cultural studies is introduced as an interdisciplinary approach that provides frameworks for both theory and practice that position therapists and clients to critically examine the role of pop culture in their lives. Cultural studies and narrative therapy are discussed as praxis allies that share a populist political intention and counter‐hegemonic discursive practices. The integration of cultural studies methodologies into narrative therapy practice with a parent and her teenage daughter is illustrated through a case vignette.     

Exploratory Evaluation and Initial Adaptation of a Parent Training Program for Hispanic Families of Children with Autism

The present paper takes a translational approach in applying the themes of the current special section to prevention and intervention science in Latino families. The paper reviews the current literature on cultural processes in prevention and intervention research with Latino families. Overall, many prevention and intervention programs have either been developed specifically for Latino families or have been modified for Latino families with great attention paid to the socio‐cultural needs of these families. Nevertheless, few studies have tested the role of cultural values or acculturation processes on outcomes. We make recommendations based on findings within basic science and in particular this special section on the incorporation of these values and processes into prevention and intervention science with Latino families.     

Cultural variation in implicit independence: An extension of Kitayama et al. ()

Previous research shows that European Americans are consistently more independent (or less interdependent) than Japanese when implicit indices are used to assess independence (vs. interdependence). The present work extended this evidence by including a novel implicit association test (IAT), as an index of implicit attitude towards independence and interdependence. Consistent with the previous findings, as compared to Japanese, Americans were significantly higher in multiple indices of implicit independence (vs. interdependence) including personal (vs. social) self‐definition, experience of disengaging (vs. engaging) emotions and personal (vs. social) form of happiness. Furthermore, as compared to Japanese, Americans had a significantly more positive implicit attitude towards independence assessed with the IAT. As also observed in the previous research, explicit measures showed inconsistent cross‐cultural patterns. Lastly, we observed little statistical within‐culture coherence among the implicit measures of independence (vs. interdependence), consistent with a view that the implicit indices capture alternative ways for individuals to achieve the cultural mandate of independence or interdependence.     

A small-world network model of facial emotion recognition

Various models have been proposed to increase understanding of the cognitive basis of facial emotions. Despite those efforts, interactions between facial emotions have received minimal attention. If collective behaviours relating to each facial emotion in the comprehensive cognitive system could be assumed, specific facial emotion relationship patterns might emerge. In this study, we demonstrate that the frameworks of complex networks can effectively capture those patterns. We generate 81 facial emotion images (6 prototypes and 75 morphs) and then ask participants to rate degrees of similarity in 3240 facial emotion pairs in a paired comparison task. A facial emotion network constructed on the basis of similarity clearly forms a small-world network, which features an extremely short average network distance and close connectivity. Further, even if two facial emotions have opposing valences, they are connected within only two steps. In addition, we show that intermediary morphs are crucial for maintaining full network integration, whereas prototypes are not at all important. These results suggest the existence of collective behaviours in the cognitive systems of facial emotions and also describe why people can efficiently recognize facial emotions in terms of information transmission and propagation. For comparison, we construct three simulated networks—one based on the categorical model, one based on the dimensional model, and one random network. The results reveal that small-world connectivity in facial emotion networks is apparently different from those networks, suggesting that a small-world network is the most suitable model for capturing the cognitive basis of facial emotions.     

The changing psychology of culture in German‐speaking countries: A Google Ngram study

This article provides evidence for the long‐term affiliation between ecological and cultural changes in German‐speaking countries, based on the assumptions derived from social change and human development theory. Based on this theory, the increase in urbanisation, as a measure of ecological change, is associated with significant cultural changes of psychology. Whereas urbanisation is linked to greater individualistic values and materialistic attitudes, rural environments are strongly associated with collectivistic values like allegiance, prevalence of religion, and feelings of belonging and benevolence. Due to an increase in the German urbanisation rate over time, our study investigates whether Germany and the German‐speaking countries around show the presumed changes in psychology. By using Google Books Ngram Viewer, we find that word frequencies, signifying individualistic (collectivistic) values, are positively (negatively) related to the urbanisation rate of Germany. Our results indicate that predictions about implications of an urbanising population for the psychology of culture hold true, supporting international universality of the social change and human development theory. Furthermore, we provide evidence for a predicted reversal for the time during and after World War II, reflecting Nazi propaganda and influence.     

Cross‐validation of cultural tightness and looseness measures

The goal of the present study was to cross‐validate two measures of cultural tightness and looseness, CTL: one used in a comparison within the United States, and the other used in a cross‐country comparison. The former was based mainly on aggregation of state laws on controversial issues and religiosity and the latter on assessment of homogeneity in moral values among representative samples across countries. To cross‐validate these two measures, both were recomputed at the US divisional level. Despite the differences in their methods of computation, the two measures of CTL correlated highly with each other, r = .92, and with theoretical variables of interest. Further, when the two measures of CTL were used simultaneously to predict theoretical variables of interest, neither remained significant suggesting that they were substitutable with each other. Convergence of results with measures computed via maximally different methods increases the confidence in the validity of these two CTL measures.     

Multiple processes associated with self-esteem as a function of attribute types

Previous studies (e.g., [Pelham, B. W. (1995). Self-investment and self-esteem: evidence for a Jamesian model of self-worth. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 1141–1150]) showed that self-esteem is positively associated with (1) perceived alignment of self-views with internal standards (Differential Importance: DI) and (2) perceived alignment of self-views with external-social standards (Normative Importance: NI). The present research shows that these processes of self-esteem differ as a function of the types of self-attributes that constitute self-esteem. Specifically, for attributes of high cultural relevance (i.e., indigenous attributes), self-esteem is positively related to DI but not NI; for attributes of lower cultural relevance, self-esteem is positively related to NI but not DI. Self-esteem is positively related to DI for both agentic and communal indigenous attributes, whereas it is also positively related to NI for communal indigenous attributes.     

朱谦之与"南方文化运动"

20世纪30年代,抗日救亡成为时代的主题,朱谦之为“文化救国”、“科学救国”计,大力倡导“南方文化运动”。朱先生的理由在于南方文化有自己的优越性:“科学的文化”、“产业的文化”、“革命的文化”。朱先生还用“文化的地理分布理论”对其进行了论证。“南方文化运动”实质上是一场关于文化的现代化运动,它除了对当时的抗日救亡运动有重要贡献外,对促进近代以来南方文化的觉醒,对中国文化现代化的探讨,也有鲜明的启示作用。