Psychology

Volume II of the Advances in Culture and Psychology showcases contributions from internationally renowned culture scholars who span the discipline of culture and psychology and represent diversity in the theory and study of culture within psychology. The volume includes cutting edge contributions on culture and neuroscience, culture and intelligence, culture and human development, culture and personality, culture and language, and culture change.

Volume III of the Advances in Culture and Psychology series showcases a number of cutting edge research programs in culture and psychology. The volume includes chapters on The Role of Language and Culture in Universality and Diversity of Human Concepts (Mutsumi Imai and Takahiko Masuda); Development—The Cultural Solution to Universal Developmental Tasks (Heidi Keller and Joscha Kärtner); From Chinese to Cross-cultural Personality Inventory: A Combined Emic-Etic Approach to the Study of Personality in Culture (Fanny Cheung, Shu Fai Cheung and Weiqiao Fan); Cultural Unity and Diversity in Compensatory Control Processes (Aaron Kay and Daniel Sullivan); Creating Cultures between Arctics and Deserts (Evert Van de Vliert); and Macro Cultural Psychology: Its Development, Concerns, Politics, and Future Direction (Carl Ratner).

Magnetic resonance imaging methods, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), have taken a commanding position in brain studies because they allow scientists to follow brain activities in the living human. The ability to measure cerebral anatomy, neuronal firing, and brain metabolism has extended and reinvigorated hopes of understanding the role that brain activity plays in human life. Neuroscientists, measuring brain energies and work by imaging methods, have consciously or unconsciously been incorporating philosophical views into the planning and interpretations of these experiments. This book assumes that behavior is a property only of the person; that the person, not the brain, remembers, intends, or decides. The brain’s role is to help the person perform these actions just as the muscle helps him to lift heavy objects and the liver maintains chemical homeostasis. Origins of the brain’s role in neuroscience are explored in a selective history of relevant philosophies and by examples of successful interdisciplinary experiments. Neuroimaging experiments that relate brain activities to observables, including human behavior, are herein valued above those that conduct futile searches for the neuronal basis of mental processes. In accord with the emphasis on observable behavior, neuroimaging results responsible for two different forms of conscious behavior have been identified and the means of studying them described.

Decision making cuts across most areas of intellectual enquiry and academic endeavor. The classical view of individual human thinkers choosing among options remains important and instructive, but the contributors to this volume broaden this perspective to characterize the decision making behavior of groups, non-human organisms and even non-living objects and mathematical constructs. A diverse array of methods is brought to bear—mathematical, computational, subjective, neurobiological, evolutionary, and cultural. We can often identify best or optimal decisions and decision making processes, but observed responses may deviate markedly from these, to a large extent because the environment in which decisions must be made is constantly changing. Moreover, decision making can be highly constrained by institutions, natural and social context, and capabilities. Studies of the mechanisms underlying decisions by humans and other organisms are just beginning to gain traction and shape our thinking. Though decision making has fundamental similarities across the diverse array of entities considered to be making them, there are large differences of degree (if not kind) that relate to the question of human uniqueness. From this survey of views and approaches, we converge on a tentative agenda for accelerating development of a new field that includes advancing the dialog between the sciences and the humanities, developing a defensible classification scheme for decision making and decision makers, addressing the role of morality and justice, and moving advances into applications—the rapidly developing field of decision support.

Why do we believe to understand animal voices such as whining or aggressive barking of our dogs, the longing meows of our cats? Why do we frequently assess deep voices as dominant and high voices as submissive. Are there universal principles governing our own communication system? Can we even see how close animals are related to us by constructing an evolutionary tree based on similarities and dissimilarities in acoustic signaling? Research on the role of emotions in acoustic communication and its evolution was neglected for a long time. When we infect others with our laugh, soothe a crying baby with a lullaby or get goose bumps listening to classical music, we are barely aware of the complex processes upon which this behavior is based. It is not facial expressions or body language that is affecting us, but sound. They are present in music and speech as “emotional prosody” and allow us to communicate not only verbally but also emotionally. In this book we will demonstrate new and surprising insights how acoustically conveyed emotions are generated and processed in animal and man. We will demonstrate why acoustic communication of emotions are of paramount importance and essential for communication across all mammal species and human cultures.

Evolution’s Empress identifies women as active agents within the evolutionary process. The chapters in this volume focus on topics as diverse as female social interactions, mate competition and mating strategies, motherhood, women’s health, sex differences in communication and motivation, sex discrimination, and women in literature. The volume editors bring together a diverse range of perspectives to demonstrate ways in which evolutionary approaches to human behavior have thus far been too limited. By reconsidering the role of women in evolution, this volume furthers the goal of generating dialogue between the realms of women’s studies and evolutionary psychology.

Navigating the social world requires sophisticated cognitive machinery that, although present quite early in crude forms, undergoes significant change across the lifespan. This book reports on evidence that has accumulated on an unprecedented scale, showing us what capacities for social cognition are present at birth and early in life, and how these capacities develop through learning in the first years of life. The book highlights what is known about the discoveries themselves but also what these discoveries imply about the nature of early social cognition and the methods that have allowed these discoveries—what is known concerning the phylogeny and ontogeny of social cognition. Each chapter focuses on a single core question: Are babies aware of what is right and wrong? Why do children have the same implicit intergroup preferences that adults do? What does language do to the building of category knowledge?

How do movies keep us riveted to the screen and thoroughly engage our sensations, thoughts, and feelings? Can scientific inquiry help us understand why we watch them and why we like them? Largely through trial and error, filmmakers have developed powerful techniques that capture the attention of audiences—visually, mentally, and emotionally. Scholars in the arts and humanities have thought deeply about the nature and impact of these techniques for some time, but, until now, few scientists have delved into empirical analyses of our movie experience. Psychocinematics introduces a new, exciting field by bringing together film theorists, philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists to consider the viability of a scientific approach to our movie experience.

This book provides a thorough review of the authors’ own research and other empirical evidence on Web surveys, taking a total survey error perspective. That perspective distinguishes several major sources of error in survey estimates, including sampling and coverage, nonresponse, and measurement issues. Because Web surveys are often used in combination with more traditional modes of data collection, the book also provides a model of the errors arising from mixed mode surveys. In its discussion of sampling and coverage, the book assesses the effectiveness of statistical procedures designed to remove selection and coverage biases from Web survey estimates. Several chapters are devoted to the measurement properties of Web surveys, examining basic design issues in Web surveys, the impact of the Web’s character as primarily a visual medium, the ability of Web surveys to permit interaction with the respondents, and the Web as a method for self-administering sensitive survey questions. An overall theme of the book is that Web surveys often offer relatively poor representation of the general population (sampling is difficult, coverage is imperfect, and response rates are often low), but relatively accurate measurement (allowing feedback to respondents and providing the benefits of self-administration). Although the book’s aims are primarily scientific, it does offer practical guidance to researchers where the evidence seems to support clear recommendations.

Vision, more than any other sense, dominates our mental life. Our conscious visual experience of the world is so rich and detailed that we can hardly distinguish it from the real thing. But as Goodale and Milner make clear in their prize-winning book, Sight Unseen, our visual experience of the world is not all there is to vision. Some of the most important things that vision does for us never reach our consciousness at all. In this updated and extended edition of their book, Goodale and Milner explore one of the most extraordinary neurological cases of recent years—one that profoundly changed scientific views on the visual brain. It is the story of Dee Fletcher—a young woman who became blind to shape and form as a result of brain damage. Dee was left unable to recognize objects or even tell one simple geometric shape from another. As events unfolded, however, Goodale and Milner found that Dee wasn‘t in fact blind — she just didn‘t know that she could see. They showed, for example, that Dee could reach out and grasp objects with amazing dexterity – despite being unable to perceive their shape, size, or orientation. Taking us on a journey into the unconscious brain, the two scientists who made this incredible discovery tell the amazing story of their work, and the surprising conclusion they were forced to reach. Written to be accessible to students and popular science readers, this book is a fascinating illustration of the power of the ‘unconscious‘ mind.