Measuring Cultural Variation

描述（由申请人提供）：本申请涉及广泛的挑战领域（01）行为、行为改变和预防，以及特定的挑战主题01- od (OBSSR)-101*研究文化现象的工具。文化的人口动态模型将文化概念化为分布在个体之间的信息。为了解释文化变迁，这些模型解释了导致一些变体传播而另一些变体减少的社会传播过程。联合项目负责人及其合作者多年来在斐济的Yasawa岛和秘鲁的Huatasani两个实地地点对文化变异和传播机制进行了实证研究。到目前为止，这些测量都是基于实验游戏、结构化访谈和行为观察。在这里，我们提出了一个为期两年的项目，通过开发一些研究文化变异和传播的新工具来扩展这项工作。这些工具解决了三个挑战。首先，为了更好地理解文化信息准确传递的机制，特别是微妙的教学形式是否发挥了重要作用，我们将生成一个包括凝视、手势和修改任务结构等行为的教学方谱。这将使我们能够记录教学的程度，并确定更多的教学是否与更准确的文化传播有关。我们还将修改心理学家使用的“过度模仿”任务，以直接衡量教学和因果透明度在决定社会学习准确性方面的相对重要性。其次，我们将使用内隐联想检验和新开发的“社会类别推断任务”来研究社会类别对传播的影响。第一种方法在没有口头报告的情况下测量态度偏差，而第二种方法使我们能够描绘出定义群体成员的属性如何影响人们对群体成员的推断。IAT已在实验室中广泛使用，但我们将进行修改，使其可以用于测量现场设置的文化差异。最后，为了测量无法通过口头自我报告获得的心理表征中的文化差异，我们将开发一种新的基于行为的访谈方法，并将该方法应用于测量食物制备技术和物质文化生产中的人口差异。虽然该方法涉及许多步骤，但其基本思想是将对录像表演是否适当的判断与对同一任务的适当表现的口头描述进行比较。关于饮食、锻炼和生活方式的文化信仰对健康有重要影响。这个研究项目的目的是为了更好地理解为什么人们会有自己的信仰。为了做到这一点，我们将测量人们如何获得文化信仰，以及这些信仰如何在两个人群中分布。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application addresses broad Challenge Area (01) Behavior, Behavioral Change, and Prevention and specific Challenge Topic 01-OD (OBSSR)-101* Tools for studying cultural phenomena. Population dynamic models of culture conceptualize culture as information distributed among individuals. To explain cultural change, these models account for the social transmission processes that cause some variants to spread and others to diminish. The Co-PI's and their collaborators have conducted empirical research on cultural variation and transmission mechanisms at two field sites, Yasawa Island, Fiji and Huatasani, Peru, for a number of years. So far these measurements have been based on experimental games, structured interviews, and behavior observation. Here we propose a two year project that will extend this work by developing a number of new tools for the study of cultural variation and transmission. These tools address three challenges. First, to better understand the mechanisms that allow for accurate transmission of cultural information, and in particular, whether subtle forms of teaching play an important role, we will generate a teaching ethogram that includes behaviors like gaze, gesture, and modified task structure. This will allow us to document the extent of teaching and determine whether more teaching is associated with more accurate cultural transmission. We will also modify the "over- imitation" task used by psychologists to directly measure the relative importance of teaching and causal transparency in determining the accuracy of social learning. Second, we will use the implicit association test and a newly developed "social category inference task" to study the effect of social categories on transmission. The first measures attitudinal biases without verbal report, while the second allows us to map how the attributes that define group membership affect the kinds of inferences that people make about group members. The IAT has been widely used in the laboratory, but we will modify so that it can be used to measure cultural variation in field settings. Finally, to measure cultural variation in mental representations that are not available through verbal self-report we will develop a new behaviorally based interview method, and apply this method to measure within population variation in food preparation techniques and the production of material culture. While the method involves a number of steps, the basic idea is to compare judgments of the adequacy of video-recorded performances with verbal descriptions of an adequate performance for the same task. Cultural beliefs about diet, exercise, and life-style have important impacts on health. The goal of this research project is to better understand why people come to have the beliefs that they do. To accomplish this, we will measure how people acquire cultural beliefs and how these beliefs are distributed in a two populations.