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DTSTAMP:20201006T231353Z
CREATED:20200922T213658Z
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SUMMARY:Mark Kleiman - Dominance hierarchies and public policies
DESCRIPTION:Mark Kleiman: UCLA Department of Public Policy1. Dominance hierarchies help resolve conflicts over resources with a minimum of actual combat by giving the higher-ranking individual priority. To some extent\, then\, the hierarchy ranking is going to reflect who would come out on top if there were actual combat. \n2. In complicated human societies\, the structure of the dominance hierarchy(ies) is partly a matter of deliberate choice\, including deliberate choice through public policy. As Aristotle pointed out\, a democratic regime doesn’t just mean that public decisions get made by the many rather than by a few or by one; it means greater social equality as well. \n3. In designing social institutions relating to dominance\, there are two big questions: \na. How steep the gradient should be.\nb. What behaviors should lead to dominant status. \n4. Being on top of the dominance hierarchy means more access to resources. That makes it desirable\, and worth fighting for. And in fact individuals in all dominance-hierarchy-forming species do fight for dominance. \n5. But if access to resources were all that counted\, then resource-rich environments would reduce the intensity of dominance conflict. Is that true? \n6. Being lower on the hierarchy in a resource-rich environment can mean more access to resources than being higher up in a resource-poor environment. (We all eat better\, sleep more comfortably\, and have better medical care than Louis XIV did.) \n7. Economists normally assume that people care about the resources available to themselves and not where they stand in dominance hierarchies. That’s what makes the Pareto Principle seem plausible. \n8. But some resources are naturally scarce; not everyone can have preferential access to mating opportunities\, for example. \n9. It turns out empirically that\, holding resource access constant\, position in hierarchy is an important contributor to health and other measures of well-being. (Whitehall studies.) \n10. That makes evolutionary sense. \n11. It also turns out empirically that\, while cross-sectionally within a society wealth correlates with happiness\, that doesn’t hold longitudinally as a society gets richer or cross-sectionally among societies\, above a national income of something like 1/3 of that currently enjoyed in the U.S. (Hedonics literature\, e.g.\, Easterlin\, Kahnemann) \n12. Ideally\, dominant status should accompany pro-social behaviors. One advantage of market-driven societies is that people gain status by accumulating wealth rather than by accumulating the means of violence. \n13. On the other hand\, awarding dominance to money can lead to an unhealthy concentration on money-making. As Keynes said\, in a poor society getting the smartest people to concentrate on making money is a good way to expand total resources available. But now that we’re rich enough so that the benefits of getting richer are limited\, maybe we ought to start rewarding more attractive human traits than diligent and well-directed greed. If you value art and science\, you ought to be thinking about how to arrange things so that producing art and science is a good way to acquire dominant status. \n14. Awarding dominance to money also promotes Veblenesque conspicuous-consumption behavior\, and commodity fetishism. Conspicuous consumption is largely signaling behavior: spending is a market signal for wealth\, so the more closely dominance runs with wealth\, the greater the incentive for conspicuous waste. Marketing means convincing people that it’s important to have whatever it is you’re trying to sell. Being inundated with marketing (other than Citigroup ads) should make people value “stuff” more relative to\, e.g.\, leisure or culture or virtue or happiness. \n15. Increasing scale through rising population\, cheap communication\, e-commerce\, and globalization tends to increase income inequality\, at least at the top of the scale\, because the greater the size of the potential market the greater the rewards for outstanding performance. (Cook and Frank’s “winner-takes-all” effect. \n16. Given how unhealthy\, and how bad for your children\, it is to be at the bottom of the pecking order\, we need to ask whether\, and how\, that problem can be allieviated. \n— Gentler status gradients\n— Multiple hierarchies \n17. That would be worth doing even at some cost in economic efficiency\, narrowly considered. But social exclusion has big external costs\, so relieving the problems at the bottom of the pecking order might turn out to have big benefits\, even in strictly economic terms. \n18. It would seem logical that a more equal income distribution would make money less important in awarding status. But is that true? \n19. If money gets less important in awarding status\, does the total steepness of the hierarchy gradient decrease\, or is money just replaced by something else with the gradient held constant or even increased? \n20. Norms of informality\, whether Quaker or hippie\, seem designed to reduce status gradients. Do they work?http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V8F-3YGTSKK-T/2/964f8cb37c7ea0eb05ed82b7b18ae978
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/mark-kleiman-dominance-hierarchies-and-public-policies/
CATEGORIES:Past Presentation,Presentation
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20050411T000000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20050411T000000
DTSTAMP:20201006T231352Z
CREATED:20200922T213703Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201006T231352Z
UID:3986-1113177600-1113177600@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Daniel M.T. Fessler - Cringing before others' eyes: A cross-cultural investigation of the evolution of shame
DESCRIPTION:Daniel M.T. Fessler: UCLA Department of AnthropologyCross-cultural comparisons can a) illuminate the manner in which cultures differentially highlight\, ignore\, and group various facets of emotional experience\, and b) shed light on our evolved species-typical emotional architecture. In many societies\, concern with shame is one of the principal factors regulating social behavior. Three studies conducted in Bengkulu (Indonesia) and California explored the nature and experience of shame in two disparate cultures. Study 1\, perceived term use frequency\, indicated that shame is more prominent in Bengkulu\, a collectivistic culture\, than in California\, an individualistic culture. Study 2\, comparing naturally occurring shame events (Bengkulu) with reports thereof (California)\, revealed that shame is associated with guilt-like accounts in California but not in Bengkulu\, and subordinance events in Bengkulu but not in California; published reports suggest that the latter pattern is prominent worldwide. Study 3 mapped the semantic domain of shame using a synonym task; again\, guilt was prominent in California\, subordinance in Bengkulu. Because shame is overshadowed by guilt in individualistic cultures\, and because these cultures downplay aversive emotions associated with subordinance\, a fuller understanding of shame is best arrived at through the study of collectivistic cultures such as Bengkulu. After reviewing evolutionary theories on the origins and functions of shame\, I evaluate these perspectives in light of facets of this emotion evident in Bengkulu and elsewhere. The available data are consistent with the proposition that shame evolved from a rank-related emotion and\, while motivating prestige competition\, cooperation\, and conformity\, nevertheless continues to play this role in contemporary humans.http://www.bec.ucla.edu/papers/Fessler_4-11-05.pdf
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/daniel-m-t-fessler-cringing-before-others-eyes-a-cross-cultural-investigation-of-the-evolution-of-shame/
CATEGORIES:Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20050418T000000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20050418T000000
DTSTAMP:20201006T231352Z
CREATED:20200922T213704Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201006T231352Z
UID:3987-1113782400-1113782400@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Raymond Gibbs - Embodied metaphor in language\, thought\, and culture
DESCRIPTION:Raymond Gibbs: UC Santa Cruz Department of PsychologyMetaphor is traditionally viewed as a special use of language. But recent research from cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics suggests that metaphor is ubiquitous in language and a fundamental part of human conceptual systems. I will argue in this talk that metaphor is also deeply rooted in recurring aspects of embodied experience that serves as the grounding for significant parts of language\, thought\, and culture. Particular attention is given to recent experimental evidence showing that metaphor use arises from embodied simulations that people engage in during in-the-moment reasoning\, speaking\, and understanding.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/raymond-gibbs-embodied-metaphor-in-language-thought-and-culture/
CATEGORIES:Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20050425T000000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20050425T000000
DTSTAMP:20201006T231352Z
CREATED:20200922T213705Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201006T231352Z
UID:3988-1114387200-1114387200@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Sang-Hee Lee - Old Is Young: Longevity in Human Evolution
DESCRIPTION:Sang-Hee Lee: UC Riverside Department of AnthropologyIncreased longevity\, expressed as number of individuals surviving to older adulthood\, represents one of the ways the human life history pattern differs from other primates. We assessed changes in longevity with the ratio of older to younger adults (OY ratio) in four hominin dental samples from successive time periods\, and determining the significance of differences in these ratios. While there is significant increased longevity between all groups indicating a trend of increased adult survivorship over the course of human evolution\, there is a dramatic increase in longevity in the modern humans of the Early Upper Paleolithic. We then addressed whether longevity increased as a result of cultural/adaptive change in Upper Paleolithic Europe or whether it was introduced to Europe as a part of modern human biology\, comparing Western Asia and European samples. We find that the Upper Paleolithic OY ratio is more than double that of the Middle Paleolithic moderns; in contrast\, the OY ratios of the two West Asian Middle Paleolithic groups are not significantly different from each other. However\, the OY ratios of both West Asian Moderns and Neandertals are significantly higher than the European Neandertal ratio. Considering cultural versus taxonomic differences\, we conclude that the increase in adult survivorship associated with the Upper Paleolithic may reflect an important cultural adaptation promoting the demographic and material representations of modernity. Further research is discussed.http://www.bec.ucla.edu/papers/Lee1_4.25.05.pdf
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/sang-hee-lee-old-is-young-longevity-in-human-evolution/
CATEGORIES:Past Presentation,Presentation
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