Although we are enthusiastic about a Darwinian approach to culture, we argue that the overview presented in the target article does not sufficiently emphasize the crucial explanatory role that psychology plays in the study of culture. We use a number of examples to illustrate the variety of ways by which appeal to psychological factors can help explain cultural phenomena.

This review demonstrates that an individualist view of emotion and regulation is untenable. First, I question the plausibility of a developmental shift away from social interdependency in emotion regulation. Second, I show that there are multiple reasons for emotional experiences in adults to elicit a process of social sharing of emotion, and I review the supporting evidence. Third, I look at effects that emotion sharing entails at the interpersonal and at the collective levels. Fourth, I examine the contribution of emotional (...) sharing to emotion regulation together with the relevant empirical evidence. Finally, the various functions that the social sharing of emotion fulfills are reviewed and the relevance of the social sharing of emotion for emotion scientists is discussed. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychology and social constructionism are widely regarded as fundamentally irreconcilable approaches to the social sciences. Focusing on the study of the emotions, we argue that this appearance is mistaken. Much of what appears to be an empirical disagreement between evolutionary psychologists and social constructionists over the universality or locality of emotional phenomena is actually generated by an implicit philosophical dispute resulting from the adoption of different theories of meaning and reference. We argue that once this philosophical dispute is recognized, (...) it can be set to the side. When this is done, it becomes clear that the two approaches to the emotions complement, rather than compete with, one another. (shrink)

The four experiments presented support Boyer's theory that counterintuitive concepts have transmission advantages that account for the commonness and ease of communicating many non-natural cultural concepts. In Experiment 1, 48 American college students recalled expectation-violating items from culturally unfamiliar folk stories better than more mundane items in the stories. In Experiment 2, 52 American college students in a modified serial reproduction task transmitted expectation-violating items in a written narrative more successfully than bizarre or common items. In Experiments 3 and 4, (...) these findings were replicated with orally presented and transmitted stimuli, and found to persist even after three months. To sum, concepts with single expectation-violating features were more successfully transmitted than concepts that were entirely congruent with category-level expectations, even if they were highly unusual or bizarre. This transmission advantage for counterintuitive concepts may explain, in part, why such concepts are so prevalent across cultures and so readily spread. (shrink)

The present volume is, we believe, the first-ever edited volume devoted to the emotion of disgust. In this chapter we address the following issues: 1. Why was disgust almost completely ignored until about 1990, 2. Why has there been a great increase in attention to disgust since about 1990?, 3. The outline of an integrative, body-to-soul preadaptation theory of disgust, 4. Some specific features of disgust that make it particularly susceptible to laboratory research and particularly appropriate to address some fundamental (...) issues in psychology. In the final section, we outline some new questions that arise from the recent increased interest in disgust in the areas of brain mechanisms, psychopathology, the psychometric approach to the structure of disgust, and disgust and morality. We then indicate some important aspects of disgust that have yet to receive systematic investigation. (shrink)

Inviting readers to ponder this genre's various manifestations since the late 1700s, this collection of probing essays allows fans and philosophy buffs alike to ...

There is extensive evidence that adults, children, and some non-human species, represent routine events in the form of hierarchically structured 'action scripts,' and show superior recall and imitation of information at relatively high-levels of this hierarchy. Here we investigate the hypothesis that a 'hierarchical bias' operates in human cultural transmission, acting to impose a hierarchical structure onto descriptions of everyday events, and to increasingly describe those events in terms of higher hierarchical levels. Descriptions of three everyday events expressed entirely in (...) terms of basic low-level actions were transmitted along ten chains each containing four adult human participants. It was found that the proportion of low-level information showed a significant linear decrease with transmission generation, while the proportions of medium- and high-level information showed significant linear increases, consistent with the operation of a hierarchical bias. The findings additionally provide support for script theory in general, and are discussed in relation to hierarchical imitation in non-human primates. (shrink)

This volume finds the proper place of psychoanalytic thought in critical analysis of cinema through a series of essays that debate its legitimacy, utility, and validity as applied to the horror genre. It distinguishes itself from previous work in this area through the self-consciousness with which psychoanalytic concepts are employed and the theorization that coexists with interpretations of particular horror films and subgenres.

One promising way to investigate the genealogy of norms is by considering not the origin of norms, but rather, what makes certain norms more likely to prevail. Emotional responses, I maintain, constitute one important set of mechanisms that affects the cultural viability of norms. To corroborate this, I exploit historical evidence indicating that 16th century etiquette norms prohibiting disgusting actions were much more likely to survive than other 16th century etiquette norms. This case suggests more broadly that work on cultural (...) evolution should pay greater attention to the role of emotion systems in cultural transmission. (shrink)

Although we are enthusiastic about a Darwinian approach to culture, we argue that the overview presented in the target article does not sufficiently emphasize the crucial explanatory role that psychology plays in the study of culture. We use a number of examples to illustrate the variety of ways by which appeal to psychological factors can help explain cultural phenomena. (Published Online November 9 2006).

We hypothesize that cultural narratives such as myths and folktales are more likely to achieve cultural stability if they correspond to a minimally counterintuitive (MCI) cognitive template that includes mostly intuitive concepts combined with a minority of counterintuitive ones. Two studies tested this hypothesis, examining whether this template produces a memory advantage, and whether this memory advantage explains the cultural success of folktales. In a controlled laboratory setting, Study 1 found that an MCI template produces a memory advantage after a (...) 1‐week delay, relative to entirely intuitive or maximally counterintuitive cognitive templates. Using archival methods, Study 2 examined the cognitive structure of Grimm Brothers folktales. Compared to culturally unsuccessful folktales, those that were demonstrably successful were especially likely to fit an MCI template. These findings highlight the role of human memory processes in cultural evolution. (shrink)