Evolution and devolution of folkbiological knowledge

Variation in traditional knowledge of culturally important macromycete species among three indigenous communities of Oaxaca, Mexico

BACKGROUND

For centuries, wild mushrooms have been a forest resource of significant cultural value in several ethnic groups worldwide. In Mexico, extensive traditional knowledge on the use of fungal resources has been developed and deeply rooted. Mexico is the second country in the world in which the most species of wild mushroom are consumed, and it is considered a pioneer in ethnomycology. Nonetheless, there are still many indigenous groups in this country that have not been studied from an ethnomycological approach. The present study aimed to record the traditional knowledge on wild mushrooms in three indigenous groups of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, and assess the variation in this knowledge within and across the studied groups.

METHODS

The data were recorded from April to October 2022 within three communities belonging to the indigenous groups Chatino, Chontal, and Chinanteco. Through 84 interviews, information related to their knowledge of wild mushrooms was obtained. The cultural significance index of wild edible mushrooms was calculated for each community. Regression analyses, analysis of variance and covariance, t test, and non-metric multidimensional scaling analysis were performed to assess the distribution of traditional knowledge in the communities.

RESULTS

A total of 32 culturally important mushroom species were recorded for the three indigenous groups (30 edible, 2 medicinal); 23 used by Chatinos, 16 by Chontales, and 6 by Chinantecos. Only Chatinos and Chinantecos use wild mushrooms in medicine. The cultural significance of wild edible mushrooms differed among groups. Traditional knowledge about wild mushrooms declines when the level of schooling increases and age decreases, especially in the Chatino group. This knowledge distributes more homogeneously in the Chontal and Chinanteco groups. Their age determines the difference in knowledge between men and women.

CONCLUSION

Documenting how traditional knowledge differs among ethnic groups is relevant for preserving cultural and biological diversity. Factors such as level of schooling and age can affect traditional knowledge of wild mushrooms, but the effects of these factors vary within and across communities. Conducting studies encompassing a broader range of variables is of interest for a better understanding of the human-mushroom relationship.

Descriptive ethnobotanical studies are needed for the rescue operation of documenting traditional knowledge

In this essay, I claim that the primary aim of ethnobiological research is now to document disappearing traditional knowledge. This is an absolute priority due to the rate at which biocultural biodiversity in the world is disappearing. Rather than diverting our efforts into inflating the theoretical part of ethnobotany, we should concentrate on knowledge documentation to facilitate its circulation in the communties that hold it or at least to preserve it for future generations, even in the static form of databases or video recordings.

Cultural consensus and intracultural diversity in ethnotaxonomy: lessons from a fishing community in Northeast Brazil

BACKGROUND

Traditional fishing communities are strongholds of ethnobiological knowledge but establishing to what degree they harbor cultural consensus about different aspects of this knowledge has been a challenge in many ethnobiological studies.

METHODS

We conducted an ethnobiological study in an artisanal fishing community in northeast Brazil, where we interviewed 91 community members (49 men and 42 women) with different type of activities (fishers and non-fishers), in order to obtain free lists and salience indices of the fish they know. To establish whether there is cultural consensus in their traditional knowledge on fish, we engaged a smaller subset of 45 participants in triad tasks where they chose the most different fish out of 30 triads. We used the similarity matrices generated from the task results to detect if there is cultural consensus in the way fish were classified by them.

RESULTS

The findings show how large is the community's knowledge of fish, with 197 ethnospecies registered, of which 33 species were detected as salient or important to the community. In general, men cited more fish than women. We also found that there was no cultural consensus in the ways fish were classified.

CONCLUSIONS

Both free-listing and triad task methods revealed little cultural consensus in the way knowledge is structured and how fish were classified by community members. Our results suggest that it is prudent not to make assumptions that a given local community has a single cultural consensus model in classifying the organisms in their environment.

Cultural Dynamics for Sustainability: How Can Humanity Craft Cultures of Sustainability?

Humanity faces twin problems of adaptation—natural environmental challenges of climate change and global humanitarian challenges of ensuring well-being for all—that pose a dilemma for sustainable development. One way forward is to develop cultures of sustainability that highlight and reward the ideas and practices that will help us transition to a sustainable lifestyle. Although institutional responses are necessary and multidisciplinary approaches are required, individual citizens can also participate in cultural dynamics—the process of cultural formation, maintenance, and transformation—to craft cultures of sustainability, and psychological science can point to potential mechanisms for effecting this cultural change. Informed by the niche-construction perspective, I suggest that the critical ingredients of cultures of sustainability include (a) conceptions of human–nature connectedness, (b) conceptions of human–artifact relation, (c) interpersonal conversations about sustainability norms within social networks, and (d) visions of an achievable utopia for a sustainable future. Further research and action are called for.

A Growing Disconnection From Nature Is Evident in Cultural Products

Human connection with nature is widely believed to be in decline even though empirical evidence is scarce on the magnitude and historical pattern of the change. Studying works of popular culture in English throughout the 20th century and later, we have documented a cultural shift away from nature that begins in the 1950s. Since then, references to nature have been decreasing steadily in fiction books, song lyrics, and film storylines, whereas references to the human-made environment have not. The observed temporal pattern is consistent with the explanatory role of increased virtual and indoors recreation options (e.g., television, video games) in the disconnect from nature, and it is inconsistent with a pure urbanization account. These findings are cause for concern, not only because they imply foregone physical and psychological benefits from engagement with nature, but also because cultural products are agents of socialization that can evoke curiosity, respect, and concern for the natural world.

Free classification of large sets of everyday objects is more thematic than taxonomic

Traditionally it has been thought that the overall organisation of categories in the brain is taxonomic. To examine this assumption, we had adults sort 140-150 diverse, familiar objects from different basic-level categories. Almost all the participants (80/81) sorted the objects more thematically than taxonomically. Sorting was only weakly modulated by taxonomic priming, and people still produced many thematically structured clusters when explicitly instructed to sort taxonomically. The first clusters that people produced were rated as having equal taxonomic and thematic structure. However, later clusters were rated as being increasingly thematically organised. A minority of items were consistently clustered taxonomically, but the overall dominance of thematically structured clusters suggests that people know more thematic than taxonomic relations among everyday objects. A final study showed that the semantic relations used to sort a given item in the initial studies predicted the proportion of thematic to taxonomic word associates generated to that item. However, unlike the results of the sorting task, most of these single word associates were related taxonomically. This latter difference between the results of large-scale, free sorting tasks versus single word association tasks suggests that thematic relations may be more numerous, but weaker, than taxonomic associations in our stored conceptual network. Novel statistical and numerical methods for objectively measuring sorting consistency were developed during the course of this investigation, and have been made publicly available.

Linguistic positivity in historical texts reflects dynamic environmental and psychological factors

People use more positive words than negative words. Referred to as "linguistic positivity bias" (LPB), this effect has been found across cultures and languages, prompting the conclusion that it is a panhuman tendency. However, although multiple competing explanations of LPB have been proposed, there is still no consensus on what mechanism(s) generate LPB or even on whether it is driven primarily by universal cognitive features or by environmental factors. In this work we propose that LPB has remained unresolved because previous research has neglected an essential dimension of language: time. In four studies conducted with two independent, time-stamped text corpora (Google books Ngrams and the New York Times), we found that LPB in American English has decreased during the last two centuries. We also observed dynamic fluctuations in LPB that were predicted by changes in objective environment, i.e., war and economic hardships, and by changes in national subjective happiness. In addition to providing evidence that LPB is a dynamic phenomenon, these results suggest that cognitive mechanisms alone cannot account for the observed dynamic fluctuations in LPB. At the least, LPB likely arises from multiple interacting mechanisms involving subjective, objective, and societal factors. In addition to having theoretical significance, our results demonstrate the value of newly available data sources in addressing long-standing scientific questions.

An Interdisciplinary Argument for Natural Morphologies in Architectural Design

Humans have evolved in natural environments, a process which has resulted in the development of a neural system specialized in the processing of information about the natural world (for example, plants and animals). To a certain extent, the existence of such a system can explain the perennial interest of the architectural field in applying conceptual ideas about nature to architectural theory and in integrating natural form in architecture. Yet, owing to the decreasing contact with natural form in the modern world, this system is becoming less stimulated and, ultimately, underdeveloped. A probable effect of this trend is that the architectural field will become increasingly disinterested in adopting natural morphologies. It is argued that this can lead to three interrelated types of impoverishment. These underscore the importance of integrating natural form in architectural design.

Does Causality Matter More Now? Increase in the Proportion of Causal Language in English Texts

The vast majority of the work on culture and cognition has focused on cross-cultural comparisons, largely ignoring the dynamic aspects of culture. In this article, we provide a diachronic analysis of causal cognition over time. We hypothesized that the increased role of education, science, and technology in Western societies should be accompanied by greater attention to causal connections. To test this hypothesis, we compared word frequencies in English texts from different time periods and found an increase in the use of causal language of about 40% over the past two centuries. The observed increase was not attributable to general language effects or to changing semantics of causal words. We also found that there was a consistent difference between the 19th and the 20th centuries, and that the increase happened mainly in the 20th century.

Culture and Psychology in the 21st Century

At the end of the 20th century, a survey of the metatheoretical landscape of culture and psychology noted an emerging consensus—physicalist ontology, gene–culture co-evolutionary phylogeny, gene–culture interactionist ontogeny, and a mutual constitutionist view of culture and mind. Revisiting the terrain now, the then emerging consensus seems well established, but new challenges appear on the horizon, prompting us to expand our metatheoretical scope. Extending beyond phylogeny, we need to consider a geological timescale, and further naturalizing the culture concept, we need to consider culture and human activity within the planetary system. According to some, we have left the Holocene, and entered into the Anthropocene, a geological epoch in which human activities have such a disproportionate impact that it deserves to be prefaced by humanity. Psychology with interests in culture can play a critical role in human efforts to investigate the psychological processes involved in the cultural change and to reconceptualize humans’ place in nature.

How can you capture cultural dynamics?

Cross-cultural comparison is a critical method by which we can examine the interaction between culture and psychological processes. However, comparative methods tend to overlook cultural dynamics - the formation, maintenance, and transformation of cultures over time. The present article gives a brief overview of four different types of research designs that have been used to examine cultural dynamics in the literature: (1) cross-temporal methods that trace medium- to long-term changes in a culture; (2) cross-generational methods that explore medium-term implications of cultural transmission; (3) experimental simulation methods that investigate micro-level mechanisms of cultural dynamics; and (4) formal models and computer simulation methods often used to investigate long-term and macro-level implications of micro-level mechanisms. These methods differ in terms of level of analysis for which they are designed (micro vs. macro-level), scale of time for which they are typically used (short-, medium-, or long-term), and direction of inference (deductive vs. empirical method) that they imply. The paper describes examples of these methods, discuss their strengths and weaknesses, and point to their complementarity in inquiries about cultural change. Because cultural dynamics research is about meaning over time, issues deriving from interpretation of meaning and temporal distance between researchers and objects of inquiry can pose threats to the validity of the research and its findings. The methodological question about hermeneutic circle is recalled and further inquiries are encouraged.

Humans (really) are animals: picture-book reading influences 5-year-old urban children's construal of the relation between humans and non-human animals

What is the relation between humans and non-human animals? From a biological perspective, we view humans as one species among many, but in the fables and films we create for children, we often offer an anthropocentric perspective, imbuing non-human animals with human-like characteristics. What are the consequences of these distinctly different perspectives on children’s reasoning about the natural world? Some have argued that children universally begin with an anthropocentric perspective and that acquiring a biological perspective requires a basic conceptual change (cf. Carey, 1985). But recent work reveals that this anthropocentric perspective, evidenced in urban 5-year-olds, is not evident in 3-year-olds (Herrmann etal., 2010). This indicates that the anthropocentric perspective is not an obligatory first step in children’s reasoning about biological phenomena. In the current paper, we introduced a priming manipulation to assess whether 5-year-olds’ reasoning about a novel biological property is influenced by the perspectives they encounter in children’s books. Just before participating in a reasoning task, each child read a book about bears with an experimenter. What varied was whether bears were depicted from an anthropomorphic (Berenstain Bears) or biological perspective (Animal Encyclopedia). The priming had a dramatic effect. Children reading the Berenstain Bears showed the standard anthropocentric reasoning pattern, but those reading the Animal Encyclopedia adopted a biological pattern. This offers evidence that urban 5-year-olds can adopt either a biological or a human-centered stance, depending upon the context. Thus, children’s books and other media are double-edged swords. Media may (inadvertently) support human-centered reasoning in young children, but may also be instrumental in redirecting children’s attention to a biological model.

Concepts of happiness across time and cultures

We explored cultural and historical variations in concepts of happiness. First, we analyzed the definitions of happiness in dictionaries from 30 nations to understand cultural similarities and differences in happiness concepts. Second, we analyzed the definition of happiness in Webster's dictionaries from 1850 to the present day to understand historical changes in American English. Third, we coded the State of the Union addresses given by U.S. presidents from 1790 to 2010. Finally, we investigated the appearance of the phrases happy nation versus happy person in Google's Ngram Viewer from 1800 to 2008. Across cultures and time, happiness was most frequently defined as good luck and favorable external conditions. However, in American English, this definition was replaced by definitions focused on favorable internal feeling states. Our findings highlight the value of a historical perspective in the study of psychological concepts.

The relation between essentialist beliefs and evolutionary reasoning

Historians of science have pointed to essentialist beliefs about species as major impediments to the discovery of natural selection. The present study investigated whether such beliefs are impediments to learning this concept as well. Participants (43 children aged 4-9 and 34 adults) were asked to judge the variability of various behavioral and anatomical properties across different members of the same species. Adults who accepted within-species variation-both actual and potential-were significantly more likely to demonstrate a selection-based understanding of evolution than adults who denied within-species variation. The latter demonstrated an alternative, incorrect understanding of evolution and produced response patterns that were both quantitatively and qualitatively similar to those produced by preschool-aged children. Overall, it is argued that psychological essentialism, although a useful bias for drawing species-wide inductions, leads individuals to devalue within-species variation and, consequently, to fail to understand natural selection.

Induction as conditional probability judgment

Existing research on category-based induction has primarily focused on reasoning about blank properties, or predicates that are designed to elicit little prior knowledge. Here, we address reasoning about nonblank properties. We introduce a model of conditional probability that assumes that the conclusion prior probability is revised to the extent warranted by the evidence in the premise. The degree of revision is a function of the relevance of the premise category to the conclusion and the informativeness of the premise statement. An algebraic formulation with no free parameters accurately predicted conditional probabilities for single- and two-premise conditionals (Experiments 1 and 3), as well as problems involving negative evidence (Experiment 2).

Architectural Lessons from Environmental Psychology: The Case of Biophilic Architecture

A review of findings from the field of environmental psychology shows that humans are aesthetically attracted to natural contents and to particular landscape configurations. These features are also found to have positive effects on human functioning and can reduce stress. However, opportunities for contact with these elements are reduced in modern urban life. It is argued how this evolution can have subtle but nontrivial adverse effects on psychological and physiological well-being. These can be countered by integrating key features of natural contents and structural landscape features in the built environment. Several practical proposals are discussed, ranging from literal imitations of natural objects (such as plants) to the use of nature's fractal geometry in an architectural context.

The Native Mind: Biological Categorization and Reasoning in Development and Across Cultures

This article describes cross-cultural and developmental research on folk biology: that is, the study of how people conceptualize living kinds. The combination of a conceptual module for biology and cross-cultural comparison brings a new perspective to theories of categorization and reasoning. From the standpoint of cognitive psychology, the authors find that results gathered from standard populations in industrialized societies often fail to generalize to humanity at large. For example, similarity-driven typicality and diversity effects either are not found or pattern differently when one moves beyond undergraduates. From the perspective of folk biology, standard populations may yield misleading results because they represent examples of especially impoverished experience with nature. Certain phenomena are robust across populations, consistent with notions of a core module.

Different neural systems for recognizing plants, animals, and artifacts

The purpose of this study was to investigate functional organization in the human brain involved in the representation of knowledge regarding plants. We measured the brain activity of eight male volunteers during the recognition of visual stimuli representing plants, animals and artifacts, using positron emission tomography. The participants were presented with and were required to name silently two different images each of 15 entities belonging to three ontological categories, and 30 series of four to six digits. Marked increases in regional cerebral blood flow were found in the hippocampus and the parahippocampal areas bilaterally and the right lateral occipital cortex during the silent naming of all three categories, compared with that during the silent reading of digits. The right lateral occipital cortex was specifically activated in association with the naming of plants, and the right fusiform cortex was specifically activated in association with the naming of animals. In addition, the right temporo-occipital cortex was activated only during animals and plants, not artifacts. Our results indicate that there were a few characteristic activations for the different categories, and that entities belonging to the different categories are not necessarily represented in different locations of the brain.