Hypotheses and tests of an evolved psychological architecture for social norms
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Psychology, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Zhao, Wanying
issued: 2010-08-27T20:59:56Z
issued: 2010
related degree: Master of Arts - MA
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: Due to the critical importance of social norms and their ubiquitous presence over the course of human history, culture-gene co-evolutionary processes should have selected for a psychological architecture that supports learning and implementing local norms (Richerson & Henrich, 2009). In this thesis, I follow the above line of reasoning to argue that dealing with social norms presented domain-specific challenges to the cultural learner, requiring specialized cognitive processes to deal specifically with norms. This motivates several predictions about major design features that a psychological architecture evolved to meet those challenges should possess. I present a survey of extant evidence that are consistent with these predictions. Two empirical studies designed to test a number of these predictions are presented.
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/27841
note: Hypotheses and tests of an evolved psychological architecture for social norms by Wanying Zhao B.Com., The University of Toronto, 2007 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Psychology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) August 2010 © Wanying Zhao, 2010 ii ABSTRACT Due to the critical importance of social norms and their ubiquitous presence over the course of human history, culture-­‐gene co-­‐evolutionary processes should have selected for a psychological architecture that supports learning and implementing local norms (Richerson & Henrich, 2009). In this thesis, I follow the above line of reasoning to argue that dealing with social norms presented domain-­‐specific challenges to the cultural learner, requiring specialized cognitive processes to deal specifically with norms. This motivates several predictions about major design features that a psychological architecture evolved to meet those challenges should possess. I present a survey of extant evidence that are consistent with these predictions. Two empirical studies designed to test a number of these predictions are presented. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract................................................................................................................................................. ii Table of contents ..............................................................................................................................iii List of tables ....................................................................................................................................... iv List of figures .......................................................................................................................................v Acknowledgments............................................................................................................................ vi Dedication..........…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2010-11
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0071205
language: eng
degree discipline: Psychology
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/27841