EHAP / Culture & Cognition

Winter 2004 Speaker Series

Friday 9:00 am - 10:30 am, 4448 East Hall

 

 

This speaker series will attempt to synthesize an evolutionary understanding of the origins and functions of the social emotions with cultural and developmental frameworks that illuminate cross-cultural consistencies and differences in emotions and social relationships. The series is organized around three central issues. First, it examines evolutionary underpinnings of social emotions (e.g., attachment/love, guilt/shame) by asking about the social situations in which these emotions offer a selective advantage, how they helped individuals to meet the adaptive challenges of those situations, and what cues and mechanisms are involved in regulating these emotions. Second, we try to identify specific cultural functions of social emotions. That is, we seek to identify social psychological situations in which certain social emotions (e.g., anger and violence) might be aroused to regulate certain specific cultural systems (e.g., the culture of honor in the American south) while at the same time these emotions are in part constituted by the attendant cultural systems themselves. The third aim of the series is to locate the first two issues in an overarching developmental framework. That is, we seek to answer the question of how evolutionarily prepared programs of social emotions might be elaborated and transformed through socialization and enculturation to yield the consistencies and variations in social life that are observed among cultural, ethnic, and religious groups.

 

The lectures, open to all members of the University community, will be each Friday at 9:00 am in 4448 East Hall. Most will last 90 minutes, but the time will extend somewhat on the weeks that offer multiple speakers or mini-symposia. Coffee, tea and bagels are served at 8:45 am.

 

The graduate seminar, Psych 689/Anthro 760, will meet immediately after the lectures on Friday mornings. It is intended primarily for Culture and Cognition students and EHAP affiliated students who are taking the seminar for credit. However, there may be space for additional graduate students and faculty who want to continue the discussion in more depth after having read articles by the speakers.The articles for each talk, when possible, will be available at https://coursetools.ummu.umich.edu/2004/winter/psych/689/001.nsf. Otherwise, they will be distributed the week before.

 

 

 

 

Series organizers: Shinobu Kitayama and Randolph Nesse

 

This series is made possible by support from the Culture and Cognition Program, EHAP, LSA, Psychology, Psychiatry, and ISR.

 

 

 

Please contact Crystal Fortwangler (Administrative Assistant, Culture and Cognition)

crystalf@umich.edu with any questions.

 

 

 

Evolution, Culture, and the Social Emotions

EHAP / Culture & Cognition, Winter 2004 Speaker Series

Friday 9:00 am - 10:30 am, 4448 East Hall

 

January 9 Evolution, Culture and Social Emotions

 

Shinobu Kitayama (Professor of Psychology, Michigan). Hidden Social Dimensions of Emotions.

 

Randolph Nesse (Professor of Psychiatry, Michigan). The Evolutionary Origins of Social Emotions.

January 16 Epigenesis of social emotions

Michael Lewis (University Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School). Emotional Development: From Biology to Cultural.

Joseph Campos (Professor of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, President-Elect, International Society for Infant Studies).“Is emotion what it is made out to be? A functionalist perspective on the generation and regulation of emotion.”

January 23

 

Gary Marcus (Professor of Psychology, New York University). Language in the era of the Genome.

 

January 30 NO LECTURE.

 

February 6 Shame and guilt

 

Allan Gibbard (Richard B. Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, Michigan). Guilt, Shame, and Norms

 

Lynn O'Connor (The Wright Institute, Professor; The Emotion, Personality and Altruism Research Group, Director). Survivor guilt across cultures: The down side to winning in social comparison.

 

June Tangney (George Mason University). Functions of Shame and Guilt: Time and Place Do Matter

February 13, 20, 27 NO LECTURE, NO SEMINAR.

 

March 5 NO LECTURE.

March 12

Batja Mesquita (Wake Forest University). Evolution's Best Advantage to Emotions: Culture

March 19

Brenda Volling (Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Michigan). Parental socialization of young children’s emotions in Chinese and U.S. families.

 

March 26 Honor Symposium

 

Scott Atran (Michigan).TBA.

 

Dov Cohen (Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois). TBA.

 

Bill Miller (Michigan). TBA.

 

Richard Nisbett (Professor of Psychology, Michigan; Research Professor ISR).

Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South.

 

April 2

Donald Munro (Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and of Chinese, Emeritus Chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, Michigan). Family Love and Educational Practice: An Early Link that Makes an Enduring Difference.

 

April 9

Paul Rozin (Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor of Psychology, Dept. of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania). Preadaptation and the evolution and development of disgust.

 

April 16

Daniel Fessler (UCLA). Cringing before others' eyes: A cross-cultural investigation of the evolution of shame

EHAP's speaker series webpage.