In this episode we discuss what culture is NOT!
Recall that culture is a pool of information, spread out over the population that is acquired through the process of social learning. While the ability to acquire culture is innate (we have evolved psychological mechanisms which allow us to learn culture) you cannot predict what someone’s culture will be just by observing their genome. This can only be done by examining their social environment. Anything which we socially learn is cultural.
However, behaviors which are innate are not cultural. Sex typical behavior is not acquired culturally. Yes, read that two times, men and women have behavioral differences. The sexes have faced different adaptive problems over our evolutionary history and thus have differing psychologies to deal with said problems (Joyce Benenson has fantastic work on this topic and we will cover it in the season on sex)!
Moreover, things which we individually learn are not cultural. If you individually figure out that red mushrooms give you diarrhea and avoid eating them that is not culture. But if someone acquires the information from you that is cultural.
Last we discuss how culture can override innate behaviors, such as our propensity to avoid bitter foods. We temper our example by saying that genes have culture on a leash, the art is in figuring out how long that leash is. The example of Women In Israeli Kibbutz revolting against collective child rearing is used to showcase this point.
