The culture to which we belong – whatever it happens to be – fills us with its peculiar inventory. We are shaped by its mandates and its expectations, its anxieties and aspirations, its preferences and aversions. The basic texture of our inner lives is sewn from cultural threads. And all of this even though we got here, wherever we are, only as a matter of chance.
Mark Pagel, Wired for Culture (2012)
Jack and Oskar, identical twins, were born in Trinidad in 1932 to a Romanian-Jewish father and a German mother. A few months after their birth, their parents separated, and their lives took radically different turns. Jack remained in Trinidad with his father, and Oskar went to Germany to be raised as a Catholic by his mother and grandmother. Jack grew up Jewish and went on to join the Israeli navy. Oskar joined the Hitler youth. When the twins met at age twenty-one, each realized that they could have grown up as the other: “If we had been switched,” Oskar told Jack, “I would have been the Jew and you would have been the Nazi.” Despite this realization, they found each other’s political and religious views incomprehensible and intolerable, and they would never reconcile them.[1]
It is not hard to understand why the brothers, raised in different countries and religions, could not reconcile each other’s cultures. Cultures are not just based on geography and religion – they also encompass social class; socioeconomic status; race, ethnicity, or tribe; gender and sexuality; geographical region; profession, and so much more. In the US we see clashes between genders; between the police and communities of color; political clashes between conservatives and liberals, and much more – cultural differences are consistently in the spotlight. Cultural clashes affect not only groups, but also families and friendships, who cannot reconcile each other’s views.
Even school boards and public libraries are subject to acrimonious cultural wars. For example, in November 2021, the white nationalistic group Proud Boys showed up at a school board meeting in New Hanover County, N.C., before a vote on a mask mandate. They also attended a gathering in Downers Grove, Ill., where parents were trying to remove a nonbinary author’s graphic novel from public school libraries.[2]
As we shall see in the next Idea, cultural polarization represents a real threat to democracy and political stability. Many people believe that these clashes are intractable because they are “cultural”, and that the problem is systemic and so not much can be done. But is this true? Clearly, cultural change is not achieved easily or overnight, but in some situations, changes can happen fast. In 2004, for example, Americans opposed same-sex marriage by a margin of 60% to 31%. By 2019, the proportions had reversed: most Americans (61%) supported same-sex marriage, while 31% opposed it.[3]
Many of the cultural changes in the last two centuries or so have resulted in an increase in human rights, for example, freedom from slavery, freedom of expression, the right to vote, the right to have an equal education, and to marry the person we love regardless of race, religion, or gender. Understandably, there was shock when, in June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion. Clarence Thomas, one of the justices, hinted that gay marriage and access to contraception were also on the chopping block. Does this mark a change in culture, or is just a temporary setback? More importantly, can the cultural divide in this country be breached and if so, how? To shed light on these important questions we need a better understanding of cultures, why they clash and how they can change.
Understanding cultures: An evolutionary approach
As the case of Jack and Oscar shows, our core values and beliefs are deeply attached to the culture in which we are born and raised, which is pretty much an accident of birth. We develop psyches organized to function in one specific culture, and as a result, our psyches become dependent on that culture. This is just like how we learn our native language. Children learn English, Spanish or Japanese because those around them speak the language, not because they have come to the rational decision that they are better than the alternatives.
Box 19: Do Culture and Genes Influence Each Other? In the last few years, an influential theory has emerged that explains human behavior: culture-gene co-evolution. The main idea behind this is that cultural traits are adaptive; they evolve and influence the social and physical environments under which genetic selection operates. Genetic selection may be able to influence cultural values and even how people see themselves. One important cultural divide is between individualistic and collectivist cultures. While individualistic cultures encourage thinking of people as independent of each other, collectivist cultures endorse thinking of people as highly interconnected to one another. Japan and China are the prototypical examples of collectivist countries, while the United States is the quintessential individualistic country. One comprehensive study examined the association between individualism–collectivism and the frequency of the allele 5-HTTLPR (serotonin transporter functional polymorphism). The study found evidence that collectivistic cultures were significantly more likely to comprise individuals carrying the short (S) allele of the 5-HTTLPR – on average 70-80% of individuals in collectivist nations carry the S allele, compared to 40-45% in the typical individualistic country. Individuals carrying this form of the allele are at high risk of depression when faced with major life stress, such as interpersonal conflict.1 Despite having a higher incidence of the “anxiety” S allele in the population, the lifetime prevalence of anxiety and depression in collectivist countries is lower than that of individualist cultures. One possible explanation is that, by emphasizing social norms that encourage social harmony and mutual social support, collectivistic cultural values create a kind of “ecological niche” that helps to protects individuals from environmental risk factors that trigger anxiety and depression. But why is there a higher incidence of the S allele in the first place? One hypothesis is linked with exposure to pathogens such as malaria, typhus, and leprosy – historically prevalent in the collectivistic East Asian countries. By emphasizing conformity over individuality, collectivistic cultures are better able to promote reduced social and physical contact with outsiders, allowing for a more successful containment of infectious diseases. We have seen this in how China responded to the covid pandemic. They closed their borders and implemented draconian lockdowns, resulting in lower numbers of deaths compared to individualistic countries like the US. (However, as we saw in Idea 9, their “Zero Covid” policy backfired, and they had to reverse it after massive protests. This shows that traits that were adaptive in the past can become maladaptive in modern environments.) In summary, collectivistic values may have evolved as an adaptive response to infectious disease. These findings support the notion that the cultural values of individualism and collectivism likely evolved in response to geographic variability of infectious disease.2 1. Chiao, J. Y. & Blizinsky, K. D. (2010). Culture–gene coevolution of individualism–collectivism and the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR), Proceedings of the Royal Society B 277, pp529-37. 2. Taylor S. E. et al. (2006). Early family environment, current adversity, the serotonin transporter promoter polymorphism, and depressive symptomatology, Biological Psychiatry, 60, 671-76
The same applies to our moral learning process; studies show that beliefs help people’s brains categorize others and to view objects as good or bad, largely unconsciously. The evidence shows that these beliefs are learned from the prevailing culture.[4]
Once our cultural values “crystallize”, these can become so embedded that people are ready to die, or kill, for them. For example, in the last years, over 30 Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest over what many Tibetans see as a systematic attempt by the Chinese to suppress their culture. In the summer of 2011, the 33 years-old Norwegian Anders Breivik killed 77 people – eight with a car bomb and 69 gunned down at a youth camp – which he saw as a heroic act to protect Norway from multiculturalism. There is little doubt that the culture to which we belong shapes our minds in powerful ways (see also Pagel’s quote above).
We should, however, keep in mind that, in the end, it is humans that make cultures. In other words, people and cultures make each other up. There is growing evidence that the co-evolution of people and culture was the driving force behind the impressive growth of the human brain (see Box 19). To thrive in human society requires a complicated mix of closely calibrated altruism, cooperation, competition, domination, reciprocity, defection, and deceit. To form alliances and coalitions, humans need to measure the emotions of friend and foe alike, to judge the intentions of all of them, and to plan a strategy for personal social interactions.
These features are “imprinted” into our human nature. As we saw in Idea 5, humans are capable of great kindness but also despicable evil. In Idea 10, I reviewed evidence suggesting that the brain evolved not as a reasoning tool but as a social communication tool to persuade other fellow humans. The evidence also shows that the best way to deceive others is to first deceive ourselves; we probably became self-deceivers to better fool other human beings.
Cultural values are not random or arbitrary; they have evolved and are adaptive, the product of culture-nature interactions. If the environment changes, cultures, like values, should change accordingly. The covid-19 crises we are collectively facing lends support for this thesis. If there is anything we should be taking away from the past few years, it is that autonomy and self-reliance are inadequate for 21st-century problems such as pandemic disease, climate change, structural racism, and many other societal issues. These are collective problems not just personal problems.
The American predilection for individualism has proven to be a public health risk during the pandemic, one that puts everyone, especially the most vulnerable people, at risk. As Ed Young, a staff writer for The Atlantic states, “during a pandemic, no one’s health is fully in their own hands.”[5] Yet the belief that their health is in their own hands led many Americans to reject advice from doctors and public health officials, such as wearing facemasks and get vaccinated, in favor of unproven remedies like Ivermectin, a medication that treats parasitic diseases. The result was a great number of unnecessary deaths.
How culture and mind “make each other up”
One critical area of research that has received relatively less attention is on the mechanisms through which cultures and humans “make each other up.” In Idea 13 we saw that for complex human behavior it is difficult, or even impossible, to disentangle nature from nurture. In other words, no action is caused by either individual psychological features or external influences: both are always at work. For example, what caused Breivik to kill eight people with a car bomb and gun down another 69, mostly teenagers? According to two court-appointed psychiatrists, Breivik was psychotic and paranoid schizophrenic at the time of the attacks. This is not an explanation, though: most paranoid schizophrenics do not become mass murderers. In a 38-page letter he wrote in jail, Breivik said that being deemed criminally insane was unbearable to him. He saw himself as a political activist protecting Norway from multiculturalism and a Muslim takeover.
In a subsequent evaluation, other psychiatrists concluded that Breivik was not psychotic during the attacks. He was influenced by ultranationalist right-wing militant groups that preach the deportation of all Muslims from Europe and the preservation of Christendom. Moreover, he was able to carry out his mass-killing plans because he had access to bomb-making methods and materials, and he was able to legally purchase semi-automatic weapons.[6] These factors are common in massacres in the US, where assault rifles are easily available.
Figure 3: The Four Levels of the Culture Cycle (From Hamedani & Markus (2019))
The question then, is not what specific factor caused Breivik to do what he did, but how all these levels of factors interact to produce the aberrant behavior. And very importantly, what can we change in our culture to prevent this act, and others like it, from happening again? This is, of course, a complex question, and a vast amount of both theoretical and empirical work remains before science can provide meaningful answers. One idea to consider is the culture cycle, a concept developed by Hazel Markus from Stanford University and Shinobu Kitayama of Kyoto University.[7] In essence, the culture cycle can be described as the iterative, recursive process by which people and cultures make each other up.
The culture cycle concept involves four nested levels, which are shown in Figure 3. It starts from either the left-hand side or the right-hand side. From the left, the ideas, institutions, and interactions of an individual’s mix of cultures shape the self, so that a person thinks, feels, and acts in ways that reflect and perpetuate these cultures. From the right, individuals participate in and create (i.e., reinforce, resist, and/or change) cultures to which other people, both in the present and throughout time, adapt.
As indicated in Figure 3, culture is not separate from the individual; it is a product of human activity. Each individual person’s activity, as well as the thoughts, feelings, and actions of those individuals who have come before that person, are involved. As cultural content changes, the self and its psychological functioning changes in turn. At the same time, peoples’ thoughts, feelings, and actions (i.e., the self) reinforce, and sometimes change, the socio-cultural forms that shape their lives. Moreover, culture is not only dynamic but cumulative, in that the socio-cultural ideas, practices, institutions, products, artifacts, economic factors, and ecological factors that comprise it are constantly invented, accumulated, and changed over time.
This dynamic culture cycle involves many types of social distinctions, from the micro (occupation, organization, neighborhood, hobby, genre preference, family, etc.) to the macro (nation, race, ethnicity, region, religion, gender, social class, generation, etc.) In this way, the culture cycle framework integrates the perspectives from different disciplines, including economics, psychology and the social sciences, and captures how these levels of analyses relate to each other. It provides useful insights into how we may “reverse” engineer our own culture: a sustainable change at one level will usually require change at all levels.
In their 2012 book Why Nations Fail, the MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and Harvard political scientist James A. Robinson argue that the key differentiator between countries is “institutions.” Basically, nations thrive when they develop “inclusive” political and economic institutions, and they fail when those institutions become “extractive” and concentrate power and opportunity in the hands of only a few (as it is increasingly happening in the United States right now). For the most part, people may be unaware of all the institutions, laws, and policies at play in their cultures. Yet they exert a formidable force by providing incentives that foster certain practices, interactions, and behaviors, while inhibiting others.
Let’s look at one example from Why Nations Fail: North Korea is one of the poorest countries on earth, while the people in South Korea are among the richest. The difference between the Koreas, the authors argue, is due to the politics that created completely different institutional trajectories. The people of the north have endured decades of famine and political repression, and dysfunctional economic institutions. In contrast, the south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people.
Cultural clashes and how to avoid them
Most of us would agree that inclusive political, economic and educational institutions are critical for economic growth, and that extractive institutions inhibit growth and prosperity. As the case of Korea shows, “inclusive economic institutions that enforce property rights, create a level playing field, and encourage investments in new technologies and skills are more conducive to economic growth than extractive economic institutions that are structured to extract resources from the many by the few.”[8] Nonetheless, the framework provided by the culture cycle helps to explain why it is so difficult to sustainably change institutions.
As Acemoglu and Robinson point out, the powerful (and other groups) may not agree on what are the best institutions for the country and may resist change if it goes against their self-interest. This is the case now with many US institutions. Repeatedly, politicians in congress sabotage each other’s bills for political gain, without any consideration for the population’s welfare. Not surprisingly, Americans have lost faith in their institutions. According to a recent report by the Gallup organization, just 27% of Americans expressed confidence in their institutions — the lowest level of trust since the questions were first asked half a century ago.[9]
Many of today’s cultural clashes are the result of devaluing the less powerful, or non-dominant, in contrast with the most powerful or dominant. This suggests that one effective way of addressing current culture clashes and divides would be to create more inclusive, equal, and effective institutions and practices. The push for change toward more inclusive institutions should come from an educated population that understands their rights and responsibilities.
The educational institutions in turn should be able to influence the everyday practices and artifacts (through school, work, media, etc.) which ultimately shape our individual selves. Thus, a country’s ability to develop inclusive political and economic institutions will be hampered if educational institutions are weak or wanting.
Let us examine, for example, the cultural and psychological dynamics that underlie one culture clash prevalent on US American college and university campuses today: the clash between underrepresented students (e.g., low-income students and/or students of color) and the mainstream (e.g., middle- to upper-class and White) culture of higher education. Higher education may be one of the central forces driving our abysmal class divide. In his 2019 book The Meritocracy Trap, Yale Law School professor Daniel Markovits argues that elite universities’ sifting, and sorting of students has resulted in a “caste system” of rank and status that, just like nobility titles, is passed from parent to child. Markovits argues that merit is “a pretense, constructed to rationalize an unjust distribution of advantage.” Indeed, over the years, meritocracy has become the opposite of what it purports to be: It is “a mechanism for the concentration and dynastic transmission of wealth, privilege and caste across generations.”[10]
As a result, students from low-income or working-class backgrounds, including students of color, often feel excluded in US schools due to threats to their social identities (e.g., stereotypes about race and intelligence) or mismatches with their interdependent norms and values. These experiences of exclusion can lead students to question whether they fit or belong in college.
Let’s look at the potential cultural clashes at each level of the culture cycle, with college life as an example:[11]
At the individuals level: research shows that underrepresented students often feel like they do not fit or belong on college and university campuses, which can be due to repeated experiences like microaggressions that take place.
At the interactions level: during intergroup encounters in classrooms or in the dorms. These factors can lead students to experience the college environment as threatening to their social identities and to view their social differences as “deficits” or as something that puts them at a disadvantage.
At the institutions level: these threats to fit or belonging can be reinforced in multiple ways, including a lack of representation in the college curriculum (e.g., not seeing people with your background reflected in lecture examples, readings, and research), and in positions of authority throughout the university.
At the ideas level: while many colleges and universities claim to value diversity, they rarely do so in ways that include and affirm underrepresented students’ backgrounds and experiences — that challenge prevailing assumptions about what it means to be a smart, educated, or successful student. Underrepresented students’ backgrounds and ways of being, therefore, are frequently devalued or seen as deficits in mainstream institutions rather than valued and seen as assets or resources, which undermines such commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion and reinforces color- or identity-blindness.
How we can all help to change our culture
According to the culture cycle model, to change their cultures, colleges and universities need to do more to challenge how students’ social differences are experienced and constructed at each layer of the culture cycle. It is not enough to make improvements in just one or two layers. The evidence provided by several empirical studies suggests several approaches can help:
to help under-represented students feel more included and empowered at the individuals level, colleges and universities can do more to value and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
At the ideas level, colleges and universities should integrate these crucial components in their mission statements and institutional strategies to provide a high-quality education for a 21st century workforce.
Next, at the institutions level, they can integrate intergroup dialogue classes and other learning experiences about diversity, equity, and inclusion into the college curriculum for all students and across all courses of study, as well as implement hiring and promotion policies that foster the diversification of faculty and administrators.
At the interactions level, colleges and universities can better support students by providing opportunities for them to expand their networks and connect with mentors and alumni that share their backgrounds and have found pathways to success.[12]
This example illustrates why it is so difficult to change well-established cultures and practices. Unless changes are made at all levels of the culture cycle, it is unlikely that the culture at large will change. Ideally, culture change is most likely to progress and have the greatest impact when there is change at each level of the culture cycle, and these changes work together to support one another.
What about the cultural changes we looked at earlier: the recent overturning of the constitutional right to abortion and the possible constraint of rights such as gay marriage; does this mark a nation-wide cultural change? Granted, the Supreme Court and some right-wing institutions like red state governments. evangelical churches, and religious schools support this trend to eliminate or limit some individual rights (except for carrying guns). Yet, most Americans, in particular the younger generations, support the right to abortion and gay marriage. Thus, coopting some institutions and laws to force cultural change is bound to fail, long-term.
The unpopular anti-abortion laws will face further pushback, especially if the courts enforce new abortion restrictions, including jailing or fining anyone that “aids and abets” an abortion. People may go to prison but, as we all know, it will not stop abortions from happening, the same way that prohibition – a mass movement also driven by religious zeal – one century ago did not stop people from drinking. In fact, it may provoke a strong counterreaction at the ideas and individuals level, prompting change in the opposite direction, toward more individual freedom.
To conclude: Understand your own culture
This brief analysis shows how individuals interact with institutions, ideas, and each other to generate culture. A major obstacle for change, as we have seen, is that most people do not even realize that they have cultures. Yet many are ready to die or kill for the sake of their cultural beliefs. We are all part of multiple culture cycles, and so it is essential that we understand how culture and people make each other up. It is also clear that we all need to understand and use the culture cycle more skillfully, especially as modern life becomes more complex and economic, political, social, and environmental problems become more acute.
[1] Segal, N. L. (2005). Indivisible by two: Lives of extraordinary twins. Harvard University Press, p.70 [2]“Members of white nationalist group show up at NHC school board meeting,” by WECT staff. WECT News, Nov 9, 2021. [3] “Attitudes on Same-Sex Marriage Public opinion on same-sex marriage.” Pew Research Center. May 14, 2019. [4]Amodio, D. M. & Lieberman, M. D. (2009). Pictures in our heads: Contributions of fMRI to the study of prejudice and stereotyping. In T. Nelson (ed.) Handbook of Prejudice and Discrimination (pp. 345-363). Taylor & Francis. See also Shweder, R., Mahapatra, M. & Miller, J. G. (1990). Culture and moral development. In J. W. Stigler, R. A. Shweder, & G. Herdt (Eds.), Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development. Cambridge University Press, 130-204 [5] “The Fundamental Question of the Pandemic is Shifting,” by Ed Young. The Atlantic, Jun 9, 2021. [6]Breivik's far-right militant ideology is described in a compendium of texts, titled 2083 – A European Declaration of Independence and distributed electronically by Breivik on the day of the attacks. See “Norway killer-'insane' diagnosis 'worse than death',” Reuters, The New York Times, April 4, 2012, and also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik. [7] Markus, H. R. & Kitayama, S. (2010). Cultures and selves: A cycle of mutual constitution, Psychological Science, 5, 420-30. Also, Hamedani M. Y. & Markus, H. R. (2019). Understanding Culture Clashes and Catalyzing Change: A Culture Cycle Approach. Frontiers in Psychology. Vol. 10, Article 700. 1-7. [8] Acemoglu, D. & Robinson, J. (2012). Why economies fail: the origin of power, prosperity and poverty, Crown, pp.429-30. [9] “Confidence in U.S. Institutions Down; Average at New Low,” by Jeffrey M. Jones. Gallup. Jul 5, 2022. [10] Markovits, D. (2019). The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite. Penguin Books. [11] This example was taken from Hamedani M. Y. & Markus, H. R. (2019). Understanding Culture Clashes and Catalyzing Change: A Culture Cycle Approach. Frontiers in Psychology. Vol. 10, Article 700. 1-7. [12]Op. Cit.
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