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9 - Taking culture and context into account in understanding moraldevelopment
- from Commentaries
- Edited by Lene Arnett Jensen, Clark University, Massachusetts
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- Book:
- Moral Development in a Global World
- Published online:
- 05 May 2015
- Print publication:
- 02 April 2015, pp 195-203
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59 - Bias in the Review Process
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- By Joan G. Miller, New School for Social Research
- Edited by Robert J. Sternberg, Cornell University, New York, Susan T. Fiske, Princeton University, New Jersey
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- Book:
- Ethical Challenges in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences
- Published online:
- 05 February 2015
- Print publication:
- 26 January 2015, pp 183-185
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Summary
This example concerns the importance of not being swayed by political or other self-interested considerations in evaluating the merit of scientific research and the need to remain open to theoretical perspectives that may be challenging of dominant paradigms. The example involves specifically the downplaying of critical opinions that I observed as a member of a site visit panel charged with appraising the merit of a grant application exploring neurological bases of psychology. As a member of this site visit panel, I observed practices, described in this chapter, that were designed to shield the grant application from negative appraisal.
One of the practices involved the site visit review panel dismissing dissenting opinions that raised questions about certain basic assumptions of the paradigm involved. I had been selected for the site visit panel as an expert on issues of culture who had been brought in to provide a perspective complementing that of the other faculty on the panel, whose expertise, if not disciplinary affiliation, was in biology and neuroscience. As members of the review panel, we were asked to write individual critical reviews of the funding proposal, with these reviews subject to discussion and further input by others in our group. In my review, I articulated some of the same critiques of neuroscience that have been raised in recent years by major theorists who, while highly supportive of neuroscience work in psychology, have raised concerns about its tendencies, in cases, to adopt stances that are reductionist or deterministic, and who have pointed to the difficulties entailed in mapping brain processes onto constructs in psychology (e.g., Barrett, 2009; Kagan, 2007). The other faculty on the site visit panel objected to my raising any of these types of concerns and asked to have everything that I had written deleted from the final site visit report (something that had not been done in the case of comments written by anyone else on our panel). I was given little opportunity to defend my views and no opportunity to include my concerns in the final report as a dissenting opinion.
Contributors
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- By Nicholas B. Allen, Stephanie Assuras, Robert M. Bilder, Joan C. Borod, John L. Bradshaw, Warrick J. Brewer, Ariel Brown, Nik Brown, Tyrone Cannon, Audrey Carstensen, Cameron S. Carter, Luke Clark, Phyllis Chua, Thilo Deckersbach, Richard A. Depue, Tali Ditman, Aleksey Dumer, David E. Fleck, Lara Foland-Ross, Judith M. Ford, Nelson Freimer, Paolo Fusar-Poli, Nathan A. Gates, Terry E. Goldberg, George Graham, Igor Grant, Melissa J. Green, Michelle M. Halfacre, Wendy Heller, John D. Herrington, Garry D. Honey, Jennifer E. Iudicello, Henry J. Jackson, J. David Jentsch, Donald Kalar, Paul Keedwell, Ester Klimkeit, Nancy S. Koven, Donna A. Kreher, Gina R. Kuperberg, Edythe London, Dan I. Lubman, Daniel H. Mathalon, Patrick D. McGorry, Philip McGuire, George R. Mangun, Gregory A. Miller, Albert Newen, Jack B. Nitschke, Jaak Panksepp, Christos Pantelis, Mary Philips, Russell A. Poldrack, Scott L. Rauch, Susan M. Ravizza, Steven Paul Reise, Nicole Rinehart, Angela Rizk-Jackson, Trevor W. Robbins, Tamara A. Russell, Fred W. Sabb, Cary R. Savage, Kimberley R. Savage, J. Cobb Scott, Marc L. Seal, Larry J. Seidman, Paula K. Shear, Marisa M. Silveri, Nadia Solowij, Laura Southgate, G. Lynn Stephens, D. Stott Parker, Stephen M. Strakowski, Simon A. Surguladze, Kate Tchanturia, René Testa, Janet Treasure, Eve M. Valera, Kai Vogeley, Anthony P. Weiss, Sarah Whittle, Stephen J. Wood, Steven Paul Woods, Murat Yücel, Deborah A. Yurgelun-Todd
- Edited by Stephen J. Wood, University of Melbourne, Nicholas B. Allen, University of Melbourne, Christos Pantelis, University of Melbourne
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- Book:
- The Neuropsychology of Mental Illness
- Published online:
- 10 May 2010
- Print publication:
- 01 October 2009, pp xv-xx
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7 - Integrating cultural, psychological and biological perspectives in understanding child development
- Edited by Heidi Keller, Universität Osnabrück, Ype H. Poortinga, Universiteit van Tilburg, The Netherlands, Axel Schölmerich, Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany
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- Book:
- Between Culture and Biology
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 28 November 2002, pp 136-156
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Summary
Recent years have seen a renewed interest in understanding biological influences on development. This interest has been stimulated, at least in part, by new theoretical developments in evolutionary theory and neuroscience that are extending attention to higher-order psychological functions, as well as by ground breaking technological advances that make possible mapping of brain cell activity in ways not previously possible (e.g. Berntson and Cacioppo, 2000; Pinker, 1997). However, to date there has been only limited effort to integrate these recent biologically based initiatives with an attention to culture. This neglect is particularly striking, given the invigoration that has occurred in recent years in cultural perspectives, with the growing body of theoretical and empirical work in cultural psychology (e.g. Cole, 1996; Miller, 1997; Shweder, 1990; Shweder et al., 1998). Such work is highlighting the role of cultural meanings and practices in completing the self and in affecting the form of basic psychological processes.
The present chapter examines the question of how to develop approaches to understanding child development that treat biological and cultural factors as sources of patterning of developmental change. The argument is made that it is critical to avoid the reductionism of assuming that biological perspectives provide a deeper level of explanation that supplants cultural analyses, just as it is critical to give greater attention to biological considerations in cultural accounts.
The chapter is organized in four sections.
9 - A cultural-psychology perspective on intelligence
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- By Joan G. Miller, Yale University
- Edited by Robert J. Sternberg, Yale University, Connecticut, Elena Grigorenko, Yale University, Connecticut
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- Book:
- Intelligence, Heredity and Environment
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 28 January 1996, pp 269-302
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Summary
Those psychologists who do work with human beings may fail entirely to see the relevance of culture.… [Psychologists accept that while everyone has culture, it is mainly relevant elsewhere where it produces certain exotic effects that anthropologists study. It is as if others have culture while we have human nature.
(Schwartz, 1992, p. 329)This chapter examines the role of culture in intelligence and the implications that a cultural perspective has for understanding hereditary and environmental influences on intelligence. This discussion builds on work being conducted in the interdisciplinary perspective of cultural psychology (Bruner, 1990; Cole, 1990; Miller, 1994a; Shweder, 1990; Shweder & Sullivan, 1993). From this perspective, psychological processes are viewed as, in part, contextually and culturally constituted, if not also as contextually and culturally variable. Culture is seen as influencing which behaviors are considered to be intelligent, the processes underlying intelligent behavior, and the direction of intellectual development. It thus is essential to any theory that is oriented to understanding the respective contributions of hereditary and environmental factors in intelligence.
Traditionally, cultural considerations have tended to be taken into account in theories of intelligence solely from an ecological perspective, if at all (e.g., Berry, 1976; Dasen, Berry, & Witkin, 1979). From this ecological perspective, cultural forms are treated exclusively in functional terms as adapted to objective constraints given in the physical setting or in the social structure. While not denying the importance of an ecological view of culture, this chapter argues that cultural factors need to be understood as influences on intelligence that vary independently of ecological constraints.
3 - Culture and moral development
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- By Richard A. Shweder, University of Chicago, Manamohan Mahapatra, Joan G. Miller
- Edited by James W. Stigler, University of Chicago, Richard A. Schweder, University of Chicago, Gilbert Herdt, University of Chicago
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- Book:
- Cultural Psychology
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 26 January 1990, pp 130-204
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Summary
This essay reports the results of a cross-cultural development study of ideas about the moral (its form) and ideas about what is moral (its content). The informants for the study are children, five to thirteen years of age, and adults, male and female, from Brahman and “Untouchable” families in the orthodox Hindu temple town of Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India; and from Judeo-Christian families in the secular university neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago, Illinois.
One aim of the essay is to assess the strengths and limitations of two prominent and important theories about the origins and development of moral understandings: Kohlberg's “cognitive developmental” theory (Kohlberg 1969, 1981; Kohlberg, Levine, and Hewer 1983) and Turiel's “social interactional” theory (Turiel 1979, 1983; Nucci and Turiel 1978; Turiel and Smetana 1984). A second aim is to highlight the role of social communication processes in the ontogeny of moral understandings by outlining a “social communication” theory of moral development and using it to interpret the similarities and differences in the moral understandings of children and adults in the two cultures.
Three theories of moral development
The three theories to be discussed present different portraits and accounts of the ontogenetic origins of the idea of a moral obligation. Kohlberg's “cognitive developmental” theory hypothesizes that a genuine understanding of the idea of a moral obligation (stages five and six) has its origins in the idea of a conventional, or consensusbased, obligation (stages three and four).
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