MORALITY WHEN THE MIND IS OPAQUE: INTENT VS. OUTCOME ACROSS THE LIFESPAN IN YASAWA, FIJI by Rita Anne McNamara B.A., Washington University in St. Louis, 2009 M.A., The University of British Columbia, 2012 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Psychology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) August 2016 © Rita Anne McNamara 2016 Abstract The ability to infer the presence and contents of other minds is one of the most powerful cognitive tools humans use to navigate our social worlds. Culture is an essential part of these social worlds. But how do mind and culture influence each other? Does culture merely shape the social situations that people navigate in the course of daily life, or does culture fundamentally alter the way that we perceive each other as we move through these social worlds? This dissertation examines how culture shapes mind through the specific example of people living in Yasawa, Fiji. Yasawan culture includes social norms that prohibit discussing others’ actions in terms of mental states – part of a wider phenomenon known as Opacity of Mind, documented in small-scale Indigenous societies and especially prevalent around the Pacific. This culturally- transmitted approach to thinking about minds offers an interesting contrast to the North American focus on minds and internal dispositions as the source of all behaviour. Across five studies, the research presented in this dissertation documents cross-cultural differences in how adults think about beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and social situations. This research also examines how underlying differences in everyday thinking about minds can be applied to social situations, resulting in different emphases on intent or outcome in moral judgments. These differences in intent vs. outcome focus are further shown to be more influenced by culture later in life; children in both cultures show similar degrees of intent focus while North American adults show greater intent focus and Yasawan adults show lower intent focus. This suggests that mental state inference and intentionality reasoning may be a part of core human cognition that is modulated by cultural influences – both increasing and decreasing mentalizing focus – into adulthood. More importantly, this work demonstrates the need to take cultural differences documented outside of urban laboratory research as a serious part of the research process. Cultural differences in adult ii psychological processing should not be considered as variation around an ideal prototype (conveniently documented in Western samples), but as reactions to specific socio-ecological pressures and historical influences that shape individuals into enculturated beings. iii Preface The studies reported here are collaborative projects, and I am the primary author of each. My primary contributions are study designs, fieldwork conducted in Yasawa, analyses, and authorship. The introductory review in chapter 1 and the conclusions in chapter 5 connect the current research to the wider body of work on these topics. They also are intended to integrate disparate threads of research and theory on individual and cultural-level influences on thinking about minds within social cognitive processing. I am the sole author of both of these chapters. These chapters present review of existing data and commentary on how the present research fits within this existing body of work; therefore these chapters do not require ethical review. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are all manuscripts currently in preparation. All of the research presented in these chapters was approved by the University of British Columbia Behavioural Research Ethics Board (BREB certificate # H12-01044). For chapters 2 and 3, the author order is McNamara, R.A., Willard, A.K., Norenzayan, A., and Henrich, J. Chapter 2 studies 1 and 2 and for chapter 3 study 1 were designed as a collaboration between Willard and myself. Willard conducted field research with Indo-Fijian participants. I designed the experiment in chapter 3 study 2. I conducted the data analysis and wrote the manuscripts. For chapter 4, the author order is McNamara, R.A., Hamlin, J.K., and Henrich, J. General study design is based on previous work by Hamlin. I adapted study design to Yasawan contexts, helped construct stimuli along with research assistants in Hamlin’s lab, collected child and adult data in Yasawa and North America, analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript. iv Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ii Preface ........................................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... v List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ xi List of Figures ........................................................................................................................... xviii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... xxi Chapter 1. Introduction: Mentalizing as a Core Foundation of Culture ............................. 1 1.1 Theory, Evolution, and Development of Mentalizing ................................................... 2 1.1.1 Evolutionary History: Mentalizing in Non-Human Primates .............................................. 5 1.1.2 Mentalizing Development and Disorders ........................................................................... 6 1.1.2.1 General Patterns in Timing and Sequence of Mentalizing Development .................... 7 1.1.2.2 Individual and Cultural Influences on Mentalizing Development ............................. 10 1.1.2.3 Mentalizing Deficits in Psychological Disorders ....................................................... 11 1.2 Why Think About Minds? Mentalizing in Competition and Cooperation .................. 12 1.2.1 Define Behavioural Expectations Through Social Structure ............................................. 13 1.2.2 Mentalizing to Coordinate Action ..................................................................................... 14 1.2.3 Empathic Processing and Decisions About Cooperation or Competition ......................... 15 1.2.4 Thinking About Intent in Competition .............................................................................. 17 1.3 Mentalizing and Culture .............................................................................................. 18 1.3.1 Cultural Influences on Mentalizing Processes ................................................................... 19 1.3.2 Mentalizing and Overimitation: Cumulative Cultural Learning and Norms ..................... 20 1.3.3 Mentalizing and Religion ................................................................................................... 23 1.3.4 Mentalizing and Moralizing ............................................................................................... 26 1.4 Overview of Chapters .................................................................................................. 29 v Chapter 2. Thinking About Thoughts When the Mind is Unknowable: Cross-Cultural Differences in Mental State Reasoning ..................................................................................... 32 2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 32 2.1.1 Theory of Mind and Empathy in WEIRD Cultures ........................................................... 34 2.1.2 Assessing Thoughts about Minds: False Beliefs and Empathy Quotients ......................... 35 2.1.3 Mentalizing Across Cultures: Ethno-Psychologies and Social Selves .............................. 38 2.1.4 Opacity of Mind ................................................................................................................. 41 2.2 Overview of Studies ..................................................................................................... 44 2.2.1 Why Fiji? Indigenous Yasawans and Indo-Fijians ............................................................ 45 2.2.1.1 Yasawa Island ............................................................................................................. 46 2.2.1.2 Lovu Village, Viti Levu ............................................................................................. 47 2.3 Study 1: False Belief When Others’ Minds are Private ............................................... 48 2.3.1 Method ............................................................................................................................... 48 2.3.1.1 Participants ................................................................................................................. 49 2.3.1.2 Materials ..................................................................................................................... 49 2.3.2 Results ................................................................................................................................ 51 2.3.3 Discussion .........................................................................................................................