C Cultural Universals features of culture, society, language, behavior, and psyche for which there are no known excep- Alfredo Ardila tion and are found worldwide in every cultural Sechenov University, Moscow, Russia group. He presents a list of hundreds of universals Albizu University, Miami, FL, USA divided in several groups, including language and cognition (for instance, color terms for black and white, antonyms, baby talk), society (such as, kin Synonyms groups, cooperation, division of labor), beliefs (including, beliefs about death, belief in supernat- Anthropological universals; Human universals ural, beliefs about fortune and misfortune), and technology (such as, tool making, fire, weapons) (the complete list of the universals proposed by Definition Brown can be found in Pinker’s(2002) link included in its reference). It can be assumed that Cultural universals are element, patterns, charac- those features, traits, and behaviors found in every teristics, or institution that are found in all human human group represent fundamental evolutionary cultures worldwide. adaptations and have a significant survival value. In his 2004 paper, Brown points out that in cultural realm, human universals include leg- Introduction ends, myths, daily routines, rules, concepts of luck and precedent, body adornment, and the use The idea that there are cultural universals has and development of instruments. Furthermore, in existed for a long time in anthropology and can the areas of language, universals include gram- be found in some classical anthropology litera- mar, phonemes, polysemy, metonymy, antonyms, ture, including authors such as Durkheim, and an inverse ratio between the frequency of use Murdock, and Lévi-Strauss, and an idea that was and the length of words. Moreover, in the social further developed during the mid- and late twen- dominion, universals include a division of labor, tieth century. social groups, age grading, family, kinship sys- Several authors have referred to diverse cul- tems, ethnocentrism, play, exchange, cooperation, tural universals. However, the most influential and and reciprocity. While in the behavioral realm, best-known proposal is Brown’s proposal initially universals include aggression, gestures, gossip, presented in 1991 and again later in 2000 and and facial expressions; in the area of the mind, 2004. Brown refers to human universals as those universals include emotions, dichotomous © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 T. K. Shackelford, V. A. Weekes-Shackelford (eds.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2796-1 2 Cultural Universals thinking, wariness around or fear of snakes, empa- fundamental conceptualization system, and thy, and psychological defense mechanisms. hence, not only differences but also similarities However, there are many universals that cannot in word categorization should be recognized. be easily classified in one or another of these Kay et al. (1991) analyzed data from 111 lan- areas. For instance, kinship terminologies can be guages in the World Color Survey and confirmed simultaneously interpreted as social, cultural, and the main lines of the original Berlin and Kay linguistic. The concept of property is both cultural hypothesis (1969, 1991), which assumes that and social, where taking turns speaking in conver- there are semantic universals in basic color vocab- sation is simultaneously linguistic, social, and ulary. This analysis demonstrated that visual behavioral. physiology plays a role in the evolutionary devel- It can be conjecture that diverse behavioral opment of basic color lexicon, constraining the universals quite probably have distinctive, even possible composite categories to a small number specific, neural substrate, and consequently are of those theoretically possible. One composite also universals of mind. category, yellow/green, is clearly attested in the Some anthropologists, however, have data, but the sequence leading to its emergence is questioned the existence of cultural universals, not clear. Colors appear in language following a taking a cultural relativist perspective. According specific sequence, but the two universal colors to this perspective, behaviors and beliefs should found in every language are white and black be understood in relation to the individual’s own (so-called achromatic colors). culture, instead of being compared with other Similarities in biological classification systems people’s criteria. Some researchers consider that have attracted special attention. It has been there are significant differences in perceiving and observed that all cultural groups think about living reasoning abilities among different cultural group; elements – plants and animals – in highly structure for instance, when comparing Asians and West- ways (Atran 1998). Folk taxonomies are devel- erners (Nisbett 2003), differences in reasoning oped across cultures; these taxonomies are usually strategies can be found. Other researchers insist different, but they also present important similar- that, regardless of apparent differences among ities. It may be assumed that such taxonomies are different cultures, there are robust underlying the results of human thinking strategies. Hence, cross-cultural universals, observed in different similarities in classifications systems found when areas, for example, classification systems (Atran comparing different human groups are reflecting 1998), color perception (Berlin and Kay 1969), human basic cognitive schemas. and even basic emotions (Wierzbicka 1999). Other quite different types of universals have been pointed out. For example, frequently it has been assumed that there are universal emotions Cultural Universals Characteristics and in all the languages certain emotions are dis- tinguished (Wierzbicka 1999). As an illustration, Proposals of cultural universals have been studied similarities in emotional terms across languages from different perspectives, in different areas, and have been proposed. For instance, Romney, including diverse research procedures. This is a Moore, and Rusch (1997) analyzed the semantic research topic that has attracted attention not only structure of 15 emotion words for monolingual in anthropology but also in psychology, sociol- English-speaking and monolingual and bilingual ogy, linguistics, and other research areas. Japanese subjects. A major question in this study Some universals in perception, classification was to contrast a single shared emotion model for systems, emotional terms, and the use of some English and Japanese versus culture-specific specific terms will be examined below. Cross- models for each language. Results supported a cultural similarities in the way perceptual experi- shared model for the semantic structure of emo- ence is conceptualized have been suggested. tion terms; nonetheless, some important differ- Vocabulary in each language represents the ences were also found between English and Cultural Universals 3 Japanese structures. Interesting to note, the physical consequences. Current studies usually Japanese bilingual participants used a model do not include cross-cultural elements of gratitude more similar to English when performing tasks and have tended to consider gratitude as an emo- in English than when performing the same task in tion associated with a linguistic practice, as in Japanese. English and other Indo-European languages. Cordaro et al. (2018) used a Facial Action Floyd et al. raised the question, to what extent Coding System coded over 2600 free-response people express gratitude in different societies, by facial and body displays of 22 emotions in focusing on episodes of everyday life where China, India, Japan, Korea, and the United States someone seeks and obtains a good, service, or to test five different hypotheses about the univer- support from another. These episodes were com- sality and cultural variations in in emotional pared across eight different languages from five expression. The authors were able to identify continents. It was found that expressions of grat- cross-culturally some core patterns of expressive itude in these episodes are quite unusual, behaviors for each of the 22 emotions. They also suggesting that social reciprocity in everyday life demonstrated systematic cultural variations of activities are based on implicit comprehension of expressive behaviors for each cultural group. rights and duties surrounding reciprocal collabo- These variations were shaped by the cultural ration. It also was observed in minor cross- resemblance in values. It was concluded that cultural variations, with relatively higher rates there are universal core patterns, and also varia- gratitude expressions in Western European tions on emotional expression in each of the stud- languages – English and Italian. Noteworthy, ied cultural groups. some Amerindian languages have few, if any, Scherer and Fontaine (2019) observe that the gratitude words, equivalent to “thank you.” For Component Process Model of Emotions claims instance, Guarani and Aymara languages use that the different components included in the emo- Spanish borrowings for “thank you”: agradese tion (i.e., action tendencies, physiological reac- (from Spanish, agradecer, to thank) is used in tions, expressions, and feeling experiences) are Guarani language (spoken specially in Paraguay basically the results of cognitive appraisals. The but also in Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil); “thank authors performed a secondary analysis of the you” in Aymara language