06 Culture and Psychology


[Teacher at BYU-Idaho giving a lecture in class.]

Brother Ivers: Okay. Now, today, we're going to talk about culture and psychology and about some things that I think are kind of deep, which are good. Hopefully it'll make you think.

And did I, in here, ever tell you about my iguana-hunt story? I never told you about my iguana-hunt story. Okay. See, as I mentioned here a while back, culture has a way of shaming people in situations where they would not be shamed in other cultures. There is such a thing called culturally-created shame, which accounts for maybe the majority of shame out there.

One time, for example, I found myself in the jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula. And I was in a Myan village. I had some Ricks College students there with me. And I really enjoyed that time in the Myan village. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life for several reasons. One of the reasons was that I was the tallest guy in the village.

[Laughter]

Brother Ivers: That's right. My only regret is there was no basketball court in that village. I could have lived out all of my fantasies. The Myans are very, very short people. The tallest guy in the village came up to my nose. The tallest woman in the village came up to my shoulders.

But, anyway, when I was there, this old man, about 80 years old, was an experienced iguana hunter. And he decided—he had always caught his iguana; he was well known for being a great iguana hunter. And he decided he was going to take some of the students on an iguana-hunting trip. And I said, “Cool. Yeah, go ahead and take some.” So he took some of the students. I decided to stay there rather than catch an iguana. I didn't think it was my thing, you know. And they went on that trip out to the jungle, and a terrible cultural event happened. They did not catch an iguana. And the old man came back, and he was just almost in tears. And he sat down on a log in our camp and just put his head in his hands like this. And I felt sorry for the guy. He was so humiliated. And so I—and then he said, “Can I take you guys on another trip?” And I decided that I would go this time, and maybe I would work real hard to restore this old gentleman's dignity. When I decided to go, the spirit kind of told me not to go. I just kind of had this bad feeling about it. But I didn't listen to it. And I should have listened to it. Because little did I know the dangers that awaited me as I walked into that dense jungle.

Anyway, we were walking through the jungle. We came to this little clearing. And the old gentleman said, “Wait here.” And he climbed up this tree. He was like 80 years old, and he scaled this tree like it was nothing. And he disappeared amongst the foliage. And I was there with three girls; they were Ricks College students. They were just sitting there, talking. We didn't know where he disappeared to. And then all of a sudden, I heard him shout, “Iguana, iguana, iguana!” We all looked up there and didn't see anything. We looked at each other. And then we heard the cracking of tree branches. It seemed to be getting closer and closer with every single crack. And all of a sudden, this huge iguana about this long barely missed hitting me on the head. If it hit me on the head, it might have killed me. Fell off the top of this big tree. Barely missed hitting me on the head and fell right down at my feet. And the guy up in the trees was yelling, “Grab it, grab it!” Well, as soon as the iguana fell down right in between us, the three girls screamed and disappeared in the jungle.

[Laughter]

Brother Ivers: And I was standing there alone. I did not run away. Probably because I was paralyzed with fear. And this iguana was looking up at me, and I was sure that he could easily bite off one of my fingers if he wanted to. He had this thing that looked like there was spikes coming out of his back. And I just stared at the iguana, and the iguana stared at me. And eventually the iguana kind of looked up at me like the same look that a mother cat looks at one of its kittens as the kitten is playing with its tail or something. It just looked at me like this, then it slowly walked down to the creek and jumped in. Anyway, just at that time there were some young men from the village walking by. And I said, “Dudes, there's like, an iguana in there.  Can you guys, like, get it for me?”

[Laughter]

Brother Ivers: And they said, “Sure, sure.” And they went down and got the iguana. And so, anyway, and the old man got down from the tree and said, “Hey, iguana.  Hey, I got it. I got it.” By then, the girls had come back out of the jungle, and they took credit for it too. And they see that man's shame was taken away by the fact that he had that victory, he caught that iguana.

Now, in all cultures, they have their things that make a real man, a real woman, and it's common to have shame if you don't live up to those things. The Cherokee Indians, before the white man came, they had an interesting division of labor. The men hunted and the women farmed. It was shameful for a man to farm. That was for the women. And men were embarrassed if they were caught planting things and that sort of stuff.  Well, anyway, when the white settlers encroached into Cherokee Nation, they realized that if they were going to live with the Americans, they had to adapt the American way of life. It still didn't work, unfortunately, and they were sent to Oklahoma, which was one of the greatest tragedies in American history. It was a terrible decision made by our government. But when the Cherokee farmers—when the Cherokee men started to farm so they could adapt to American society, be accepted by American society, they considered it personally humiliating. And it took several generations of Cherokees to get over the humiliation of men farming because that was a feminine thing to do. Farming was a feminine occupation, not a manly occupation. Now, see, here in the Northwestern United States, you can't get a more manly occupation than farming. See what I mean? And culture tends to bestow prestige on certain activities, and culture tends to bestow shame on other activities.

Now, I wanted to mention another interesting story here. We talk about the Kuna Indians—before I get some facts and statistics and that sort of thing. You'll read something else about life with the Kuna, and I've touched on this before to emphasize certain points. Another thing written by an anthropologist who spent some time with the Kuna. He says the spirit realm is constantly impinging on the lives of the Kuna as they go about their daily routine. Spirits periodically attack the weak and the defenseless, causing illness, deformity, and death. They row—these are the spirits—they row through Kuna villages under cover of darkness, startling the lowly passerby in the unlit streets and abducting their souls. Children, especially infants, are extremely vulnerable to spirit attack and must be guarded carefully day and night. Men alone in the jungle often meet spirits head on and are forced to flee for their lives. On balance, however, life is relatively benign for those who behave themselves in moral fashion and take the necessary precautions. The spirits generally respect those who follow the rules—remember that with the BYU-Idaho dress and grooming standard—

[Laughter]

Brother Ivers: —which are recorded in and reinforced by Kuna tradition. According to Kuna tradition, certain places beyond the perimeter of the village are designated sanctuaries of spiritual animals, plants, or demons. There are communities of spirits living in the hills and the mountains on the mainland; in whirlpools found beneath the surface of the ocean, lakes, rivers, and swamps, and in clouds floating through the skies.

When my son served in the Kuna islands, he witnessed spirits attacking people.  And they would go through like these, oh, seizures and things like that.

Yeah.

Female:  Where do the Kuna live?

Brother Ivers:  In these islands off the coast of Panama.

Female: Okay.

Brother Ivers: Yeah.  And some, in part, they do live on the mainland in Panama, too. On the coast.

But for some reason, the American missionaries were never attacked, even though they violated the rules all the time, sometimes unknowingly. And, again, culture can create—can have a big affect on your psychology, to the extent that you're even attacked by spirits, supposedly, and you go into these seizures.

My guess is, when we look at the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, there was a bunch of girls—one boy and about eight girls in there, somewhere—who were continually seeing witches and being severely affected by them. That had to have had something to do with Puritan culture. Had to have something to do with Puritan culture and the unbelievable strictness of it, their fanaticism. Also, it may have been a situation with PTSD, too. All of those kids, it just so happened, every single one of them were refugees from an area where there was a serious Indian war, where a lot of families were killed. So the PTSD may have been somewhat involved. Recent research, just in the last 10 years or so, they uncovered that interesting fact. And so people who have PTSD do strange things, you know, and it's a very common sort of thing. And most people get over it, but it just takes a while. And those kids, when they were older, they realized that they had done something weird. And 10 years later, the village of Salem repented for what they had done, because they realized that they had done the wrong thing. They realized all those visions probably were not visions.

Another thing, too, that I want to talk about is self-esteem. For example, the culture into which one is born has a significant effect on one's self-esteem. Because one is born with certain talents, no matter what. And in certain cultures, those talents will be exalted, and in certain cultures, those talents will be minimized or even debased. And so there may be some people who were born in the wrong culture for them. See, every culture has the culturally created—we mentioned this once before—the culturally-created ought self. [Writes ought self on the whiteboard.] There's a culturally-created ought self in every culture, in every subculture. And then, of course, there is the real self. [Writes real self on the whiteboard.] And the real self may or may not correspond to this culturally-demanded ought self. [Taps the word ought self on the board.] And the higher the correspondence, the higher the correspondence between the real self and the ought self, most likely, the higher self-esteem one will enjoy. But the lesser the correspondence between the culturally-created ought self and your real self, then it is harder to have that self-esteem.

Self-esteem, in some studies, has come out to be the most important factor in academic achievement. And no one knows if it's the chicken or the egg. Some people say, “Well, if you're good in academics, you just get self-esteem.” You know what I mean? And so it's hard to decide that.

Yeah.

Female: I just wanted to share this quote. It's by Albert Einstein. It says, “Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it's stupid.”

Brother Ivers: Yeah.  What a great quote.

Female: And so I just thought that that was really interesting [inaudible].

Brother Ivers: That's a powerful, powerful quote. Yeah. Yeah, I love that quote.  Send that to me on email. That'd be good. That'd be good. Yeah.

And, see, there are many Einsteins that have been born in cultures where they cannot be Einstein, because they were not allowed to be because the culturally-created ought self did not allow them to be that way. And I think what we need to do in our culture is make sure this ought self is pretty broad, you know. But yet, at the same time, we have ideas what a real man, a real woman is. In some cultures, a real man is one who plays the stock market and has good investments, knows how to manage his money. Some places, a real man is one who has a Ford F-250 pickup with a gun rack in the back. And some cultures, a real man is the guy who is gonna go work out at the gym. Maybe we'll talk about that. In some places, a real woman is one who can, in some cultures, one who can cook very, very well, take care of her children very, very well. In some, is very, very obedient to her husband. In some cultures, a real woman is someone who is climbing the corporate ladder and competing with a man and beating them. And, again, it's just a huge difference in what constitutes a real woman and a real man.

And so, anyway, in your groups, I wonder if you could just talk for a minute about what you've noticed as you've traveled the world, or even in your own culture. What are some of the culturally-created ought selves that maybe are irrational? And people are not recognizing they're irrational, people accept these as givens. They accept these as givens, and they judge themselves against often irrational ought selves, which causes their lives to be miserable. And life is too short and too precious to be miserable due to irrational, culturally-created, artificial ought selves. In your groups, talk about that for a minute.

[Students talking.]

Brother Ivers: We talked about, last time, how anorexia is a culturally-created disease, probably. Because it's nonexistent in third world circumstances. The only people that have anorexia live in the developed, industrialized countries or they live among the rich, like they're in a rich neighborhood in New Delhi or something. And that's interesting. Very, very interesting.

Another thing, too. See, schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a very serious mental illness where you hear voices that aren't there and stuff like that. And schizophrenia, there's no doubt at this point, or at least very little doubt, anyway, that schizophrenia is caused by biochemical imbalances in the brain. They're just biochemical imbalances. It's been strongly linked to that. It's just a chemical thing. However, studies have shown that schizophrenia abates—that means decreases, decreases—abates more quickly in some cultures than other cultures. Some cultures, the schizophrenic is cured more quickly than he or she is cured in other cultures, and no one knows why that is. So, obviously, there's a cultural-biological interplay with a lot of these things.

Another interesting thing, too. We know that there's a genetic component to depression. Depression runs in families, and depression is, by the way, very common. It's very, very common. If you suffer from depression, there's—you have plenty of other people around you. I know many, many people who suffer from depression. It's very common. But it's firmly linked to genetics. However, there's a cultural component to it, as well. For example, Mexican Americans and Mexicans have basically the same genetics, but yet Mexican Americans have a higher rate of depression than Mexicans do. And same with all in Latin America when they immigrate to the United States. African Americans have a higher rate of depression than Africans. Asian Americans have a higher rate of depression than Asians. Now, sounds like we live in a very depressing country.

[Laughter]

Brother Ivers: But, apparently, many people who visit this country say it's anything but depressing. It's exciting. And no one knows exactly why that is. But, somehow, cultures very often subconsciously can exacerbate problems. Now, there are other theories, too, that are not really culturally related as to why that is. For example, people in the West have higher ADHD than people in the East. And no one knows why that is, but they think it's just because the reason people's ancestors got to the West is they were just more antsy and had to move on. You know what I mean? And so those—these things are carried genetically, and that's why. And maybe people that immigrate to the United States, the same thing. Of course, the Africans had no choice. They really didn't. They didn't have a choice. But, anyway, it's interesting. No one knows exactly why these things are as they are, but there's very likely a good cultural component there.

Now, another interesting thing how culture will play with your mind, with your reality. I should have mentioned this earlier, but I forgot. From 1520 to 1630, 30,000 people were tried as werewolves in Europe. From 1520 to 1630. Many of those 30,000 were executed. From 1520 to 1630, 30,000 people were put on trial for being werewolves in Europe. Many of them, many of them, were executed. Now, of that 30,000, I'm wondering, I'm just curious, I wonder how many really were werewolves? Maybe like, maybe like none?

[Laughter]

Brother Ivers: Maybe like none? Of 30,000, probably maybe 10,000 of them were executed, killed. And the educated people at the time were saying there definitely were werewolves, and there's a way to figure it out. Cotton Mather, one of the most brilliant colonists of Massachusetts. We owe a lot to Cotton Mather in our country. He was—he basically started smallpox inoculations there in Massachusetts. Other people developed it, but he had the courage to really push it and implement it. He wrote a lot of books. He wrote books on history, he wrote books on science. And at the same time, he believed in witches. And he was one of the people instrumental in getting one of the people executed in Salem, Massachusetts. Because he arrived just in time, they were about to let him go, and he started showing off his expertise on witches and they changed their mind and killed the guy. And so you don't have a lot of faith in—well, you know, have less faith in uneducated people, but don't have total faith in educated people. Because there's a lot of cultural things there, and a lot of—science is an ongoing process. The day's going to come where they're going to think that we in 2013 are a bunch of morons. Primitive savages, probably. Every people in every era thought they were the ultimate, and the time's going to come where they're going to think we're primitive.

Between 1450 and 1750—as late as 1750—between 1450 and 1750, 100,000 people were executed for being witches in Europe. Between 1450 and 1750, 100,000 people were executed for being witches in Europe. I'm assuming all of those 100,000 were not witches, were innocent.

Then, going back to how—I'm going to tell you a little bit about how culture will play with your mind a little bit. I'm going to give you an interesting puzzle here, and if you know the answer, don't shout it out for a minute. I want everyone to think on it. Just give you an idea how culture plays with your psychology. Some of you will recognize this right away, some of you will have heard it. If you've heard it, keep your mouth shut for a few minutes while I ask you to give me the answer to this. Just give you an example of how culture will play with your mind.

Think of this scenario. A man and his son are in a serious car accident. The father is killed, and the son is rushed to the emergency room. Upon arrival, the attending doctor looks at the child and gasps, “This child is my son!” Who's the doctor?

Read this again. A man and his son, they're in a serious car accident. The father is killed, and the son is rushed to the emergency room. Upon arrival, the attending doctor looks at the child and gasps, “This child is my son!” Who's the doctor?

Now you can answer it.

Students: The mom.

Brother Ivers: The mom. The mom is the doctor. But our culture teaches us that doctors have to be men. And it's in my psyche, too. When I first heard of this, I thought, “This is crazy. The dad's dead. The doctor must be mistaken. He must—that's not his son.” Or maybe the kid's adopted, you know. Anyway.

[Laughter]

Brother Ivers: Maybe there's some sort of affair, I don't know. But, anyway. But see, I went through all those explanations until it finally dawned on me, after about 10 minutes of thinking about it, that it was the mom. Now, it's probably a little bit easier for you guys, because you're in a generation where it's common for women to be physicians. And in my era, it was quite unusual. And so it'd be a little harder for—a little older you are, a little harder to make those connections there. But culture will play with your psyche, where you have these hidden cultural assumptions that cannot make you see the obvious. It should be obvious the doctor was the mom because the dad was dead. So there was only one parent left, so it had to be the mom. But yet culture—our cultural assumptions won't let us see that very, very quickly.

 Now, another interesting thing about cultural assumptions playing with your mind. This is really, really interesting. And this has been established through hundreds and hundreds of studies. One time, some psychologists, Aronson and Steele were the names, they decided they would just do this experiment. Something made them think about it, that it might work. They doubted it would work, but they did it anyway. They took a bunch of black kids and white kids in college. They gave them the GRE, which is the Graduate Record Examination. An examination many of you are going to have to take if you want to go to graduate school. Hopefully many of you will. And so, anyway, the black kids, when they took this one GRE test, they did not have a question about race. They didn't have a question about race.  And so the black kids took the test knowing consciously or subconsciously that the person grading the test would not know what race they were. Well, anyway, they got the such and such score on average.

And then they brought in another group of white kids and black kids, and the black kids—they made sure that the black kids in both groups, on average, had the same level of academic achievement from ACT scores and things like that. These were college students. And so this time they gave them the GRE, and on a form before they took the test, they had to identify what race they were. The scores of the black kids decreased by 50 percent. The scores of the black kids decreased by 50 percent when they had to identify their race. Now, it's been done in study after study—

Yes.

Female: Were you saying—did that study that you were looking at, did it make it seem like because the black kids knew that whoever was looking at the test would know their race, that that made it harder for them to perform well? Is that—

Brother Ivers: Yeah.

 

Female: Because when I read something, I think it was the same study, the article I was reading kind of portrayed the information like—like, we kind of live up to our stereotypes, you know.

Brother Ivers: Mm-hmm, exactly.

Female: And since, you know, Asians are considered like the smart race, you know.

Brother Ivers: Yep.

Female: And I don't know, if they have to check the box, like, “I'm just an inner city kid,” you know. And so that kind of—they already find out in their mind, “Oh, I'm not going to do well, I'm black,” or something like that. So what—I guess there's like two different ways you can interpret this.

Brother Ivers: Oh, yeah. It's been done many, many times with the same results.  And it is. They live up to their—the cultural expectation.

The idea—I should write this down—is called stereotype threat. [Writes stereotype threat on the whiteboard.] And it's been replicated with many different races under many different circumstances under many different stereotypes. For example, all of us white males, we feel inferior to black males athletically. And they even did a study where white males were reminded they were white in some ways before they did this athletic thing.

[Laughter]

Brother Ivers: And the white guys that were reminded—they were of similar athletic ability—the ones that were reminded that they were white did like 50 percent worse on the athletic thing than the ones who were not reminded they were white before it happened. Yeah. And so all races have the tendency to live up or down to those cultural expectations. My guess is, I don't know if the study's been done on this, but my guess is, if there are Asian Americans in that room, if they had to write it down that they were Asian American before they took the test, they would do better. You know what I mean? Because they were reminded they're Asian American. And so, wow. That is unbelievable.

[End]