Galton's Problem Research Articles

Pulotu: Database of Austronesian Supernatural Beliefs and Practices.

Scholars have debated naturalistic theories of religion for thousands of years, but only recently have scientists begun to test predictions empirically. Existing databases contain few variables on religion, and are subject to Galton’s Problem because they do not sufficiently account for the non-independence of cultures or systematically differentiate the traditional states of cultures from their contemporary states. Here we present Pulotu: the first quantitative cross-cultural database purpose-built to test evolutionary hypotheses of supernatural beliefs and practices. The Pulotu database documents the remarkable diversity of the Austronesian family of cultures, which originated in Taiwan, spread west to Madagascar and east to Easter Island–a region covering over half the world’s longitude. The focus of Austronesian beliefs range from localised ancestral spirits to powerful creator gods. A wide range of practices also exist, such as headhunting, elaborate tattooing, and the construction of impressive monuments. Pulotu is freely available, currently contains 116 cultures, and has 80 variables describing supernatural beliefs and practices, as well as social and physical environments. One major advantage of Pulotu is that it has separate sections on the traditional states of cultures, the post-contact history of cultures, and the contemporary states of cultures. A second major advantage is that cultures are linked to a language-based family tree, enabling the use phylogenetic methods, which can be used to address Galton’s Problem by accounting for common ancestry, to infer deep prehistory, and to model patterns of trait evolution over time. We illustrate the power of phylogenetic methods by performing an ancestral state reconstruction on the Pulotu variable “headhunting", finding evidence that headhunting was practiced in proto-Austronesian culture. Quantitative cross-cultural databases explicitly linking cultures to a phylogeny have the potential to revolutionise the field of comparative religious studies in the same way that genetic databases have revolutionised the field of evolutionary biology.

Future Tense and Economic Decisions: Controlling for Cultural Evolution.

A previous study by Chen demonstrates a correlation between languages that grammatically mark future events and their speakers' propensity to save, even after controlling for numerous economic and demographic factors. The implication is that languages which grammatically distinguish the present and the future may bias their speakers to distinguish them psychologically, leading to less future-oriented decision making. However, Chen's original analysis assumed languages are independent. This neglects the fact that languages are related, causing correlations to appear stronger than is warranted (Galton's problem). In this paper, we test the robustness of Chen's correlations to corrections for the geographic and historical relatedness of languages. While the question seems simple, the answer is complex. In general, the statistical correlation between the two variables is weaker when controlling for relatedness. When applying the strictest tests for relatedness, and when data is not aggregated across individuals, the correlation is not significant. However, the correlation did remain reasonably robust under a number of tests. We argue that any claims of synchronic patterns between cultural variables should be tested for spurious correlations, with the kinds of approaches used in this paper. However, experiments or case-studies would be more fruitful avenues for future research on this specific topic, rather than further large-scale cross-cultural correlational studies.

Commentary: Large-scale psychological differences within China explained by rice vs. wheat agriculture.

Commentary: Large-scale psychological differences within China explained by rice vs. wheat agriculture.

Cultural Trait Transmission and Missing Data as Sources of Bias in Cross-Cultural Survey Research

Ember, Ember, and Low (2007) recently reported male mortality in warfare and environmental pathogen stress as statistically significant predictors of nonsororal polygyny. Two sources of bias can be identified in their data analysis: 1) omitted variable bias due to not including a variable for cultural trait transmission, that is, Galton's Problem; and 2) bias caused by extensive deletion of cases when the basic assumption required by listwise deletion, that the missing data are missing completely at random, does not hold. We first re-estimated Ember et al.'s model after adding a trait transmission variable using the listwise deletion subsample, and then again after using contemporary multiple imputation procedures to deal with missing data. Our findings indicate that the significant effects reported for male mortality and pathogen stress are the result of these two sources of bias. The only significant predictor of the world-wide distribution of nonsororal polygyny in the current analyses is cultural trait transmission.

Tylor's Legacy in International Accounting Research

When Hofstede published the book Culture's Consequences - International Differences in Work-Related Values in 1980, he established indices of culture; culture was to be a measurable variable in international business studies. Hofstede's theoretical basis is traced to a comparative approach established by George Murdock. The lack of use of Hofstede's dimensions in mainstream social sciences is described. This is sourced to the nineteenth-century scholarship of Edward Tylor, and the debate concerning Galton's problem. Murdock took the occasion of the 1971 Huxley Memorial Lecture Anthropology's Mythology to renounce his own adherence to this method, and to plead for a new association between anthropology and psychology. Such a shift was paralleled by Hofstede in 1991. It is suggested that there are other methods which may better advance international comparative accounting research.

The m-STAR Model as an Approach to Modeled, Dynamic, Endogenous Interdependence in Comparative & International Political Economy

Even casual observation reveals obvious spatial patterns in labor-market outcomes and policies across the developed democracies, and within the European Union particularly. Labor-market policies entail significant cross-border spillovers, so strategic interdependence among developed democracies might explain this. However, these countries also faced common or very similar exogenous-external conditions and internal trends, which would also tend to generate spatial patterns in the domestic responses thereto, even without any interdependence. Likewise, membership in the EU itself presents both a series of common external stimuli and a set of strategic interdependencies in common and individual-country labor-market-relevant actions. Additionally, however, labor-market policies will themselves shape the patterns of economic interchange by which some of the interdependencies arise, and entry into the European Union typically presupposes a certain baseline set of shared national characteristics and orientations, raising the possibility that labor-market policies and the pattern of interdependence via institutional co-membership have common origin. That is, the policies of interest may also shape the patterns of connectivity affecting those outcomes, a complex sort of endogeneity known as selection in the dynamic networks literature. We have discussed elsewhere the severe empirical-methodological challenges in distinguishing the first two of these possible sources of spatial correlation (Galton's Problem). This paper extends those analyses, applying the multiparametric spatiotemporal autoregressive (m-STAR) model as a simple approach to modeling the patterns of interdependence simultaneously with its effects, while recognizing their possible endogeneity (i.e., selection). We do so in an empirical application attempting to disentangle the roles of economic interdependence, correlated external and internal stimuli, and EU membership in shaping labor-market policies in recent years.

Galton's Problem as Multiple Network Autocorrelation Effects

Empirical evidence that cultural traits are often nonrandomly distributed because of the individual or combined effects of common history, diffusion, borrowing, and/or other types of cultural transmission processes has been accumulating for decades. Because many cultural traits have recently been shown to be influenced by more than one transmission process, it has become a methodological priority in comparative research to develop statistical methods that can simultaneously incorporate multiple transmission processes. This article proposes a multiple network autocorrelation effects model and associated two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimation procedures. The network autocorrelation effects model offers an alternative interpretation of how cultural trait transmission processes operate than does the network autocorrelation disturbances model. Conceptual differences between the two classes of models suggest that the network effects specification will be more generally applicable in comparative studies. An empirical example demonstrates the substantive value of the multiple network autocorrelation effects model and the widely available 2SLS estimation procedures.

Yet Another Solution to Galton's Problem

For half a century, Galton's problem has been a thorn in the side of cultural anthropologists, agitating them to print. Galton's problem motivated the creators of all the major cross-cultural sampling frames to advocate selection of a single ethnographic description from each of up to hundreds of internally homogeneous culture areas. Why this happened is perplexing. Galton's problem disappears when it is thought of as a theoretical issue of correct specification of a theoretical model. There are implications for the construction of new cross-cultural samples.

Selecting Cases in Cross‐National Political Research

Four specific problems are discussed that relate to selecting comparable cases in cross‐national political research. First, to manage the so‐called Galton's problem, which is about the assumption of autonomous units, two strategies are discussed. The one is to abandon the assumption and study the mechanisms of diffusion, the second is to choose cases for comparison which can be assumed to have influenced each other to a minor extent only. Second, it is suggested that the method of paired comparisons be applied more than before to minimize the ‘many variables, small N problem’ (Arend Lijphart). Third, the tendency of the comparable cases strategy to over‐determine the dependent phenomenon throws an unfavourable light on binary comparisons, which are much too popular in comparative political science. Finally, the task of explaining by means of variances in several independent variables the variance in one dependent variable requires the use of several and not only one set of cases.

Taking ‘Galton's Problem’ Seriously

This article builds on the recent policy diffusion literature and attempts to overcome one of its major problems, namely the lack of a coherent theoretical framework. The literature defines policy diffusion as a process where policy choices are interdependent, and identifies several diffusion mechanisms that specify the link between the policy choices of the various actors. As these mechanisms are grounded in different theories, theoretical accounts of diffusion currently have little internal coherence. In this article we put forward an expected-utility model of policy change that is able to subsume all the diffusion mechanisms. We argue that the expected utility of a policy depends on both its effectiveness and the payoffs it yields, and we show that the various diffusion mechanisms operate by altering these two parameters. Each mechanism affects one of the two parameters, and does so in distinct ways. To account for aggregate patterns of diffusion, we embed our model in a simple threshold model of diffusion. Given the high complexity of the process that results, strong analytical conclusions on aggregate patterns cannot be drawn without more extensive analysis which is beyond the scope of this article. However, preliminary considerations indicate that a wide range of diffusion processes may exist and that convergence is only one possible outcome.

Globalization as ‘Galton's Problem’: The Missing Link in the Analysis of Diffusion Patterns in Welfare State Development

Most macro cross-national studies in political science that analyze the impact of globalization on domestic policies do not sufficiently consider the meth- odological consequences of diffusion processes, or Galton's problem, as it is often referred to+ I argue that globalization is a form of diffusion+ Therefore it requires a shift from an exclusively functional analysis, which dominates in almost all estab- lished comparative studies in the field, to a diffusional analysis+ I assume that glob- alization leads to a shift in focus on the part of political actors from domestic to international issues+ I test this hypothesis by examining social expenditure rates of sixteen highly developed welfare states+ The results indicate that globalization has become a highly influential factor since the late 1980s in contrast to the years before+ In addition to the actual results presented here, the methodological approach of ana- lyzing globalization as diffusion is relevant to other areas of comparative and inter- national politics and may be a tool in future research+

A phylogenetic approach to cultural evolution

There has been a rapid increase in the use of phylogenetic methods to study the evolution of languages and culture. Languages fit a tree model of evolution well, at least in their basic vocabulary, challenging the view that blending, or admixture among neighbouring groups, was predominant in cultural history. Here, we argue that we can use language trees to test hypotheses about not only cultural history and diversification, but also bio-cultural adaptation. Phylogenetic comparative methods take account of the non-independence of cultures (Galton's problem), which can cause spurious statistical associations in comparative analyses. Advances in phylogenetic methods offer new possibilities for the analysis of cultural evolution, including estimating the rate of evolution and the direction of coevolutionary change of traits on the tree. They also enable phylogenetic uncertainty to be incorporated into the analyses, so that one does not have to treat phylogenetic trees as if they were known without error.

"Galton's Asset" and "Flower's Problem Cultural Networks and Cultural Units in Cross‐Cultural Research Ml (Or, Male Genital Mutilations and Polygyny in Cross‐Cultural Perspective)

Edward Tylor had envisioned anthropology to be comprised of ethnology and ethnography in equal parts, but today ethnography dominates the field. In this paper, we examine two reasons for the refugee status of ethnology. First, we look at the notorious "Galton effect." Second, we examine the problem of defining and using cultural units, particularly when positivistic and static theories and methods of culture have been largely discredited by anthropology. We argue against any formulaic solutions to these problems and show that for each research question one needs to reconsider the criteria for how to construct cultural units and how to ensure that the cultures under study are not merely replicas of one another. We show that previous solutions to these issues are limited because they fail to appreciate the contingent and multidimensional nature of culture. We also argue that, instead of a "Galton problem," there is actually a "Galton asset," which can be used to study historical and emergent communicative networks. [Keywords: cross–cultural research, Galton problem, cultural units, methods and theory]

EMBER, Carol R. and Melvin EMBER. CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH METHODS

"EMBER, Carol R. and Melvin EMBER. CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH METHODS." Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 34(2), pp. 303–304

Comparing Nations in Mass Communication Research, 1970-97

The purpose of this article is to assess critically, within the framework of the sociology of knowledge, how we come to know what we know in comparative international communication research. The point of departure is the collective output of comparative international communication enterprise - the published articles in six major communication journals through which theories, methods and findings have been diffused and the cumulated knowledge made possible during the past three decades. A major concern is the general pattern of methodological approaches and epistemological positions as manifested in the existing comparative international communication studies. The common patterns in comparative international communication research include lack of theoretical framework, non-equivalence of concepts and indicators, incomparability of units of analysis and unawareness of Galton's problem.

Cultural Units in Cross-Cultural Research

In 1889, Galton argued that often traits diffuse across cultures and therefore we could never really know if cultural traits arose independently as adaptive responses or were a result of diffusion. With numerous hypothetical and actual examples we show that, statistically, there are no mechanical fixes to this problem. We conclude by asserting that each cross-cultural research question should find its own solution to Galton's problem and that, in fact, this is not a problem at all, but rather an asset which can be used to trace historical networks. (Galton's problem, cultural units, community, language, megacultural regions, Standard Cross-Cultural Sample) The notion of the cultural unit has two meanings. One meaning considers cultural units as elements out of which culture is composed. There are doubts whether such entities exist at all (see Gatewood, this volume). In any case, this meaning has no direct relevance on cross-cultural research. One can discuss and compare molecular units, such as postmarital residence practices, without being concerned about the elemental units that comprise this practice. The other meaning of cultural units, however, does have direct relevance and must first be descriptively rather than formally explained. To start with, within cross-cultural research the problem of cultural units is not quite identical to the problem of units of comparison (though both problems are connected). The solution to the problem of comparison was solved long ago by Naroll (e.g., 1970), who suggested that the unit of comparison should be community, not culture. However, the problem of cultural units arises immediately upon selecting communities for cross-cultural comparison. As the very notion of cross-cultural research implies, the communities that are used for comparison must belong to different cultures. Clearly, the inclusion in a sample of a number of communities that belong to the same culture could result in the production of a correlation confirming a false hypothesis (or, alternatively, rejecting right ones). This can be illustrated with a fictional example. Our hypothesis is that the consumption of dates (the fruit) enhances the sexual drive among religious specialists, and the consumption of red wine inhibits that drive in religious specialists. Sexual drive is measured by asking these specialists their frequency of sexual intercourse after consuming dates or wine. The frequency of sexual intercourse should go up after consuming dates and go down after consuming wine. To test the hypothesis, imagine a sample of communities described in Table 1: Table 1: Communities in Sample 4 Spanish 4 Iraqi 1 Russian 1 Estonian 1 Javanese 1 Ganda 1 Greek 1 Maronite-Lebanese The statistical analysis of the data for this sample is most likely to produce the following results: Table 2: Dates vs. Red Wine Consumption/ Sexual Intercourse Cross-Tabulation (version 1) Sexual Intercourse Near Absent Regular with Regular with More One Partner than One Panner Wine 4 1 0 No wine/dates 1 1 2 Dates 1 0 4 Total 6 2 6 Value Approx. Sig. Gamma .79 .001 Spearman Correlation .64 .014 Thus the test is likely to support a patently wrong hypothesis. One of the main reasons for this is that the sample included eight communities from two national cultures. One of these (Spain) is characterized by Catholicism (and hence a celibate clergy) and the wide use of red wine. The other is Islamic (which permits polygyny for religious specialists) and has a wide consumption of dates. The solution normally proposed to avoid such problems is simply to include no more than one community using the same language in the sample. …

Parallel-Cousin (FBD) Marriage, Islamization, and Arabization

Islamization, along with an area's inclusion in the eighth-century Arab-Islamic Khalifate (and its persistence within the Islamic world) is a strong and significant predictor of parallel-cousin (FBD) marriage. While there is a clear functional connection between Islam and FBD marriage, the prescription to marry a FBD does not appear to be sufficient to persuade people to actually marry thus, even if the marriage brings with it economic advantages. A systematic acceptance of parallel-cousin marriage took place when Islamization occurred together with Arabization. (Cross-cultural research, Middle East, marriage, Galton's problem) Cousin marriages are widespread among the cultures of the world (Ember 1983:83; Pasternak, Ember, and Ember 1997:133). The vast majority of these are cross-cousin marriages; the other main type, parallel-cousin marriage, is much less common. Parallel-cousin marriage can be divided into two types; matrilateral (MSD) and patrilateral (FBD). The former is so rare that I am aware of only one ethnographic case; i.e., that of the Tuareg of the Sahara (Pershits 1998:543). The latter is much more common but still is restricted to a few dozen cultures, and the shape of its regional distribution is rather peculiar. The overwhelming majority of these cases appear among the Islamic cultures of North Africa, and those of west and central Asia. That this marriage arrangement is connected with Islam stems logically from this observation, and has been expressed by many students of Middle Eastern anthropology (e.g., Barth 1954; Murphy and Kasdan 1959; Bourdieu 1995:30-71; for an almost exhaustive list of corroborative publications in French and English see Rodionov 1999:266).(1) An initial attempt to test the hypothesis connecting Islam and FBD marriage by using the electronic version of the Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock et al. 1990) immediately resulted in a problem. Astonishingly, the first test showed no connection at all between Islamization and FBD marriage. The next step was to look at the individual cases. The results were even stranger. The sample comprising the societies with FBD marriage included Mbala, Nyasa, Cantonese, Rotinese, Banyun, Konkomba, Yurak, Mentaweians, Sivokakmeit, Goajiro, Songo, Afikpo, Toma, Coniagui, Riffians, Ossetians, Ainu, Yakut, Saramacca, Fon, Kanuri, Shantung, and Tibetans. Clearly there was something wrong here. The Ainu and Ossetians, for example, could never have practiced parallel-cousin marriage. On the other hand, some peoples definitely having FBD marriage turned out to be listed as having crosscousin FSD marriage; e.g., Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, and Iranians. The answer to this apparent puzzle is simple: the authors of the electronic version of the Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock et al. 1990) mixed up the codes. The codes for variable 24 turned out to be the ones for variable 23. Thus, the actual codes for variable 23 should be read as follows: 0 = Missing data 1 = All four cousins 2 = Three of four cousins 3 = Two of four cousins (e.g., paternal) 4 = One of four cousins (e.g., FBD) 5 = No first cousins 6 = First and some second cousins excluded 7 = No first, unknown for second 8 = No first or second cousins 9 = No preferential or prescriptive unions However, a closer inspection of the electronic Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock et al. 1990) data showed that its authors had simply lost the information on parallel-cousin FBD marriage while recoding the original codes of Murdock (1967). The value of the 1967 Atlas variable 25 (Cousin Marriage) corresponding to the presence of parallel-cousin FBD marriage (Qa) appears not to have been reflected at all in the electronic version. Hence, there was no other choice but to use the primed version (Murdock 1967). (The most recent electronic version of the Atlas [Murdock et al. 1999-2000] has corrected this mistake.) A straightforward cross-tabulation of the presence of parallel-cousin FBD marriage and Islamization (Tishkov [1998] is the basis for coding this variable) produced the following results: Table 1: Parallel-Cousin (FBD) Marriage/Islamization Cross-Tabulation Parallel-Cousin Islamization (FBD) Marriage 0 (absent) 1 (present) Total 0 (absent) 702 32 734 95. …

Testing Theory and Why the "Units of Analysis" Problem Is Not a Problem

This article discusses why comparison is possible and why theory needs to be tested universally. It discusses why worldwide results are likely to be more generally valid (and more useful practically) than more limited comparisons, and certainly more generalizable or trustworthy than single-case analyses or theory that has never been tested. Answers are provided for the main objections to worldwide research: the supposed incomparability of cultural traits, the supposed incomparability of units of analysis, the supposed impossibility of unbiased sampling, and what is known as Galton's problem. (Theory, testing, cross-cultural, units) Compared with most social sciences, anthropology as a discipline has a larger frame of reference. In the language of statistical inference, it has a bigger sampling frame. The whole world of humans, past and present, is its frame of reference; anthropologists are interested in every place and time that has ever had a human population. The other social sciences generally have more parochial sampling frames. They also generalize about human behavior, but their data are drawn from more restricted domains, certainly not the whole of human prehistory and history. So, for example, researchers in some disciplines (sociology, economics, political science, psychology) are mostly concerned with one or another complex commercial society, typically their own. Or they may deal just with the nation-states of the past few hundred years (political science, history, international relations). Even those who call themselves cross-cultural psychologists (who are aware that humans are not exactly the same psychologically in all societies) generally do their research in countries that have schools and colleges because the tests and measures they want to employ require subjects who can read and write. Years ago, Otto Klineberg (1980:v) scolded his psychological colleagues for their ethnocentrism: How could speak of human attributes and human behavior when they knew only one kind of human being? We can say the same thing to most social scientists (other than anthropologists). Are literate subjects representative of all human beings? Is the nation-state the only kind of human polity? Do commercial and industrial economies represent all the possible ways to make a living? This is not to say that anthropologists are never parochial. Some anthropologists generalize from one society to a set of societies or even to all of humanity. This kind of parochial generalization can be called other-centric, in contrast to the kind of parochialism we call ethnocentric, which glorifies one's own society. Then there is extreme relativism, which is not even parochialism: it rules out the possibility of any generalizations. For an extreme relativist, understanding can only come from analysis of a single case; comparison is unjustifiable, even hegemonic or imperialist. But if comparison is possible and even desirable (which is what we try to show here), extreme relativism should be interpreted as a variant of what philosophers call solipsism, the belief that the self can be aware of nothing but its own experiences and states. Described so baldly, extreme relativism looks silly. There is an irony here. Anthropology as a discipline claims the whole world as its domain; all of humanity past and present, in all times and places, is of interest and concern to it. But there are many anthropologists who are resistant to comparisons of any kind, out of extreme relativism or just because they are unsophisticated about how science operates. If generalizations are suggested, they are often the kinds of parochial over-generalization (other-centric, ethnocentric) mentioned above. In the absence of systematic supporting evidence, why should anyone believe that any one human population is like all others, or even like all others of its type? We might like to think that the ! …

Sexual dimorphism in stature and women's work: A phylogenetic cross-cultural analysis

The following cultural variables were tested for their association with sexual dimorphism: sexual division of labor, type of subsistence (hunting and agriculture), and polygyny. The transmission of these traits among populations was investigated. All the traits were found to be associated with phylogeny, indicating that they are inherited from mother to daughter populations. A cross-cultural comparative method was used which controls for the statistical effects of similarity due to common ancestry (Galton's problem). Cross-cultural variation in sexual dimorphism in stature is negatively associated with women's contribution to subsistence. Women are taller, relative to men, in societies where women contribute more to food production. This may be because female nutritional status is better in these societies. No relationship was found between sexual dimorphism and other aspects of subsistence or polygyny. These results are discussed in relation to other studies of sexual dimorphism in modern and archaeological populations, and in relation to cross-cultural variation in sex-biased parental investment.

A Reconsideration of Galton's Problem (Using a Two-Sex Population)

The main purposes of this paper are to promote and expound the bisexual Galton–Watson branching process as a relevant model for the consideration of Francis Galton's problem regarding the extinction of surnames of “men of note.” A scheme for adapting the bisexual process to consider Galton's problem is introduced. A necessary and sufficient condition for the certain extinction of a male-induced property in a two-sex species is presented. An approach for calculating the extinction of a male-generated characteristic in the two-sex species is proposed. That approach is then used to find the probability of the extinction of surnames in a bisexual population for Alfred Lotka's data based on an United States Census. Finally, these results are then compared with the classic extinction probabilities (from Lotka) associated with the traditional Galton–Watson branching process using asexual reproduction.