Cultural DNA. Bains Gurnek

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comparisons. This is largely because a high proportion of personality tests implicitly or explicitly ask respondents to compare themselves to the people around them. By their very nature, many such instruments therefore cannot be used for teasing out differences across cultures. Last, but not least, I have drawn upon the observations of legions of anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and travelers who have drawn strong psychological conclusions about the cultures that they have engaged.

      Much has been written about cultural differences. However, there has been a limited effort to explain why such differences exist in the first place. This is one of our main objectives: to get underneath the skin of differences and to provide an explanation for why they might exist. Here, there have been extensive breakthroughs that provide a foundation for understanding the roots of differences between cultures. Over the past decade, analysis of mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA has enabled us to build a very precise picture of how and when groups populated different parts of the world. In a field that was at best murky and speculative before, there is now a high degree of precision and convergence that I will draw upon extensively when seeking to explain cultural differences. We also now have a much sharper lens, driven in part by advances in analysis of ice cores, on the profound climatic challenges that have affected modern humans since they arrived on the scene 200,000 years ago. The modern concern with global warming can perhaps create the false impression that our environment in the past was some kind of stable, unchanging nirvana for humans. But nothing could be further from the truth.

      Furthermore, while ecological and historical processes have been the main drivers of the cultural DNA of regions, there is increasing evidence that genetic features may also have a role to play. A wide range of genetic investigations, which will be reviewed later, suggest there has been rapid and intense evolution since modern humans left Africa that affects a diverse range of attributes, such as food tolerance, disease resistance, and energy metabolism. From the point of view of psychological differences, there is now extensive evidence of profound variations across different groups in some of the genes that determine both the level and uptake of key neurotransmitters. These findings are relatively new and still in the process of being tested and replicated. However, some differences do appear robust. For example, the serotonin transporter gene, which affects the level of serotonin in the brain by influencing the same functions that the drug Prozac impacts, has both short and long allele versions. Individuals with the short alleles are more prone to anxiety and depression following negative life events. A variety of other behavioral and psychological traits are also associated with the presence of short alleles. Now something like 80 percent of people in China have the short allele versus 40 percent in the United States and 25 percent in South Africa.16

      Similarly, a gene called DRD4, which influences dopamine levels in the brain, also has short and long alleles. Individuals with the long alleles are more adventurous, novelty seeking, independent minded, rebellious, as well as hyperactive – and something like 75 percent of South American Indians possess the long allele version. The figures for the United States are in the region of 30 percent and in Europe 20 percent or so. In China the rate of the long allele is close to 0 percent.17 Similarly, large differences are seen in genes that influence the opioid system, which, as well as being associated with perceptions of pain and well-being, is also associated with emotional reactions to disruption of social bonds. When northern Europeans see Italian or Spanish soccer players react as if they have been mortally wounded at the slightest physical impact, it may not just be histrionic acting out – the poor guy writhing on the ground to boos from the crowd may actually be biologically more sensitive to pain.

      The latter point illustrates something more important. If a small number of the differences observed between cultures reflect such biological factors, it may be wiser to recognize this fact rather than to pretend otherwise. At the very least, this can absolve individuals from personal blame, as well as lead to greater empathy, when their reactions or behaviors are not in accordance with what other groups expect. In addition, overwhelmingly most genetic adaptations, as will be reviewed later, arose first because of cultural change, which then drove differential selection; a kind of culture-gene coevolution.

      Why Bother with Differences?

      Even if differences exist, why bother focusing on them as opposed to what we have in common? We are in many senses a co-operative species – but once even small group differences are introduced, elements of wariness, suspicion and frequently hostility ensue. Social Psychologist Henri Tajfel graphically illustrated this in his minimal-group experiment in which he was able to engender surprisingly high levels of intergroup rivalry and discord simply by artificially dividing people between those who liked a particular artist or not.18 Anyone who doubts the power of trivial group differences to elicit powerful emotions can simply observe the dynamics between groups of teenagers at high school or go and see a soccer match just about anywhere in the world.

      Another thing that makes discussion of group differences sensitive is that there is an automatic belief that merely identifying differences involves ordering groups of people hierarchically. People who repudiate all talk of difference seem to do so because they actually hold the implicit, but unacknowledged, view that in any comparison non-Westerners will come out for the worse. If, however, you accept the argument that different groups' psychological instincts are actually finely tuned to the environment in which they are required to survive – and that fundamentally all groups have qualities that play out for good or ill in different situations – discussing differences becomes less emotionally loaded.

      Nothing illustrates the gravitational pull of immutable hierarchical thinking better than the whole controversial field of intelligence quotients (IQ) and race – which is the natural place many go to when thinking about group differences. Books like The Bell Curve19 and, more recently, A Troublesome Inheritance fall into this trap.20 The first point to make is that standard IQ scores, thought to be relatively fixed in populations, have been changing quickly the world over – the so-called Flynn effect. James Flynn found, for example, that IQ scores had risen by about three points per decade for several decades – this may seem small but actually makes a massive difference over just a few decades.21 Diet, the spread of technology, control of infectious disease, as well as familiarity with IQ tests themselves, have all been hypothesized as leading to these improved scores. Different groups show different levels of this effect, and some developed countries appear to have stopped improving. It is likely that many developing countries will continue to post sharp rises and, until things have leveled out, nobody can make accurate statements about intergroup differences.22

      More importantly, there is inevitably a danger in applying tests developed in one culture to others that might see the world very differently. Each culture's intellectual orientation is finely attuned to the ecology of the environment and the survival challenges that that culture has faced. Therefore, nobody is more or less intelligent than another in a fundamental sense; they are just different. The analytical/logical/structured approach so beloved by Western academic researchers is only one way of looking at intellect. It ignores wisdom, judgment, creativity and intellectual flexibility as well as emotional intelligence. The ecology of the new global environment will lead to a greater convergence of scores with respect to standard Western measures, as well as leading to many non-Western modes of intelligence becoming more and more valued and appreciated – thus challenging the notion of hierarchy.

      Another reason for focusing on and helping to explain differences is to aid cultures in developing greater levels of empathy and respect for each other. Psychologically, since humans are one of the most social species in the animal kingdom, the development of empathy is one of the most important tasks that a person faces. Surprisingly, if one maps brain size against body mass, most species fall on a fairly tight curve. There are a few species that are clear outliers in that

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