Galton's Problem and HRAFLIB

Naroll, Raoul

doi:10.1177/106939717601100204

Cited by 17 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Masks of known threatening or nonthreatening social function were obtained from museum and bibliographic sources. To ensure the independence of cultural samples (Galton's problem; Naroll, 1976), masks were obtained from widely diverse cultures. The number of masks of each type from each culture is presented in Table 2.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The recognition of threatening facial stimuli.

Aronoff¹,

Barclay²,

Stevenson³

1988

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

118

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Two studies examined the information that defines a threatening facial display. The first study identified those facial characteristics that distinguish between representations of threatening and nonthreatening facial displays. Masks that presented either threatening or nonthreatening facial displays were obtained from a number of non-Western cultures and scored for the presence of those facial features that discriminated between such displays in the drawings of two American samples. Threatening masks contained a significantly higher number of these characteristics across all cultures examined. The second study determined whether the information provided by the facial display might be more primary nonrepresentational visual patterns than facial features with obvious denotative meaning (e.g., diagonal lines rather than downturned eyebrows). The subjective response to sets of diagonal, angular, and curvilinear visual stimuli revealed that the nonrepresentational features of angularity and diagonality in the visual stimulus appeared to have the ability to evoke the subjective responses that convey the meaning of threat. A century-long debate was stimulated by Darwin's (1872) intriguing speculation that emotional expression in human beings, as in other animal species, might rest upon a common neuromuscular foundation. One line of reasoning (e.g., Birdwhistell, 1963; Klineberg, 1938; LaBarre, 1947), primarily based on anthropological evidence covering a wide array of human activity, has maintained that emotion is expressed through highly variable behaviors, cross-culturally, and so is best understood as the result of a culture-specific cognitive labeling process. Following more closely Darwin's interest in the stimulus configurations generated by facial displays, a second line of reasoning (Ekman, 1971,1982;Izard, 1971, 1977; among others) has provided impressive support for the position that speciescharacteristic features underlie facial displays of emotion. Typically, in this work, photographs of individuals experiencing (or actors simulating) a set of emotions are shown to members of different cultural groups who are then asked to identify the emotion displayed. These studies have shown that a wide range of emotional representations can be discriminated correctly (Ekman, 1971; Izard, 1971), with the results from less Western cultures parallel to those obtained from more Western cultures. More recently, such research has been attentive to the specific features that compose a type of facial display. Coding systems of emotionally related facial displays, such as Ekman and Friesen's (1978) Facial Action Coding System, are more than conve-We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of William Crano, Lester Hyman, Lawrence Messe, and Eileen Thompson in the design and execution of this study. Valuable comments by Thomas Carr, Hiram Fitzgerald, Lawrence Messe, and Rose Zacks on an earlier draft of this paper are much appreciated.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The recognition of threatening facial stimuli.

Aronoff¹,

Barclay²,

Stevenson³

1988

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

118

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…If effects can reliably be found across diverse societies, the reasoning goes, researchers are justified in assuming cross-cultural invariance or even universality; differences among samples are interpreted as evidence for either the influence of observed or unobserved cultural factors or methodological differences. By comparing geographically and culturally distant societies, this approach addresses “Galton’s problem,” which describes the pitfalls of drawing inferences from cross-cultural data that are autocorrelated because of shared cultural and historical roots (Naroll, 1965). This rationale guided the construction of the widely used “Standard Cross-Cultural Sample” (Murdock & White, 1969).…”

Section: Using the Causal Framework For Principled Study Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Causal Framework for Cross-Cultural Generalizability

Deffner

Rohrer

McElreath

2022

Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science

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Behavioral researchers increasingly recognize the need for more diverse samples that capture the breadth of human experience. Current attempts to establish generalizability across populations focus on threats to validity, constraints on generalization, and the accumulation of large, cross-cultural data sets. But for continued progress, we also require a framework that lets us determine which inferences can be drawn and how to make informative cross-cultural comparisons. We describe a generative causal-modeling framework and outline simple graphical criteria to derive analytic strategies and implied generalizations. Using both simulated and real data, we demonstrate how to project and compare estimates across populations and further show how to formally represent measurement equivalence or inequivalence across societies. We conclude with a discussion of how a formal framework for generalizability can assist researchers in designing more informative cross-cultural studies and thus provides a more solid foundation for cumulative and generalizable behavioral research.

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“… 4. Prior discussions about case dependence have also occurred under the label of “Galton’s problem” in the context of cross-national studies in political studies (Braun and Gilardi 2006) and anthropology (Naroll 1965). However, these discussions are not concerned with the implications for theory building or guidance for future researchers, all of which are issues we deal with in this article. …”

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confidence: 99%

Theory Building, Case Dependence, and Researchers’ Bounded Rationality: An Illustration From Studies of Innovation Diffusion

Oliveira

Secchi

2021

Sociological Methods & Research

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Researchers increasingly take advantage of the comparative case design to build theory, but the degree of case dependence is occasionally discussed and theorized. We suggest that the comparative case study design might be subject to an often underappreciated threat—dependence across cases—under certain conditions. Using research on innovation diffusion as an illustration, we explore the role of social linkages across cases when building theory through comparison and contrast between cases. We develop an agent-based simulation, grounded by comparative case research about innovation diffusion, as novel way to study the implications of case dependence in theory building using multiple-case study research. Our simulation results suggest that the degree of case dependence has a nontrivial bearing on innovation diffusion experienced by case entities, specifically when the researcher draws a few case entities operating in a highly interconnected industry. Under these conditions, overlooking the degree of case dependence might weaken newly built theory against commonly held standards of internal validity and external validity in inductive research. We conceptualize the issue of case dependence as a concern about researchers’ bounded rationality. Accordingly, we build on our findings to provide actionable advice aiming to alleviate this concern while being amendable to the variety of approaches to build theory from multiple cases in social sciences.

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Galton's Problem and HRAFLIB

Cited by 17 publications

References 20 publications

The recognition of threatening facial stimuli.

The recognition of threatening facial stimuli.

A Causal Framework for Cross-Cultural Generalizability

Theory Building, Case Dependence, and Researchers’ Bounded Rationality: An Illustration From Studies of Innovation Diffusion

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