Urban Western folkbiological thinking is malformed by a poverty of cultural input

Evidence

In small-scale societies, people typically use, and children first learn, focal categories (see figure 5.4 ) like “robin,” “wolf,” and “chimpanzee.” But the urban-living children and university students that psychologists typically study use what are called “life-form-level” categories, such as “bird” and “fish.” Moreover, these urbanites seem to preferentially reason from what they know about humans to other species, rather than just positioning humans within the taxonomy and treating them like any other animal. Comparative studies with Maya children, as well as Americans living in rural areas, have suggested why: urban children receive very little cultural input on plants and animals; thus, the only critters they know much about are humans. In essence, urbanized Western folkbiological systems are malfunctioning due to a poverty of input during cognitive development. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 269

Categorization

• XREF: Direct parallel to the known-age conformist-bias question: here too the developmental consequence depends on what cultural input arrives during childhood — same structure as the reader’s coercion-vulnerability framing. — connects to: Cultural forms ossify and drift apart from the life that created them — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 837; Colonial knowledge production stripped local knowledge of its localness deliberately — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 573
• QUESTION: If folkbiology requires a particular flow of cultural input to develop normally, does conformist-bias transmission likewise need a specific input window before it matures?

Broader Connections

• Colonial knowledge production stripped local knowledge of its localness deliberately #complicates (0.76) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 573
• Cultural forms ossify and drift apart from the life that created them #expands (0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 837