ORCID Profile
0000-0002-1944-2613
Current Organisations
University of Oxford
,
University of Queensland
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Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 17-06-2020
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 21-01-2021
DOI: 10.1111/CDEV.13528
Abstract: Preferences for pink and blue were tested in children aged 4–11 years in three small‐scale societies: Shipibo villages in the Peruvian Amazon, kastom villages in the highlands of Tanna Island, Vanuatu, and BaYaka foragers in the northern Republic of Congo and compared to children from an Australian global city (total N = 232). No sex differences were found in preference for pink in any of the three societies not influenced by global culture ( d s − 0.31–0.23), in contrast to a female preference for pink in the global city ( d = 1.24). Results suggest that the pairing of female and pink is a cultural phenomenon and is not driven by an essential preference for pink in girls.
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 29-06-2020
Abstract: There is a large, if disparate, body of archaeological literature discussing specific instantiations of symbolic material culture and the possibility of ritual practices in Neanderthal populations. Despite this attention, however, no single synthesis exists that draws upon cognitive, psychological and cultural evolutionary theories of ritual. Here, we review the evidence for ritual-practice among now-extinct Homo neanderthalensis , as well as the necessary cognitive pre-conditions for such behaviour, in order to explore the evolution of ritual in Homo sapiens . We suggest that the currently available archaeological evidence indicates that Neanderthals may have used ‘ritualization’ to increase the successful transmission of technical knowledge across generations—providing an explanation for the technological stability of the Middle Palaeolithic and attesting to a survival strategy differing from near-contemporary H. sapiens . This article is part of the theme issue ‘Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours’.
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 29-06-2020
Abstract: Human rituals exhibit bewildering ersity, from the Mauritian Kavadi to Catholic communion. Is this ersity infinitely plastic or are there some general dimensions along which ritual features vary? We analyse two cross-cultural datasets: one drawn from the anthropological record and another novel contemporary dataset, to examine whether a consistent underlying set of latent dimensions in ritual structure and experiences can be detected. First, we conduct a factor analysis on 651 rituals from 74 cultural groups, in which 102 binary variables are coded. We find a reliable set of dimensions emerged, which provide potential candidates for foundational elements of ritual form. Notably, we find that the expression of features associated with dysphoric and euphoric experiences in rituals appears to be largely orthogonal. Second, we follow-up with a pre-registered factor analysis examining contemporary ritual experiences of 779 in iduals from Japan, India and the US. We find supporting evidence that ritual experiences are clustered in relatively orthogonal euphoric, dysphoric, frequency and cognitive dimensions. Our findings suggest that there are important regularities in the ersity of ritual expression and experience observed across both time and culture. We discuss the implications of these findings for cognitive theories of ritual and cultural evolution. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours'.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 22-02-2019
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 28-11-2018
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Rohan Kapitany.