Behavior across Cultures: Results from Observational Studies

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108 15/Behavior across Cultures: Results from Observational Studies observers had been trained and had achieved reliability using a standardized observation technique and schedule. In other words, if a general statement is made, we want not simply a flat assertion but also a detailed specification of the means used to derive it. So, keeping these methodological considerations in mind, we can now turn to the three representative question-sets and some partial empirical answers. Question 1: Are boys everywhere more aggressive than girls? If such a sex difference exists, does it hold across all types of aggression? Aggression is of special interest as a form of social behavior both because it is frequently associated with males and because its range runs from children's mild attacks to full-scale warfare. Although aggression has been among the most widely studied topics in all of psychology, relatively little of the research has been based on the systematic observation of children and on standardized definitions for aggressive behavior. We want to report briefly on these kinds of data, which have been gathered from ten societies around the world, including most of the major culture areas. Children aged 3 to 11 were studied in their homes and communities as they engaged in normal social activities with others, nurturing, scolding, helping, and hitting-in short, doing those things that youngsters typically do. Several thousand behavioral acts were observed and coded according to the categories of social behavior into which the acts fell. The categories included three types of aggression: physical assault, rough-and-tumble play, and verbal attack such as insulting, threatening, or challenging. As Table 1 indicates, a very strong preponderance of aggressive acts was displayed by boys. The last column in the table, which gives overall tendencies, shows that in no group did the girls display a higher level of total agonistic behavior than boys, even though there were two societies in which boys and girls were equal. (One of these semi-exceptional cases, interestingly enough, was the United States, which had formed the basis for the original generalization!) For each type of aggressive behavior considered separately, as we see in the first three columns, only one society in ten showed the girls to be higher than the boys. For verbal aggression, however, there were enough "ties" that just six of the ten societies had a higher level for boys than girls. Based on our data, then, we can say in answer to our initial question-set, first, that boys do seem to aggress more frequently than girls across a wide variety of cultures; and second, that while the subcategories of aggression also tend to show boys to be higher than girls, the cross-cultural tendency is relatively weak so far as verbal aggression is concerned. In general, this rough cross-cultural count mirrors quite well the usual Western-based finding, with boys almost always more frequently observed in the physical forms of aggression, but with girls not far behind in verbal aggression, and sometimes rivaling boys in that respect. Question 2: Are females always the main caretakers of children? Don't fathers ever match mothers in this regard, or at least get themselves heavily involved in caretaking activities? Females are the main caretakers TABLE 1 Sex differences in aggression in 10 societies Type of Aggression Society" Assaultine Horseolav Verbal All Belize India Kenya (a) Kenya (b) Mexico Nepal Okinawa Philippines Samoa U.S.A. +" indicates that boys' scores were higher than girls'. "-" indicates that girls' scores were higher than boys'. =" indicates that boys' and girls' scores were approximately equal. "Data for Belize, Kenya (b), Nepal, and Samoa were taken from Munroe and Munroe (1984). Data for India, Kenya (a), Mexico, Okinawa, the Philippines, and the U.S.A. were taken from Whiting and Edwards (1973).
15/Behavior across Cultures: Results from Observational Studies 109 of infants and young children in all known cultures. Available ethnographic evidence over the years led anthropologists to claim this, and subsequent observational studies have corroborated it. As to fathers, their involvement in caretaking does vary culturally, but it has always been reported as very low compared with that of mothers. Direct observation has, again, confirmed this point, with mothers found involved in direct care of infants about 20-25 percent of their time, fathers no more than 2-3 percent. This wide gap between mothers and fathers has prompted many speculations, including the possibility of a maternal instinct and a division of These results lay to rest any supposition that adult males may be fundamentally disinclined to undertake intensive caretaking or nurturing behavior. labor based on physical characteristics, such as size and strength, that differentiate the sexes in all societies. The findings of a recent observational project, however, have demonstrated that an extreme cultural instance can cause us to revise our ideas about what might seem to be natural behavior. Anthropologist Barry Hewlett (1991) lived with and studied the Aka Pygmies of the Western Congo Basin. He had noted, casually, that fathers were highly involved in infant care. He then carried out several hundred hours of systematic observations and, on that basis, reported that: fathers averaged a full hour per day holding the baby during daylight hours, spent 20 percent of their time in early evenings actively caring for the baby, were found no farther than an arm's length from their babies for half the day, and, in the Aka's forest-camp setting, were within view of the baby a remarkable 88 percent of the time. (Even with this level of involvement, father care of the Aka infant was below that of the mother.) These results lay to rest any supposition that adult males may be fundamentally disinclined to undertake intensive caretaking or nurturing behavior. Hewlett also found that Aka fathers, though intimate, affectionate, and helpful with their infants, did not engage in vigorous or rough-and-tumble play. His data clearly do not support the recent idea that infants become attached to their fathers by means of father-initiated stimulating play. But to return to our question, we have in the Aka case a level of paternal care far exceeding anything hitherto reported. As in other societies, the Aka father's caretaking does not match that of the mother, but involvement with his baby is very high indeed. Question 3: Does leisure time increase with modem urban life? Or is it in the technologically and economically simpler societies that people have time to spare? At mid-century, the consensus was that the Western world possessed a technical competency capable of granting us all the leisure we might want. It was argued that from the perspective of a hunter-gatherer like the Tasmanian, "we apparently had a magic which made the plants grow as abundantly as we wanted and the animals herd together as tame as dogs. . . ready to be slaughtered at will" (Forde, 1952, p. 2). And for their part, hunters were considered to be "threatened with starvation and working constantly to achieve bare survival" (Netting, 1977, p. 9). But this traditional view was completely reversed when the first systematic observations on time use among hunters began to be collected. The food quest, as among the !Kung Bushmen, occupied adults only a few hours per day on average, and foragers were suddenly rechri tened "the original affluent society," with industrial peoples said to work longer and harder than all others. Now, however, behavior observations have been extended to societies at all levels of cultural complexity and in many areas of the world, and we are able to answer the question of relative work and leisure in a more precise way. We note first, though, that the term "labor" is used more inclusively than for just subsistence activity and includes work as broadly defined, namely, the wage jobs most of us engage in, our household chores, the shopping, the preparation of food, active caretaking of children, and so on. It appears, contrary both to the earlier view and to the more recent one, that we in the urban-industrial world put in approximately the same time on daily labor as those in food-collecting societies. Yet lying between us and the hunting peoples on a scale of cultural complexity are the agrarian societies, and what we have learned from observation is that these agriculturalists work longer hours than either us or the hunter-gatherers. Not only adults but children too follow this pattern; one comparison, for example, showed that during nonschool hours for children aged 3-10, those in
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Behavior across Cultures: Results from Observational Studies

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