W W Dressler
Biographic Data
| ID | 2218 |
|---|---|
| NAME | W W Dressler |
| GIVEN NAMES | W W |
| FAMILY NAME | Dressler |
| SIGNATURE | DRESSLER W W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Alabama |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7892-2652 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 104 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1133 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 104 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
Cognitive Cultural Domains as Common Understandings
Common Understanding (CU) is the shared awareness that a cultural domain exists as a category that labels some phenomenon of interest in the world within a particular social group, and this domain is described by a set of terms that set certain boundaries around it. This article deploys a research protocol using: (1) free lists to investigate variation both within and between group CU, and (2) a greedy algorithm to partition CU into covering subs…
Facilitating Exchanges Between Applied & Academic Anthropologists
Validating cultural models with cultural consensus theory
Distance from a Cultural Prototype and Psychological Distress in Urban Brazil
The metaphor of culture as a space or environment of meaning is widely employed. Going beyond metaphor, we present a model of culture as a 3-dimensional Euclidean space, using data from Brazil on cultural models of life goals. The dimensions of this space are defined by degree of sharing of culture (cultural competence); alternate configurations of that shared meaning (residual agreement); and social practice (cultural consonance). A cultural dis…
Ethnographic Methods for Identifying Cultural Concepts of Distress
We review ethnographic methods that allow researchers to assess distress in a culturally sensitive manner. We begin with an overview of standardized biomedical and psychological approaches to assessing distress cross-culturally. We then focus on literature describing the development of reliable and valid culturally sensitive assessment tools that can serve as complements or alternatives to biomedical categories and diagnostic frameworks. The meth…
Age at Arrival and Depression among Mexican Immigrant Women in Alabama
Mexican-born women in the U.S. are at high risk of depression. While acculturation is the primary analytical framework used to study immigrant mental health, this research suffers from (1) a lack of specificity regarding how cultural models of living and being take shape among migrants converging in new destinations in the U.S., and (2) methods to empirically capture the impact of cultural positioning on individual health outcomes. Instead of rel…
Cultural Consonance in Food Consumption and Nutrient Intake in Southern Brazil
Culture influences food consumption and nutrient intake. In this paper we present a new approach in research, examining how knowledge and understanding of food is encoded in cultural models. The degree to which individuals match these shared models in their own consumption patterns is then measured, using the concept of cultural consonance. In research conducted in urban Brazil, the configuration of cultural models of food, and the association of…
Time in the United States and diabetes among Mexican immigrant women
Mexican immigrants in the U.S. show high incidence of type 2 diabetes, and increased risk is associated with longer duration of residency. This study considers the impact of culture over time for Mexican immigrant women in a southern U.S. city. Using cultural consensus analysis to empirically derive the substance and structure of a cultural model for la buena vida (the good life) among Mexican immigrant women in Birmingham, Alabama, we assess the…
Cultural consonance, body image, and disordered eating among young South Korean men
Modeling Culture
Cognitive culture theory and the associated methods of cultural domain analysis and cultural consensus analysis have revolutionized the study of cultural sharing and variation. However, the ways in which these methods can be employed are still not widely appreciated. Our aim in this paper is to propose a systematic framework for investigating cultural models. We provide examples of ideal types of sharing and variation in cultural models, includin…
Biocultural Strategies for Measuring Psychosocial Stress Outcomes in Field-based Research
The goal of assessing psychosocial stress as a process and outcome in naturalistic (i.e., field) settings is applicable across the social, biological, and health sciences. Meaningful measurement of biology-in-context is, however, far from simple or straightforward. In this brief methods review, we introduce theoretical framings, methodological conventions, and ethical concerns around field-collection of markers of psychosocial stress that have em…
The construction of the cultural niche
OBJECTIVES: Objective of the study is to develop a more precise model of culture as an evolutionary niche for the human species. Culture is encoded in cultural models and can be decomposed into three basic components: shared knowledge and understanding, referred to as cultural competence; alternate configurations of shared understanding, referred to as residual agreement; and social practice, referred to as cultural consonance. Individuals are th…
Variation in Cultural Consensus Between Expert and Novice Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Athletes
Martial Arts Studies publishes the highest quality academic work on any aspect of martial arts studies. It aspires to stimulate and enrich the development of research and scholarship in martial arts studies by publishing the highest quality interdisciplinary work in the emergent field
Cultural Models of Substance Use Risk and Attributed Stigma
The stigma associated with substance use is well known, but little research has examined stigma attribution, or the tendency to stigmatize, nor is there much cross-cultural research on the topic. We examine cultural models for the risk of substance use associated with stigma attribution in two settings: the United States and Brazil. Study populations of young adults are the focus in each setting. Using methods of cultural domain analysis, cultura…
Cultural Consensus and Cultural Consonance
Theoretical and methodological developments guided by a cognitive theory of culture have advanced our understanding of cultural processes over the past 40 years. The theoretical construct of cultural models, developed in the 1970s, provided a more precise definition of culture. The cultural consensus model, introduced in 1986, enabled investigators to verify and analyze the degree to which culture was shared and how it was distributed. Subsequent…
La Buena Vida
Mexican immigrant women come to the United States in pursuit of what they call la buena vida (the good life) for themselves and for their children. The research described here attempts to better understand what la buena vida means to these women in terms of what they perceive as necessary to achieve this ideal. While the theoretical construct of acculturation is typically used to study what happens to individuals transitioning from one cultural o…
Flower boys and muscled men
Body image disturbance and eating disorders are rising all over the world. However, little is known about experiences of body image in men across cultural groups, and measurement tools often fail to account for the profound ways in which culture and gender can affect these data. An American cultural model of the ideal male body was compared with that of South Koreans using cultural domain analysis and residual agreement analysis. Cultural domain …
Cultural Models of Substance Misuse Risk and Moral Foundations
This study examines the cognitive resources underlying the attribution of stigma in substance use and misuse. A cultural model of substance misuse risk was elicited from students at a major U.S. state university. We found a contested cultural model, with some respondents adopting a model of medical risk while others adopted a model of moral failure; agreeing that moral failure primarily defined risk led to greater attribution of stigma. Here we i…
Agency, Cultural Consonance and Depressive Symptoms
Cultural consonance, or individual enactment of cultural models, is associated with lower depressive symptoms. This article incorporates individual agency into the cultural consonance model. Data were collected using mixed methods in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. Brazil is a unique setting for this research, given that personal agency is institutionalized in the practice of o jeitinho (a distinctively Brazilian way of circumventing rules). Cultural con…
Stress
Stress in the social environment as a threat to individual wellbeing has been extensively investigated. Cross‐cultural studies of health and disease have contributed importantly to this literature. In the 1960s and 1970s research focused on the stressful effects of migration and culture change. In the 1970s anthropologists adapted social–psychological models of the stress process to settings outside North America and Europe, showing how the defin…
What You Know, What You Do, and How You Feel
Describing the link between culture (as a phenomenon pertaining to social aggregates) and the beliefs and behaviors of individuals, has eluded satisfactory resolution; however, contemporary cognitive culture theory offers hope. In this theory, culture is conceptualized as cognitive models describing specific domains of life that are shared by members of a social group. It is sharing that gives culture its aggregate properties. There are two aspec…
Medical Disease or Moral Defect? Stigma Attribution and Cultural Models of Addiction Causality in a University Population
Cultural Consonance in Life Goals and Depressive Symptoms in Urban Brazil
Cultural consonance is the degree to which individuals approximate, in their own beliefs and behaviors, the prototypes for belief and behavior encoded in cultural models. Low cultural consonance is associated with higher psychological distress. Cultural consonance also converges across some cultural domains. Cultural consonance in different domains may converge because of an individual’s access to socioeconomic resources, or cultural consonance i…
The interaction of cultural consonance and a polymorphism in the 2A serotonin receptor in relation to depression in Brazil
OBJECTIVES: To replicate a previously identified gene-environment interaction between a genetic polymorphism in the serotonin 2A receptor and cultural consonance in family life in relation to depressive symptoms (Dressler et al., 2009). METHODS: A sample of 402 individuals in a sample drawn from four different economic strata in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil was interviewed and genotyped. RESULTS: Cultural consonance in family life has an inverse associ…
Culture as a mediator of gene-environment interaction
Race and Ethnicity in Public Health Research
The description and explanation of racial and ethnic health disparities are major initiatives of the public health research establishment. Black Americans suffer on nearly every measure of health in relation to white Americans. Five theoretical models have been proposed to explain these disparities: a racial-genetic model, a health-behavior model, a socioeconomic status model, a psychosocial stress model, and a structural-constructivist model. We…
The Health Consequences of Cultural Consonance
Cultural dimensions of health and behavior have been difficult to study because of limited theoretical and methodological models linking the cultural, the individual, and the biological. We employ a cognitive theory of culture to understand culture and health in an African American community in the southern United States. First, cultural consensus analysis is used to test for shared cultural models of lifestyles and social supports within the com…
Extended Family Relationships, Social Support, and Mental Health in a Southern Black Community
Les perspectives contemporaines sur la famille noire suggerent que la famille etendue est une source essentielle de support social a l'interieur de la communaute noire. Les influences sur l'etat depressif d'un certain nombre de relations sociales sont examinees; on passe en revue: les dimensions de la parente etendue et la perception comparee du soutien venant de la parente et venant des non-parents. Les symptomes depressifs ont paru en raison in…
Culture, Socioeconomic Status, and Physical and Mental Health in Brazil
The association of socioeconomic variables with poor health status has been widely observed, if not well understood, and cultural dimensions of socioeconomic differences have rarely been incorporated into research models. In this article, a cultural dimension of socioeconomic status is examined in a Brazilian city through the use of ethnographic and social survey techniques. It suggests that lifestyle, defined in terms of the relative ability to …
Measuring Cultural Consonance
A valid and reliable anthropological measurement must be culturally appropriate for a particular social setting. Justifying the appropriateness of a measurement often depends on the skill of the researcher in describing the ethnographic setting. This has resulted in valuable research, but it is difficult to systematize and lacks transparency. Here the authors present a measurement model for anthropology that links structured ethnographic methods-…
Skin Color, Social Classification, and Blood Pressure in Southeastern Puerto Rico
Objectives. We tested competing hypotheses for the skin color–blood pressure relationship by analyzing the association between blood pressure and 2 skin color variables: skin pigmentation and social classification. Methods. We measured skin pigmentation by reflectance spectrophotometry and social classification by linking respondents to ethnographic data on the cultural model of “color” in southeastern Puerto Rico. We used multiple regression ana…
Culture
Modeling biocultural interactions
Anthropology, as a unified science of human existence, seeks to understand a variety of influences and outcomes in the process of human adaptation. In that there is a complex interaction between human behavior and human biology in this process, the integration of theory and method to incorporate social, cultural, and biological variables in research design is of paramount importance. This integration has been, at best, imperfect. The aim of this …
Cultural consonance and arterial blood pressure in urban Brazil
What's Cultural about Biocultural Research
Advances in biocultural research have been hampered by the lack of an explicit theory of culture. Culture can be viewed as a collection of cultural models of specific domains with empirically verifiable distributions within a social group. Individuals are variably able to approximate these models in their own beliefs and behavior, a concept referred to as “cultural consonance.” Cultural consonance is hypothesized to be associated with psychophysi…
Health in the African American Community
African Americans are at a higher risk of having a variety of health problems and have less access to health care than white Americans. This article explores these health inequalities and their explanations. Three conventional models of health inequalities-a racial-genetic model, a health behavior or lifestyle model, and a socioeconomic status model-are examined and found to be insufficient to account for observed disparities. A fourth alternativ…
Arterial Blood Pressure and Modernization in Brazil
The relationship between individual modernization and elevated arterial blood pressure was examined in a study in urban Brazil. We hypothesized that elevated blood pressure would result from the discrepancy between an individual's style of life and his or her economic resources; specifically, we suggested that when modern life-style acquisition exceeded economic resources, a circumstance referred to as "life-style stress," blood pressure would be…
Finding Culture Change in the Second Factor
This article reports the replication after 10 years of cultural consensus analyses in four cultural domains in the city of Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. Additionally, two methods for evaluating residual agreement are applied to the data, and a new technique for evaluating how cultural knowledge is represented by residual agreement is introduced. We found that overall cultural consensus observed in 2001 was replicated in 2011 in four cultural domains. S…
A prospective study of cultural consonance and depressive symptoms in urban Brazil
Social Consistency and Psychological Distress
Various hypotheses have been proposed regarding the stressful nature of a lack of consistency among different dimensions of social status. Three of these, termed respectively the status inconsistency, goal-striving stress, and lifestyle incongruity models, are evaluated with data collected in a southern black community. Of these three models, lifestyle incongruity proves the best predictor of depressive symptoms, in interaction with age. More sym…
Arterial blood pressure and individual modernization in a Mexican community
Cultural Consensus and Cultural Diversity
This study uses mixed methods and theory from cognitive anthropology to examine the cultural models of domestic violence among domestic violence agency workers, welfare workers, nurses, and a general population comparison group. Data collection and analysis uses quantitative and qualitative techniques, and the findings are integrated for interpretation. Findings reveal consensus among service providers on how controllable domestic violence factor…
Studying Diversity and Sharing in Culture
The structure and distribution of cultural models within social groups have been studied in a variety of domains, using a variety of methods. In this article we examine cultural models of lifestyle in Brazil; here, lifestyle is defined as the accumulation of consumer goods and the adoption of behaviors that help to define one's social identity. Three issues are examined: (1) the structure and distribution of models of culturally appropriate lifes…
The social and cultural context of coping
Household Structure in a Southern Black Community
Eating, drinking and being depressed
Medical Anthropology
This article about medical anthropology was inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu, specifically, his efforts to reconcile the antinomy of a "social structuralist" and a "cultural constructivist" perspective. These perspectives are often opposed in the literature, buty in Bourdieu's view, human life cannot be studied without taking into account both how individuals are situated within and constrained by social structures and how those individual…
Art Styles, Social Stratification, and Cognition
In a diachronic study of the relationship between social stratification and formal design elements on painted vases in ancient Greece it was found that during periods of greater social stratification in the Greek city-state of Athens there was comparatively more (1) complexity of style, (2) utilization of space, and (3) enclosure of figures in Attic painted pottery than during periods of less stratification. These results support Fischer's (1961)…
Culture and the Immune System
In this article, we examine the distribution of a marker of immune system stimulation-C-reactive protein-in urban Brazil. Social relationships are associated with immunostimulation, and we argue that cultural dimensions of social support, assessed by cultural consonance, are important in this process. Cultural consonance is the degree to which individuals, in their own beliefs and behaviors, approximate shared cultural models. A measure of cultur…
Perceptions of Injustice in a Black Community
Few studies have examined beliefs and attitudes about injustice and discrimination within minority communities. Most research has emphasized the institutional consequences of discrimination, or the racial beliefs of the majority groups. In this study we examine attitudes about injustice and reactions to discriminatory acts within a Black community in the U.S. South. Beliefs and attitudes were found to cluster in three dimensions, including respon…
Art Styles, Social Stratification, and Cognition
In a diachronic study of the relationship between social stratification and formal design elements on painted vases in ancient Greece it was found that during periods of greater social stratification in the Greek city-state of Athens there was comparatively more (1) complexity of style, (2) utilization of space, and (3) enclosure of figures in Attic painted pottery than during periods of less stratification. These results support Fischer's (1961)…
Part four
This study seeks to answer two questions: is there intra‐cultural variation in a sample of bilingual English and Patois speakers in St. Lucia with regard to the cognition of disease terms; and, if there is, what are the linguistic and sociocultural correlates of this bilingual variation? A cognitive mapping technique, the triad sort, is used to determine the cognition of a set of disease terms. Data were collected from a sample which maximized va…
Part three
The relationship between sociological factors and arterial blood pressure in St. Lucia, in the West Indies, is examined in this paper. Some epidemiological research has suggested that “social disorganization” contributes to poor health status. Furthermore, it has been argued that the Afro‐American family is a “disorganized social unit,” a social pathology resulting from slavery and oppression and contributing to poor health. An alternative view i…
Ethnomedical Beliefs and Patient Adherence to a Treatment Regimen
Coping Dispositions, Social Supports, and Health Status
Blood Pressure, Relative Weight, and Psychosocial Resources
Research was conducted to determine the degree to which the effect of obesity on blood pressure was modified by sociocultural factors. A measure of psychosocial resources incorporating both access to social supports and coping styles, was developed in research in St. Lucia, a West Indian culture. The study sample consisted of 98 40-49-year olds randomly selected from a community. Obesity was measured by percent overweight using weight-for-height …
Hypertension and Culture Change
Social and Cultural Influences in Cardiovascular Disease
The Hypoglycemia-Aggression Hypothesis
In a critical evaluation of work by Ralph Bolton on the relationship between hypoglycemia and aggression among the Qolla of Peru, Ted Lewellen has argued that the Qolla are not highly aggressive, that they have been the victims of pseudoscientific stereotyping and prejudice, that they are not especially prone to problems in glucose homeostasis, and that whatever aggression they display can be explained in large part by their consumption of alcoho…
Hypertension and Perceived Stress
Stress and Sorcery in Three Social Groups
The hypothesis that stress factors associated with culture change are related to higher levels of belief in sorcery is tested here. It is hypothesized that these beliefs function as a "culturally constituted defense mechanism" for individuals as a means of coping with stressors. The hypothesis is tested in three different social groups, using two different measures of stress factors associated with culture change. The general proposition receives…
Psychosomatic symptoms, stress, and modernization
The social and cultural context of coping
Extended Family Relationships, Social Support, and Mental Health in a Southern Black Community
Les perspectives contemporaines sur la famille noire suggerent que la famille etendue est une source essentielle de support social a l'interieur de la communaute noire. Les influences sur l'etat depressif d'un certain nombre de relations sociales sont examinees; on passe en revue: les dimensions de la parente etendue et la perception comparee du soutien venant de la parente et venant des non-parents. Les symptomes depressifs ont paru en raison in…
Household Structure in a Southern Black Community
Social Support and Health . Sheldon Cohen, S. Leonard Syme
Blood pressure, ethnicity, and psychosocial resources
Research on psychosocial factors and cardiovascular disease has shown that psychosocial resources (including social supports and coping styles) help to protect individuals from the risk associated with psychosocial stressors. Some evidence indicates that this protective effect may extend to standard risk factors as well. This latter hypothesis was examined in greater detail in a study conducted in Brazil, in which it was found that psychosocial r…
Social support and arterial pressure in a central Mexican community
Research on the relationship of social support and arterial blood pressure was conducted in a town in central Mexico. A culturally appropriate measure of social support was developed assessing perceived support from relatives, friends, neighbors, and compadres (ritual kin). The effects of perceived support from these four sources were compared to the effects of the amount of reported social contacts. For males, more support from all four sources …
Arterial blood pressure and individual modernization in a Mexican community
The Stress Process in a Southern Black Community
Interest has grown in the development and implementation of primary prevention programs for various forms of mental illness. Primary prevention strategies for mental illness (and other disorders) hold great promise for reducing psychiatric morbidity by altering the etiologic factors that lead to dysfunction. Such programs must first be tested to evaluate their efficacy. In this paper the implications for research on primary prevention programs ar…
Arterial Blood Pressure and Modernization in Brazil
The relationship between individual modernization and elevated arterial blood pressure was examined in a study in urban Brazil. We hypothesized that elevated blood pressure would result from the discrepancy between an individual's style of life and his or her economic resources; specifically, we suggested that when modern life-style acquisition exceeded economic resources, a circumstance referred to as "life-style stress," blood pressure would be…
A Reply to Garn, Sullivan, and Ten Have
Blood pressure and social class in a Jamaican community
A study of social factors and blood pressure was conducted in a Jamaican community among a sample of 199 persons ages 30 to 50. After controlling for obesity, age, and respondent tension (and other covariates), interaction effects of social class x sex for systolic and diastolic blood pressure were found. Blood pressure increased with increasing social class for males and decreased with increasing social class for females
Perceptions of Injustice in a Black Community
Few studies have examined beliefs and attitudes about injustice and discrimination within minority communities. Most research has emphasized the institutional consequences of discrimination, or the racial beliefs of the majority groups. In this study we examine attitudes about injustice and reactions to discriminatory acts within a Black community in the U.S. South. Beliefs and attitudes were found to cluster in three dimensions, including respon…
Social Consistency and Psychological Distress
Various hypotheses have been proposed regarding the stressful nature of a lack of consistency among different dimensions of social status. Three of these, termed respectively the status inconsistency, goal-striving stress, and lifestyle incongruity models, are evaluated with data collected in a southern black community. Of these three models, lifestyle incongruity proves the best predictor of depressive symptoms, in interaction with age. More sym…
Sociology (77 works) · Psychology (73 works) · Social Psychology (53 works) · Medicine (51 works) · Categorization, perception, and language (40 works) · Demography (29 works) · Anthropology (27 works) · Gerontology (26 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (25 works) · Clinical Psychology (24 works)