M C Robbins
Biographic Data
| ID | 58032 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M C Robbins |
| GIVEN NAMES | M C |
| FAMILY NAME | Robbins |
| SIGNATURE | ROBBINS M C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Missouri |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8465-8712 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 152 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1966 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Cognitive Cultural Domains as Common Understandings: A Research Protocol
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…
American-English Ethnoanatomy: Novices and Experts
This interdisciplinary study of novice, American–English speakers found two major discrepancies between their conceptualizations of external human anatomy, and the expert opinion of the scientific and medical community. In contrast to the experts, (1) more than 90% of the novices exhibit polysemy when identifying human limbs and (2) about 50% exhibit partonomic disagreement, about whether ‘thumbs’ are ‘fingers’, and ears are ‘parts of’ the face. …
The Nolan Index: An R Program for Calculating List Resemblances
The Nolan Index (NI) is a normed, quantitative measure for comparing the degree of resemblance (similarity or dissimilarity) between free listings with an Excel program for calculating it. This article enhances that effort with the addition of an R program and additional applications. Free-list resemblance measures have been used to investigate and compare historical and cultural connections, ecological relationships, cultural item utilities, pra…
Foreword for Justin
The Nolan Index: A Quantitative Measure of List Similarities
Several ethnobiological studies have used the Jaccard Index, a qualitative, binary measure, to compare group similarities and differences in lists of plant and animal species, medicinals, foods, cultural utilities, and so on. We extend this effort by formulating the Nolan Index, a new, more precise quantitative measure of the relative frequency of listed items to compare similarities and differences between groups . It is deployed here to evaluat…
Free List Analytics: An Overview
Linguistic Influence on Russian and American Ethnobiological Categorization
In the Russian language, nouns are classified by gender and animacy, whereas in English, nouns are not. Using triad-sorts of names for biological and non-biological taxa, a comparison of results provided by native speakers of both languages reveals that cognitive categorizations of animate and inanimate nomenclatural forms differ significantly between speakers of Russian and American English. Speakers of American English appear to categorize name…
Free-list Measures of Cognitive Sharing and Organization: Ethnobotany in Rural Missouri
We present a normed measure of cognitive sharing/diversity and a measure of cognitive organization that can be derived from free lists. They are useful for making cross-cultural and intracultural comparisons both within and between culturally constituted cognitive domains. An ethnographic example using data collected in rural Missouri from 40 novice and expert respondents to the domain of wild plants is used for illustrative purposes. Consistent …
An Improved Measure of Cognitive Salience in Free Listing Tasks: A Marshallese Example
A new free-list measure of cognitive salience, B′, is presented, which includes both list position and list frequency. It surpasses other extant measures by being normed to vary between a maximum of 1 and a minimum of 0, thereby making it useful for comparisons irrespective of list length or number of respondents. An illustration of its properties, uses, and computation is provided with the aid of examples drawn from free lists of foods elicited …
Emotional Meaning and the Cognitive Organization of Ethnozoological Domains
This article shows that the cognitive structure of semantic ethnozoological domains is influenced by the culturally constituted affective values of these domains. Data were collected from American undergraduates who free listed the generic constituents of four ethnozoological life-forms: birds, fish, snakes, and wugs. Participants indicated on each free list which items they liked and disliked, and which single item best represented the life-form…
Ethnobotany and Ethnicity in the Ozarks: A Reply to Jones
HUMAN ORGANIZATION southern Missouri, researchers will need to be cautious in identifying the ethnicity and cultural affiliation of informants since a large population segment in this region are Western Cherokee who have not identified themselves to outsiders in almost 150 years. This situation can possibly be alleviated by contacting local Native American groups prior to going into the field to gain permission for tribal members to identify them…
A Measure of Semantic Category Clustering in Free-Listing Tasks
A measure of semantic category (subset) clustering in free lists is presented that has several advantages over other cluster measures: (1) it is independent of interitem distances; (2) it expresses the degree of clustering of semantic subsets within a list, and overall, as proportions of a maximum that ranges from 0 to 1; and (3) this ratio can be used to compare the degree of clustering within semantic subsets in the same list, overall, and acro…
Cultural Conservation of Medicinal Plant Use in the Ozarks
While a number of recent health care studies have focused on the availability of modern health care services among rural U.S. populations, the commensurate study of access to folk medical systems has been relatively neglected. In this paper we explore the cultural conservation of folk medicinal plant use in 14 communities across the Ozark Mountain region of Arkansas and Missouri. Six relevant socioeconomic and demographic factors are examined in …
A Measure of Dichotomous Category Bias in Free Listing Tasks
To smoke or not to smoke: A decision theory perspective
Smoking as an Occupational Adaptation Among Shrimpfishermen
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Annette Kline, Michael Robbins, J. Thomas; Smoking as an Occupational Adaptation Among Shrimpfishermen. Human Organization 1 December 1989; 48 (4): 351–355. doi: https://doi.org/10.17730/humo.48.4.u6n5820643u4746m Download citation file: …
Social Status and Settlement Pattern Features: A Tojolabal Maya Example
John S. Thomas is a member of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL 36688. Michael C. Robbins is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MU 65211. The research reported in this paper was made possible by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Zmprovement Grant (BNS76-19846) and research funds from the Department ofAnthropology, Univ…
Numerical Techniques in Social Anthropol. ogy. J. CLYDE MITCHELL
Estimating original assemblage content to adjust for post-depositional vertical artifact movement
Frequency curves of a particular class of artifacts, such as pottery, from each stratum assemblage have been used to derive relative chronologies and simultaneously models of cultural change. Such empirical counts do not usually take into account post‐depositional processes affecting archaeological remains. A distinctive type of ceramic, coin molds, from the Iron Age hillfort at the Titelberg in Luxembourg provides the model for presenting a meth…
A Measure of Social Homogamy
More on Misconceptions about Workload and Birthrates: Reply to Spenser and Hum
A Measure of Settlement Pattern Change and Stability
A counting index of the average degree of extreme settlement pattern change and stability is presented. Data from regional archaeological settlement pattern surveys in the Basin of Mexico are used to illustrate it
An Optimization Analysis of Alcohol Use in Rural Buganda
A stochastic process model of conflict and cooperation in Andean communities
Whyte's (1975) study of perceived conflict and cooperation in Andean communities elucidated four community types represented by combinations of these two variables and analyzed community stability and change from one type to another over a five-year period. Using a Markov model, we deduce what the expected future distribution of community types will be if present trends continue and what these projections reveal about long-term processes of commu…
A Stochastic Model of the Adoption of Microtechnology in Rural Buganda
Estimating original assemblage content to adjust for post-depositional vertical artifact movement
Frequency curves of a particular class of artifacts, such as pottery, from each stratum assemblage have been used to derive relative chronologies and simultaneously models of cultural change. Such empirical counts do not usually take into account post‐depositional processes affecting archaeological remains. A distinctive type of ceramic, coin molds, from the Iron Age hillfort at the Titelberg in Luxembourg provides the model for presenting a meth…
Emotional Meaning and the Cognitive Organization of Ethnozoological Domains
This article shows that the cognitive structure of semantic ethnozoological domains is influenced by the culturally constituted affective values of these domains. Data were collected from American undergraduates who free listed the generic constituents of four ethnozoological life-forms: birds, fish, snakes, and wugs. Participants indicated on each free list which items they liked and disliked, and which single item best represented the life-form…
Seasonal Variation in Conception in Rural Uganda and Mexico 1
Using data from rural Uganda and Mexico, this study explores the use of multivariate statistical procedures for examining the combined effects of certain socio‐cultural and climatic variables on seasonal variations in conception. In addition, it fails to support the hypotheses advanced by Nurge (1970) that more conceptions occur during periods of heavy work and that more births occur during periods of light work. Different results and alternative…
Climate and Behavior: A Biocultural Study
Relatively neglected in the growing number of human ecological studies is the consideration of direct environmental effects on the behavioral and psychological adaptations of individuals. This paper presents some tentative cross-cultural and cross-national evidence relating one environmental variable--climate--to both behavioral and psychocultural processes. Some support for the hypothesis that the amount of emotional expression or "level of arou…
Art Styles, Social Stratification, and Cognition: An analysis of Greek vase painting1
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)…
Drinking Patterns and Acculturation in Rural Buganda1
Basic sociocultural changes are often reflected in changing drinking patterns. Data from rural Uganda suggests that with increasing acculturation, there is a trend toward informal drinking behavior, a preference for modern beverages, and the elaboration of drinking settings. Modern settings appear to provide important opportunities for access to the national culture. Results indicate that the marginal population, not the least or most acculturate…
An Improved Measure of Cognitive Salience in Free Listing Tasks: A Marshallese Example
A new free-list measure of cognitive salience, B′, is presented, which includes both list position and list frequency. It surpasses other extant measures by being normed to vary between a maximum of 1 and a minimum of 0, thereby making it useful for comparisons irrespective of list length or number of respondents. An illustration of its properties, uses, and computation is provided with the aid of examples drawn from free lists of foods elicited …
The Comparative Motor Development of Baganda, American White, and American Black Infants1
Baganda infants in Uganda were found to be significantly advanced in motor development during the first year of life when compared with Bayley's sample of American White and Black infants. Though they were not found to be as precocious as Geber's sample of Uganda infants, the same downward trend in degree of motor development during the second year of life was found. As age increased, developmental motor quotient (DMQ) decreased, but at 24 months…
Material Culture and Cognition1
Gratification Patterns and Modernization in Rural Buganda
This paper examines the nature of the relationship of various aspects of the modernization process to deferred/immediate goal gratification among rural Baganda living in Uganda. Study 1 investigates and rejects the assumption that deferred gratification (or the willingness to postpone immediate desires for more substantial future rewards) is positively and linearly related to modernization. Study 2 examines additional factors, assumes a nonlinear…
A Measure of Semantic Category Clustering in Free-Listing Tasks
A measure of semantic category (subset) clustering in free lists is presented that has several advantages over other cluster measures: (1) it is independent of interitem distances; (2) it expresses the degree of clustering of semantic subsets within a list, and overall, as proportions of a maximum that ranges from 0 to 1; and (3) this ratio can be used to compare the degree of clustering within semantic subsets in the same list, overall, and acro…
Factor Analysis and Case Selection in Complex Societies: A Buganda Example
0f major concern to anthropologists today is the viability of their traditional research procedures for comprehending large, complex societies. In a recent review of these matters, Despres has observed that: The problem involves the impending extinction of the so-called primitive societies in which anthropologists have done most of their work and the growing realization that anthropology's future as a scientific discipline depends upon the abilit…
Part one: Problem-drinking and the integration of alcohol in rural buganda1
This paper summarizes the results of an anthropological study of alcohol use in a rural parish in the Buganda region of Uganda designed to examine the hypothesis that when alcohol is well integrated into the sociocultural system its positive social and physiological functions will tend to outweigh its role as a means of assuaging personal psychological problems. It focuses on the differential functions of a well‐integrated, traditional beverage, …
Free-list Measures of Cognitive Sharing and Organization: Ethnobotany in Rural Missouri
We present a normed measure of cognitive sharing/diversity and a measure of cognitive organization that can be derived from free lists. They are useful for making cross-cultural and intracultural comparisons both within and between culturally constituted cognitive domains. An ethnographic example using data collected in rural Missouri from 40 novice and expert respondents to the domain of wild plants is used for illustrative purposes. Consistent …
Smoking as an Occupational Adaptation Among Shrimpfishermen
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Annette Kline, Michael Robbins, J. Thomas; Smoking as an Occupational Adaptation Among Shrimpfishermen. Human Organization 1 December 1989; 48 (4): 351–355. doi: https://doi.org/10.17730/humo.48.4.u6n5820643u4746m Download citation file: …
Social Status and Settlement Pattern Features: A Tojolabal Maya Example
John S. Thomas is a member of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL 36688. Michael C. Robbins is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MU 65211. The research reported in this paper was made possible by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Zmprovement Grant (BNS76-19846) and research funds from the Department ofAnthropology, Univ…
Pictorial Depth Perception and Acculturation Among the Baganda1
Data collected among the Baganda of Uganda indicates that pictorial perceptual skills are positively and significantly related to relative amounts of exposure to Western culture. Both urban and relatively more acculturated rural residents make overall more correct identifications of pictorial objects and more consistent use of cues to pictorial depth than more traditional Baganda. These results offer support for the proposition that visual percep…
To smoke or not to smoke: A decision theory perspective
A Measure of Social Homogamy
An Optimization Analysis of Alcohol Use in Rural Buganda
A Stochastic Model of the Adoption of Microtechnology in Rural Buganda
Sex Differences in Dreams in Uganda
The Nolan Index: An R Program for Calculating List Resemblances
The Nolan Index (NI) is a normed, quantitative measure for comparing the degree of resemblance (similarity or dissimilarity) between free listings with an Excel program for calculating it. This article enhances that effort with the addition of an R program and additional applications. Free-list resemblance measures have been used to investigate and compare historical and cultural connections, ecological relationships, cultural item utilities, pra…
The Nolan Index: A Quantitative Measure of List Similarities
Several ethnobiological studies have used the Jaccard Index, a qualitative, binary measure, to compare group similarities and differences in lists of plant and animal species, medicinals, foods, cultural utilities, and so on. We extend this effort by formulating the Nolan Index, a new, more precise quantitative measure of the relative frequency of listed items to compare similarities and differences between groups . It is deployed here to evaluat…
Linguistic Influence on Russian and American Ethnobiological Categorization
In the Russian language, nouns are classified by gender and animacy, whereas in English, nouns are not. Using triad-sorts of names for biological and non-biological taxa, a comparison of results provided by native speakers of both languages reveals that cognitive categorizations of animate and inanimate nomenclatural forms differ significantly between speakers of Russian and American English. Speakers of American English appear to categorize name…
Material Culture and Cognition1
Factor Analysis and Case Selection in Complex Societies: A Buganda Example
0f major concern to anthropologists today is the viability of their traditional research procedures for comprehending large, complex societies. In a recent review of these matters, Despres has observed that: The problem involves the impending extinction of the so-called primitive societies in which anthropologists have done most of their work and the growing realization that anthropology's future as a scientific discipline depends upon the abilit…
Pictorial Depth Perception and Acculturation Among the Baganda1
Data collected among the Baganda of Uganda indicates that pictorial perceptual skills are positively and significantly related to relative amounts of exposure to Western culture. Both urban and relatively more acculturated rural residents make overall more correct identifications of pictorial objects and more consistent use of cues to pictorial depth than more traditional Baganda. These results offer support for the proposition that visual percep…
Drinking Patterns and Acculturation in Rural Buganda1
Basic sociocultural changes are often reflected in changing drinking patterns. Data from rural Uganda suggests that with increasing acculturation, there is a trend toward informal drinking behavior, a preference for modern beverages, and the elaboration of drinking settings. Modern settings appear to provide important opportunities for access to the national culture. Results indicate that the marginal population, not the least or most acculturate…
Ethnology: Children of Their Fathers: Growing up among the Ngoni of Malawi. M argaret R ead . Foreword by George and Louise Spindler. Case studies in Education and Culture
The Comparative Motor Development of Baganda, American White, and American Black Infants1
Baganda infants in Uganda were found to be significantly advanced in motor development during the first year of life when compared with Bayley's sample of American White and Black infants. Though they were not found to be as precocious as Geber's sample of Uganda infants, the same downward trend in degree of motor development during the second year of life was found. As age increased, developmental motor quotient (DMQ) decreased, but at 24 months…
General and Theoretical: Cross‐Cultural Studies: Selected Readings . D. R. PRICE‐Williams, ed
Sex Differences in Dreams in Uganda
Gratification Patterns and Modernization in Rural Buganda
This paper examines the nature of the relationship of various aspects of the modernization process to deferred/immediate goal gratification among rural Baganda living in Uganda. Study 1 investigates and rejects the assumption that deferred gratification (or the willingness to postpone immediate desires for more substantial future rewards) is positively and linearly related to modernization. Study 2 examines additional factors, assumes a nonlinear…
Climate and Behavior: A Biocultural Study
Relatively neglected in the growing number of human ecological studies is the consideration of direct environmental effects on the behavioral and psychological adaptations of individuals. This paper presents some tentative cross-cultural and cross-national evidence relating one environmental variable--climate--to both behavioral and psychocultural processes. Some support for the hypothesis that the amount of emotional expression or "level of arou…
Seasonal Variation in Conception in Rural Uganda and Mexico 1
Using data from rural Uganda and Mexico, this study explores the use of multivariate statistical procedures for examining the combined effects of certain socio‐cultural and climatic variables on seasonal variations in conception. In addition, it fails to support the hypotheses advanced by Nurge (1970) that more conceptions occur during periods of heavy work and that more births occur during periods of light work. Different results and alternative…
Art Styles, Social Stratification, and Cognition: An analysis of Greek vase painting1
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 Cognition: Readings in Cross‐Cultural Psychology. J. W. Berry and P. R. Dasen , eds
Statistics for anthropologists
David Hurst Thomas. Figuring Anthropology: First Principles of Probability and Statistics. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976. xi + 532 pp. Tables, figures, appendix, exercises, references, and index. $13.50
Part one: Problem-drinking and the integration of alcohol in rural buganda1
This paper summarizes the results of an anthropological study of alcohol use in a rural parish in the Buganda region of Uganda designed to examine the hypothesis that when alcohol is well integrated into the sociocultural system its positive social and physiological functions will tend to outweigh its role as a means of assuaging personal psychological problems. It focuses on the differential functions of a well‐integrated, traditional beverage, …
A Stochastic Model of the Adoption of Microtechnology in Rural Buganda
A stochastic process model of conflict and cooperation in Andean communities
Whyte's (1975) study of perceived conflict and cooperation in Andean communities elucidated four community types represented by combinations of these two variables and analyzed community stability and change from one type to another over a five-year period. Using a Markov model, we deduce what the expected future distribution of community types will be if present trends continue and what these projections reveal about long-term processes of commu…
More on Misconceptions about Workload and Birthrates: Reply to Spenser and Hum
A Measure of Settlement Pattern Change and Stability
A counting index of the average degree of extreme settlement pattern change and stability is presented. Data from regional archaeological settlement pattern surveys in the Basin of Mexico are used to illustrate it
An Optimization Analysis of Alcohol Use in Rural Buganda
A Measure of Social Homogamy
Estimating original assemblage content to adjust for post-depositional vertical artifact movement
Frequency curves of a particular class of artifacts, such as pottery, from each stratum assemblage have been used to derive relative chronologies and simultaneously models of cultural change. Such empirical counts do not usually take into account post‐depositional processes affecting archaeological remains. A distinctive type of ceramic, coin molds, from the Iron Age hillfort at the Titelberg in Luxembourg provides the model for presenting a meth…
Numerical Techniques in Social Anthropol. ogy. J. CLYDE MITCHELL
Social Status and Settlement Pattern Features: A Tojolabal Maya Example
John S. Thomas is a member of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL 36688. Michael C. Robbins is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MU 65211. The research reported in this paper was made possible by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Zmprovement Grant (BNS76-19846) and research funds from the Department ofAnthropology, Univ…
Smoking as an Occupational Adaptation Among Shrimpfishermen
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Annette Kline, Michael Robbins, J. Thomas; Smoking as an Occupational Adaptation Among Shrimpfishermen. Human Organization 1 December 1989; 48 (4): 351–355. doi: https://doi.org/10.17730/humo.48.4.u6n5820643u4746m Download citation file: …
Sociology (22 works) · Computer Science (21 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Geography (12 works) · Anthropology (9 works) · Categorization, perception, and language (9 works) · Library science (8 works) · Archaeology (7 works) · Citation (7 works) · Cognition (7 works)