I'll actually give it a bit of context because it's quite interesting. This study's authors aimed to compare the role of non-conformity (creativity) vs conformity in adults' perception of children's intelligence across two cultures: U.S. and Vanuatu. In U.S. culture, non-conformity in the shape of creativity is highly valued: individuals are more likely to be deemed intelligent if, instead of copying others' actions with high fidelity, they develop new ways of accomplishing tasks. This is not the case across all cultures - I encourage you to read the introduction section of the cited article for more references. Here, adult participants were shown videos of an adult demonstrating how to perform a task, followed by two more videos: one with a child following exactly the same steps as the adult (conformity), and one with a child performing the task in a more liberal manner (non-conformity). When asked to decide which of the two children is smart, U.S. adults either selected the child exhibiting non-conformity, or showed no preference. Ni-Vanuatu adults on the other hand more often selected the child exhibiting conformity (i.e., imitating the adult perfectly). This study is one of many demonstrating that what we think of and praise as "intelligence", far from being universal, varies across cultures, reflecting different cultural values tied to distinct social organizations.

Clegg, J. M., Wen, Nicole. J., & Legare, C. H. (2017). Is non-conformity WEIRD? Cultural variation in adults’ beliefs about children’s competency and conformity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(3), 428‑441. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000275

#cognition #sociology #SocialScience #psychology #ethnology #education

A re-recording Margaret Fay Shaw’s 1955 broadcast “Folksongs of South Uist”. In 2015, Canna Collection archivist Fiona J Mackenzie re-recorded Shaw’s exact words & married them with the original archive song audio. The pictures in the video are part of the Canna Photographic Collection, all of them (apart from the ones of herself) taken by Margaret

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ7mMOyT8Gs

#Scottish #literature #music #song #folklore #Hebrides #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #ethnology #photography