Do Kenyan Kids Fail Mirror Tests?

Paging APORIA, et al with an important research question

Here’s a question you’ve probably never thought to ask.

Can Kenyan kids recognize themselves in mirrors?

Luckily for you, a study team, containing among others, the current distinguished Harvard evolutionary anthropologist Joseph Henrich, has an answer for you.¹

“…It is possible but unlikely that these children, up to 72 months of age, did not recognize themselves in the mirror.” - Broesch, Callaghan, Joseph Henrich… et al

You may have previously read professor Heinrich’s work on the purely ‘cultural’ basis for the WEIRD (Western European Industrialized Rich Democratic) psychology.² Well, this earlier piece is quite a treat. Why would one raise and dismiss such an “unlikely” conclusion? Here are two other fun quotes from the paper. I’ll provide a little more context later.

“Although the data presented here do not directly address the question of why they did not show signs of self-oriented behavior, we speculate that these are false negative responses…“

“In all cases, independent of testing locations and experimenter, children overwhelmingly showed freezing behavior and no self-referencing behavior.”

Ouch. Kenyan kids up to age 5 showed “no self-referencing behavior”?

That doesn’t sound good. Let’s look at this study and see if it’s worth anything.

—

Henrich’s Kenyan kids appear to fail mirror tests

Of the 82 children tested, only two demonstrated any of the defined self-oriented behaviors when facing their “marked” image in the mirror.

Here’s some background information: As the paper describes, there’s a test that’s long been used to identify when visual self-recognition emerges among children. It’s exact format can vary a little bit, but it basically works like this. A child is played with, and a mark is added to their forehead or hairline covertly. Then they are then shown their face in the mirror; and the observer sees whether they point at, attempt to remove or interact with the mark placed on them in anyway.

You might think that reactions to this test would be altered by a child’s familiarity with mirrors, but Israeli kids with access and Bedouin desert kids without access have shown no significant differences. The introduction of the paper tells us that historically, 70% of middle class Western children show self-oriented behavior by 24 months (50% by 18 months).

It is in this context that the study quoted; and described by the paper can be understood. A study in which, out of an 82 Kenyan kid balanced cohort ranging from 18 to 72 months; only 2 showed any of the defined self oriented behaviors above. And they weren’t particularly older ones.

It’s almost too absurd to believe. Could rural Kenyan kids really not recognize themselves in mirrors? One wonders why our researchers didn’t feel any inclination to ask them about their experience?! Kids at that age can talk after all. But were they at least curious enough to try the test elsewhere. Yes. Yes, they were.

And, It’s not just Kenyans who appear to fail

These results point to significant cultural variations in spontaneous signs of MSR by 3 and 4 years of age, with 88% of children passing in the United States and significantly fewer in Fiji, Peru, Grenada, and Saint Lucia.

Our researchers tried this test again. This time with kids from various locations and a cohort from 36 to 55 months of age. US Western children were Urban. Canadian Western children rural. The results were as follows.

What could this all mean?

(The HBD Crown lying in the gutter)

Let me share my own opinion of what these study results show.

I do not believe they show a primarily IQ based gap, or that they are primarily about mirror self-recognition… though I suppose If you find Julian Jaynes’ galaxy mind theorizing on Bronze Age Greeks not being conscious convincing ³; “Modern rural Kenyans, etc aren’t either” wouldn’t exactly make Jaynesianism more radical. I don’t.

Nor do I think, as the researchers claim to believe that we are looking at a merely cultural difference in social behaviors…

“We speculate that children are recognizing their image with a distinct mark on their forehead but do not know the appropriate and acceptable response. The fact that these children respond with overwhelming inhibition by freezing suggests that they may be expressing social compliance rather than a lack of self-recognition. “

though I suppose a high enough rate of infant abuse might do the trick. The freezing note is important, because freezing is not a common response of at least western children who cannot recognize themselves. Given this, I doubt that Kenyan kids are literally failing at mirror self-recognition.

Rather I think there’s a reasonable possibility that if the original studies are not fraudulent… we are looking at yet another example of that same category of innate psychological differences in reactions to stimuli represented by phenomena like:

• Chinese-American newborns being in effect born mask friendly and docile compared to White-American babies, or

• most Japanese babies not crying during immunizations in which all White babies do⁴.

Which I covered before in my East Asian Series and once again thank

hbd chick

,

Peter Frost

and

John Derbyshire

for highlighting previously.

This is not a GWAS study. It’s more like Trans-Swimmers - almost immediately intelligible to the general population. And unlike say, IQ differences, “Different races experience stimuli in different ways, and so should ideally develop in different societies reflecting this” is not transparently a hostile claim, nor is it hard to widely organize under.

Plus, you don’t have to bother telling a plumber his kid will never be an astronaut or continue repeating, or worse, even make yourself believe that intelligence has no moral relevance.

Let me end this post with a simple public message to Aporia.

--

Dear

Aporia

Staffers, etc…

I know at least some of you are reading this. I know you have access to the resources required to pull off the following. It’s not a particularly hard or insane thing to request that you get it done. It’s rather central to your mission.

I want to see a thoroughly recorded re-run of Henrich’s Kenyan Mirror Test Study conducted in the US on our Native Black population.

And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.

The Futurist Right is my own personal publication in which I highlight critical questions facing the West and conduct highly acclaimed Independent research (See the Collinses’ review of how I cracked Low East Asian Fertility last year); without either offense-maxxing or shying away from any uncomfortable conclusions. If you like what you read, and want to see my work continue and expand, please consider getting a founder’s subscription.

1. Full Paper - Cultural Variations in Children's Mirror Self-Recognition - Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology (2010). Covered in Scientific American with the predictable take.

2. Joseph Heinrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous; comes highly recommended. Wiki. Interview with

Richard Hanania

. Buy Book on Amazon.

3. Here’s a decent review of this “big-if-true” take.

4. Differences between Japanese Infants and Caucasian American Infants in Behavioral and Cortisol Response to Inoculation Author(s): Michael Lewis, Douglas S. Ramsay and Kiyobumi Kawakami Source: Child Development, Vol. 64, No. 6 (Dec., 1993), pp. 1722-1731