Biocultural Linkages – Cultural Consensus, Cultural Consonance, and Human Biological Research

Cultural consensus analysis tests for shared models of behavior in various cultural dimensions. Cultural consonance is used to assess the degree to which individuals behave in a way that is consistent with these cultural models. Results are presented from two studies using cultural consensus and consonance analysis (CCCA) on health risk in an African American population and on diet in a mixed sample from West Alabama. In the African American case study, cultural consonance in lifestyle and social support are demonstrated to have a significant effect on blood pressure. In the diet study, significant differences in cultural consonance on the health dimension of diet between groups espousing different dietary preferences were demonstrated in spite of all groups sharing the same model of healthy foods. These studies are used to argue that more sophisticated measures of culture in human biological research are readily available and accessible for most studies

A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Obesity and Health in Three Groups of Women: The Mississippi Choctaw, American Samoans, and African Americans

This study compares obesity as assessed by Body Mass Index (BMI) and the relationship of BMI to hypertension and diabetes in adult females from three populations, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw (N=50), American Samoa (N=155), and an African American community in West Alabama (N=367). These groups were surveyed in the early to mid 1990s. All three groups of women have very high levels of overweight and obesity, with the Samoans being most extreme in this regard. While there are indications that all three groups of women consume a calorically dense diet, low activity appears to be the most likely causal factor in the high rates of obesity. Relaxed negative attitudes toward an overweight/obese body image may also play a role in the high rates. The prevalences of hypertension and diabetes are alarmingly high in all three groups. There are, however, very different associations between BMI, hypertension, and diabetes in the three groups of women. The Samoans are substantially more obese (and older), but they have lower rates of hypertension than the African American women and lower rates of diabetes than the Choctaw women. While the genetic background of the three groups no doubt plays a role, it is also likely that a BMI of 30+, the common cutoff for obesity, means different things in these different populations. These results provide further support for the idea of variation in the relationship of BMI to disease in different populations

Biocultural linkages – Cultural consensus, cultural consonance, and human biological research. Coll Anthropol 1:3–10

ABSTRACT Cultural consensus analysis tests for shared models of behavior in various cultura