A satisfactory account of human cognitive evolution will explain not only the psychological mechanisms that make our species unique, but also how, when, and why these traits evolved. To date, researchers have made substantial progress toward defining uniquely human aspects of cognition, but considerably less effort has been devoted to questions about the evolutionary processes through which these traits have arisen. In this article, I aim to link these complementary aims by synthesizing recent advances in our understanding of what makes human cognition unique, with theory and data regarding the processes of cognitive evolution. I review evidence that uniquely human cognition depends on synergism between both representational and motivational factors and is unlikely to be accounted for by changes to any singular cognitive system. I argue that, whereas no nonhuman animal possesses the full constellation of traits that define the human mind, homologies and analogies of critical aspects of human psychology can be found in diverse nonhuman taxa. I suggest that phylogenetic approaches to the study of animal cognition-which can address questions about the selective pressures and proximate mechanisms driving cognitive change-have the potential to yield important insights regarding the processes through which the human cognitive phenotype evolved.

The Judeo-Christian belief, based on the bible, is that “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1: 27). This dissertation explores the Akan understanding of the human person to shed further light on creation of human beings in the image of God and to understand and demonstrate the corresponding uniqueness of the human being among God's creatures. With the help of the Akan context, we note that every human being possesses a spark of God. God, who is relational, shares relationality with human beings.<br> Through the use of Akan anthropology, we identify creation “in the image of God” to mean that every human being is created through the agency of parents, who also share in the image of God through their birth. Our interpretation is that the okra is the soul and is considered the “spark of God” in the human being. The honhom, which refers to the breath of life, is treated as the breath that God breathed into human beings to make a human a living being (Gen 2:7). We equated the breath of God with the Holy Spirit who gives life. We propose to demonstrate the possibility of human relationships through the Holy Spirit.<br> At the moment of conception, every human being derives some elements from his/her father and mother and elements from God. These elements from the three sources (God, mother, and father) combine to make a person a human being. Though humanity derives certain elements from the three sources, it is the holistic person that reflects God's image in the sense that through the various elements humanity is able to relate and communicate with God, neighbor, and the world. The holistic human person enables us to clarify that humanity is both physical and spiritual. <br> With the help of the Akan anthropology, we successfully show that knowledge of the human being starts with the relationship between God and human beings, which extends to other humans and the universe, thus offering a further insight into the meaning of being created in the image of God. <br> Our conclusion is that when a Christian is asked the question, “What exactly in the human being points to the image of God?” he/she will be able to respond that there is a “spark” of God in every human being. We therefore renew Christian anthropology through the method of contextualization with the Akan culture to disclose the hidden presence of God in the human being. We demonstrate that theology functions exactly as the manner in which religion makes sense within a given culture. As the people in the culture understand their world and make meaning of it, they can also share their insight with others. Human beings have become a source of theology in addition to scripture and tradition. Human beings are created in God’s image and are relational and unique within God's creation. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Theology / PhD; / Dissertation;

In human-to-human contexts, display rules provide an empirically sound construct to explain intercultural differences in emotional expressivity. A very prominent finding in this regard is that cultures rooted in collectivism—such as China, South Korea, or Japan—uphold norms of emotional suppression, contrasting with ideals of unfiltered self-expression found in several Western societies. However, other studies have shown that collectivistic cultures do not actually disregard the whole spectrum of emotional expression, but simply prefer displays of socially engaging emotions (e.g., trust, shame) over the more disengaging expressions favored by the West (e.g., pride, anger). Inspired by the constant advancement of affective technology, this study investigates if such cultural factors also influence how people experience being read by emotion-sensitive computers. In a laboratory experiment, we introduce 47 Chinese and 42 German participants to emotion recognition software, claiming that it would analyze their facial micro-expressions during a brief cognitive task. As we actually present standardized results (reporting either socially engaging or disengaging emotions), we manipulate participants' impression of having matched or violated culturally established display rules in a between-subject design. First, we observe a main effect of culture on the cardiovascular response to the digital recognition procedure: Whereas Chinese participants quickly return to their initial heart rate, German participants remain longer in an agitated state. A potential explanation for this—East Asians might be less stressed by sophisticated technology than people with a Western socialization—concurs with recent literature, highlighting different human uniqueness concepts across cultural borders. Indeed, while we find no cultural difference in subjective evaluations of the emotion-sensitive computer, a mediation analysis reveals a significant indirect effect from culture over perceived human likeness of the technology to its attractiveness. At the same time, violations of cultural display rules remain mostly irrelevant for participants' reaction; thus, we argue that inter-human norms for appropriate facial expressions might be loosened if faces are read by computers, at least in settings that are not associated with any social consequence.