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Cultural Universal Characteristics Essay

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All throughout time when we as humans come together and create a society we begin making traits that soon will define the society in which we made. However, there are two basic types of traits that form when a society is created. First is the cultural universal trait(s) which are common features of human behavior that can be found in virtually all societies. The second is culturally specific traits which are traits that form in a society that are unique to that specific society. Of course there are traits that lie on the border line of these two categories.
As stated before cultural universal traits are common features of human behavior that can be found in virtually all societies. One such example of a cultural universal trait is …show more content…

In New Zealand women with tattooed lips and chins are considered the most beautiful. A second cultural specific trait is our standards and our morals. Even though this is such a broad topic I believe it deserves to be in this category. This is because here in the U.S if we were starving and near death we would do anything to survive, to keep on living. Such an example is the Donner party who reverted to cannibalism to survive the harsh and deadly winter in which they were stuck in. However in India a starving Indian family will not kill a cow for it is against their religion. That is what makes me believe morals and standards belong in this category. Each culture has their own that they follow, no two are the same they may be similar but they are surely different as well.
In this essay I have discussed what a cultural universal trait is, but since these traits can be viewed throughout the whole world and all of its societies can these traits be considered an instinct of humans? Well to answer this question we must first know what an instinct is. An instinct is an innate, typically fixed pattern of behavior in animals in response to certain stimuli. For example an instinct is all animals know they must look for food and water to survive. If that was not an instinct there would be no living animals on the planet they would have died off even before

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