Final answer:
Margaret Mead's research in Samoa and New Guinea led to the understanding that sexual and gender norms vary widely across cultures, challenging Western notions of sexual repression and biologically determined gender behaviors.
Step-by-step explanation:
Margaret Mead was a groundbreaking cultural anthropologist whose research in Samoa, as detailed in her publication Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), brought forward the idea that Samoan culture had a more relaxed and receptive attitude towards sexuality, especially when compared with Euro-American norms. Unlike the sexual repression observed in the West, Mead found that Samoans encountered adolescence not as a crisis, but rather as a period of freedom and exploration. Her observations noted that children grew up witnessing the realities of childbirth, menstruation, copulation, and death, contributing to a more open sexual socialization process which contradicted prevalent Western beliefs of the time. Similarly, Mead's work Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935) highlighted her findings on gender roles among different cultural groups in New Guinea, which challenged her initial assumptions regarding biologically grounded gender behaviors. This work and others contributed to a broader understanding of the diversity of sexual and gender norms across cultures, paving the way for later studies in the field of anthropology on sexuality and gender diversity.