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Switch to: References
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In this chapter, I argue that the field of cultural evolution can usefully inform attempts to understand and influence the long-term future. First, I provide an overview of cultural evolution, covering what it means for culture to evolve, the mechanisms by which it happens, the crucial importance of cumulative cultural evolution for hunan history, and how cultural evolution (and in particular intergroup competition) has driven the rise of large-scale cooperation. Second, I draw out some possible lessons from cultural evolution for (...) |
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This article argues that understanding human uniqueness requires recognizing that we are a cultural species whose evolution has been driven by the interaction among genes and culture for over a million years. Here, I review the basic argument, incorporate recent findings, and highlight ongoing efforts to apply this approach to more deeply understand both the universal aspects of our cognition as well as the variation across societies. This article will cover (1) the origins and evolution of our capacities for culture, (...) |
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In our response to the 27 commentaries, we refine the theoretical claims, clarify several misconceptions of our framework, and explore substantial disagreements. In doing so, we show that our framework accommodates multiple historical scenarios; debate the historical evidence, particularly about “pre-Axial” religions; offer important details about cultural evolutionary theory; clarify the termprosociality;and discuss proximal mechanisms. We review many interesting extensions, amplifications, and qualifications of our approach made by the commentators. |
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Prior work has demonstrated that young children in the US and the Ecuadorian Amazon preferentially remember information about the dangerousness of an animal over both its name and its diet. Here we explore if this bias is present among older children and adults in Fiji through the use of an experimental learning task. We find that a content bias favoring the preferential retention of danger and toxicity information continues to operate in older children, but that the magnitude of the bias (...) |
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This research provides evidence regarding the causal effect of group conformity on task performance in stable and variable environments. Drawing on studies in cultural evolution, social learning, and social psychology, we experimentally tested the hypotheses that conformity improves group performance in a stable environment (H1) and decreases performance (by hindering adaptability) in a temporally variable environment (H2). We compare the performance of individuals, low conformity groups, and high conformity groups in a four-arm randomized lab experiment (N = 240). High conformity (...) |
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When people get ill, they naturally want to restore health through medical interventions. Here I model a situation in which individuals can psychologically entertain multiple potential treatments at once: when illness occurs, individuals would attempt one treatment first, and if it fails to produce an observable effect within a particular time period, a second treatment is attempted, and the eventual recovery is attributed to the treatment that is temporally closer. This creates population dynamics wherein the therapeutic power of the superior/effective (...) |
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Most research on transmission biases in cultural evolution has treated different biases as distinct strategies. Here I present a model that combines both frequency dependent bias (including conformist bias) and payoff bias in a single decision-making calculus and show that such an integrated learning strategy may be superior to relying on either bias alone. Natural selection may operate on humans’ relative dependence on frequency and payoff information, but both are likely to contribute to the spread of variants with high payoffs. (...) |
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