Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/31815
Year of Publication: 
2007
Series/Report no.: 
Papers on Economics and Evolution No. 0722
Publisher: 
Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena
Abstract: 
To explain emergent cultural phenomena, this paper argues, it is inevitable to understand the evolution of complex human cognitive adaptations and their links to the population-level dynamics of cultural variation. On the one hand, the process of cultural transmission is influenced and constrained by humans' evolved psychology; people tend to acquire some cultural variants rather than others. On the other hand, the cultural environment provides cultural variants that are transmitted to or adopted by individuals via processes of social learning. To gain insights into this recursive relationship between individual cognitive dispositions at the micro level and cultural phenomena at the macro level, the theory of gene-culture coevolution is applied. Moreover, a model of cultural evolution demonstrates the dissemination of novelty within a population via biased social learning processes. As a result, some unique facets of human behavior and cumulative cultural evolution are identified.
Subjects: 
Cultural Evolution
Social Learning
Diffusion Dynamics
Coevolution
Evolutionary Economics
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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