Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Five Misunderstandings About Cultural Evolution

  • Published:
Human Nature Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Recent debates about memetics have revealed some widespread misunderstandings about Darwinian approaches to cultural evolution. Drawing from these debates, this paper disputes five common claims: (1) mental representations are rarely discrete, and therefore models that assume discrete, gene-like particles (i.e., replicators) are useless; (2) replicators are necessary for cumulative, adaptive evolution; (3) content-dependent psychological biases are the only important processes that affect the spread of cultural representations; (4) the “cultural fitness” of a mental representation can be inferred from its successful transmission; and (5) selective forces only matter if the sources of variation are random. We close by sketching the outlines of a unified evolutionary science of culture.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. In recent years our views and those of Sperber, Atran, and Boyer have largely converged. However, perhaps owing to their important contributions on numerous fronts, a legacy of published claims about the problems with formal models and the nature of cultural traits continues to sow confusion among many, especially those not well equipped to digest mathematical models.

  2. Broadly, “content bias” refers to any situation in which a meme’s representational content influences its likelihood of transmission. Such biases arise from the interaction of the representational content of the meme and human psychologies. While this includes reliably developing aspects of human psychology (e.g., incest aversion favoring favor ubiquitous oedipal narratives; Johnson and Price-Williams 1996), it also includes the “fit” between different memes, or different experiences and certain memes (cultural psychologies).

References

  • Atran, S. (1998). Folk biology and the anthropology of science: cognitive universals and cultural particulars. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21, 547–609.

    Google Scholar 

  • Atran, S. (2001). The trouble with memes: inference versus imitation in cultural creation. Human Nature, 12, 351–381.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Atran, S. (2002). The religious landscape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aunger, R. (2002). The electric meme: A new theory of how we think. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Basalla, G. (1988). The evolution of technology. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baum, W. M. (2005). Understanding behaviorism: Behavior, culture, evolution. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bentley, R. A., et al. (2007). Regular rates of popular culture change reflect random copying. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 151–158.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blackmore, S. (1999). The meme machine. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1985). Culture and the evolutionary process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1987). The evolution of ethnic markers. Cultural Anthropology, 2, 27–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1992). Punishment allows the evolution of cooperation (or anything else) in sizable groups. Ethology & Sociobiology, 13, 171–195.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1995). Why does culture increase adaptability? Ethology & Sociobiology, 16, 125–143.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1996). Why culture is common, but cultural evolution is rare. Proceedings of the British Academy, 88, 77–93.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyer, P. (1994). The naturalness of religious ideas. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyer, P. (1999). Cognitive tracks of cultural inheritance: how evolved intuitive ontology governs cultural transmission. American Anthropologist, 100, 876–889.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyer, P. (2001). Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., & Feldman, M. (1981). Cultural transmission and evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Claidiere, N., & Sperber, D. (2007). The role of attraction in cultural evolution. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 7, 89–111.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Collard, M., Shennan, S. J., & Tehrani, J. J. (2006). Branching, blending, and the evolution of cultural similarities and differences among human populations. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27, 168–184.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Conot, R. E. (1979). A streak of luck. New York: Seaview Books (distributed by Simon and Schuster).

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford Unversity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawkins, R. (1982). The extended phenotype. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dennett, D. (1995). Darwin’s dangerous idea. London: Penguin Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diamond, J. M. (1997). Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Durham, W. H. (1991). Coevolution: Genes, culture, and human diversity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eerkens, J. W., & Lipo, C. P. (2005). Cultural transmission, copying errors, and the generation of variation in material culture and the archaeological record. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 24, 316–334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grant, P., & Grant, R. (1986). Ecology and evolution of Darwin’s finches. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hager, T. (2007). The demon under the microscope. New York: Three Rivers Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J. (2001). Cultural transmission and the diffusion of innovations: adoption dynamics indicate that biased cultural transmission is the predominate force in behavioral change and much of sociocultural evolution. American Anthropologist, 103, 992–1013.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J. (2004). Demography and cultural evolution: why adaptive cultural processes produced maladaptive losses in Tasmania. American Antiquity, 69, 197–214.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J. (2007). The evolution of costly displays, cooperation, and religion: Inferentially potent displays and their implications for cultural evolution. Economics and Evolution working paper series. Evolutionary Economics Group, MPI Jena, Germany. <Available at https://papers.econ.mpg.de/evo/discussionpapers/2007–21.pdf>

  • Henrich, J., & Boyd, R. (1998). The evolution of conformist transmission and the emergence of between-group differences. Evolution and Human Behavior, 19, 215–242.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J., & Boyd, R. (2001). Why people punish defectors: weak conformist transmission can stabilize costly enforcement of norms in cooperative dilemmas. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 208, 79–89.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J., & Boyd, R. (2002). On modeling cultural evolution: why replicators are not necessary for cultural evolution. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2(2), 87–112.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J, & Boyd, R. (In press). Division of labor, economic specialization, and the evolution of social stratification. Current Anthropology, in press.

  • Henrich, J., & Gil-White, F. (2001). The evolution of prestige: freely conferred deference as a mechanism for enhancing the benefits of cultural transmission. Evolution and Human Behavior, 22, 165–196.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J., & McElreath, R. (2006). Dual inheritance theory: The evolution of human cultural capacities and cultural evolution. In R. Dunbar, & L. Barrett (Eds.) Oxford Handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 555–570). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J. et al. (Eds.) (2004). Foundations of human sociality: Economic experiments and ethnographic evidence from fifteen small-scale societies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Henrich, N. S., & Henrich, J. (2007). Why humans cooperate: A cultural and evolutionary explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, A. W., & Price-Williams, D. R. (1996). Oedipus ubiquitous: The family complex in world folk literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laland, K. N., Odling-Smee, J., & Feldman, M. W. (2000). Niche construction, biological evolution, and cultural change. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 131–175.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leslie, A. M. (1994). ToMM, ToBY, and agency: Core architecture and domain specificity. In L. A. Hirschfeld, & S. A. Gelman (Eds.) Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture (pp. 119–148). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lipo, C. P. (Ed.) (2006). Mapping our ancestors. Piscataway, NJ: Aldine Transaction.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martindale, C. (1975). Romantic progression: The psychology of literary history. Halsted: Washington Hemisphere.

    Google Scholar 

  • McElreath, R. (2003). Reputation and the evolution of conflict. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 220, 345–357.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McElreath, R., & Boyd, R. (2007). Modeling the evolution of social behavior. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McElreath, R., & Strimling, P. (2008). When natural selection favors imitation of parents. Current Anthropology, in press.

  • McElreath, R., Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (2003). Shared norms and the evolution of ethnic markers. Current Anthropology, 44, 122–129.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McElreath, R., et al. (2005). Applying evolutionary models to the laboratory study of social learning. Evolution and Human Behavior, 26, 483–508.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mesoudi, A. (2008). The cultural transmission of Great Basin projectile technology: an experimental simulation. American Antiquity, 73, 3–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mesoudi, A., & Laland, K. N. (2007). Culturally transmitted paternity beliefs and the evolution of human mating behaviour. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. B: Biological Sciences, 274, 1273–1278.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A., & Laland, K. N. (2004). Perspective: is human cultural evolution Darwinian? Evidence reviewed from the perspective of The Origin of Species. Evolution, 58, 1–11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A., & Laland, K. N. (2006a). A science of culture: clarifications and extensions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 366–383.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A., & Laland, K. N. (2006b). Towards a unified science of cultural evolution. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 329–347.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyers, M. A. (2007). Happy accidents: Serendipity in modern medical breakthroughs. New York: Arcade.

    Google Scholar 

  • Offerman, T., & Sonnemans, J. (1998). Learning by experience and learning by imitating others. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 34, 559–575.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Panchanathan, K., & Boyd, R. (2004). Indirect reciprocity can stabilize cooperation without the second-order free rider problem. Nature, 432, 499–502.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pinker, S. (1997). How the mind works. New York: W. W. Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richerson, P., & Boyd, R. (1998). The evolution of ultrasociality. In I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, & F. K. Salter (Eds.) Indoctrinability, ideology and warfare (pp. 71–96). New York: Berghahn Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richerson, P., & Boyd, R. (2000). Complex societies: the evolutionary dynamics of a crude superorganism. Human Nature, 10, 253–289.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Richerson, P., & Boyd, R. (2005). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rogers, A. (1989). Does biology constrain culture? American Anthropologist, 90, 819–831.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rogers, E. M. (1995). Diffusion of innovations. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenthal, T. L., & Zimmerman, B. J. (1978). Social learning and cognition. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shennan, S. (2001). Demography and cultural innovation: a model and its implications for the emergence of modern human culture. Cambridge Archaeology Journal, 11, 5–16.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shennan, S. (2003). Genes, memes, and human history: Darwinian archaeology and cultural evolution. London: Thames & Hudson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shennan, S. (in press). Pattern and process in cultural evolution. Berkeley: University of California.

  • Sneader, W. (2005). Drug discovery: A history. Chichester, England, and Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, G. (1996). Cultural selection. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello, M. (1996). Do apes ape? In C. M. Heyes, & B. G. Galef Jr. (Eds.) Social learning in animals: The roots of culture (pp. 319–346). San Diego: Academic Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.) The adapted mind (pp. 19–136). New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whiten, A. (2000). Primate culture and social learning. Cognitive Science, 24(3), 477–508.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, T. (1987). The history of invention. New York: Facts on File.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wrangham, R. W., et al. (1999). The raw and the stolen: cooking and the ecology of human origins. Current Anthropology, 40, 567–594.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

We thank Natalie Henrich for her comments as well as the three insightful anonymous reviewers. Boyd and Henrich thank the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, where much of this paper was written. Boyd’s contribution was partially funded by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation and Henrich’s contribution was partially funded by the National Science Foundation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Psychology and Economics, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada

    Joseph Henrich

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

    Robert Boyd

  3. Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California-Davis, One Shields Ave, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Peter J. Richerson

Authors
  1. Joseph Henrich
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Robert Boyd
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Peter J. Richerson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joseph Henrich.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Henrich, J., Boyd, R. & Richerson, P.J. Five Misunderstandings About Cultural Evolution. Hum Nat 19, 119–137 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-008-9037-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-008-9037-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation