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Dual Inheritance Theory

Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

Synonyms

Gene-culture coevolution; Culture-gene coevolution; Natural selection; History of natural selection

Definition

Dual Inheritance Theory is a theoretical framework positing that human biology and behavior are influenced by two lines of inherited information: a genetic line, which all species inherit from their biological parents, and a cultural line, unique to our species, which we inherit from other members of our society.

Introduction

Dual Inheritance Theory was first developed by two population geneticists (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981) and an anthropologist and an ecologist (Boyd and Richerson 1985) as a set of formal mathematical models to describe the transmission and evolution of culture – beliefs, values, behaviors, technology, and other socially transmitted knowledge possessed by societies around the world. Both pairs of scholars drew on the rich toolkit of evolutionary biology that had so nicely described the rest of the natural world, extending it to explain...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

    Connair J. S. Russel & Michael Muthukrishna

  2. Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Michael Muthukrishna

  3. Naturalistic Social Cognition Group, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany

    Connair J. S. Russel

Authors
  1. Connair J. S. Russel
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  2. Michael Muthukrishna
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Muthukrishna .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  2. Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Penn State Worthington Scranton, Scranton, USA

    Douglas Sellers

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Russel, C.J., Muthukrishna, M. (2018). Dual Inheritance Theory. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1381-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1381-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Dual Inheritance Theory
    Published:
    19 July 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1381-2

  2. Original

    Dual Inheritance Theory
    Published:
    15 June 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1381-1

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