Emergent cultural phenomena and their cognitive foundations

Arbeitspapier

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.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Papers on Economics and Evolution ; No. 0722

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft
• Subject: Cultural Evolution ; Social Learning ; Diffusion Dynamics ; Coevolution ; Evolutionary Economics ; Kulturpsychologie ; Evolutionsökonomik ; Kognition ; Sozialer Wandel ; Lernprozess ; Theorie

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Cordes, Christian
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Max Planck Institute of Economics
• (where): Jena
• (when): 2007

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/31815
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET