A systems approach to cultural evolution

Abstract

A widely accepted view in the cultural evolutionary literature is that culture forms a dynamic system of elements (or 'traits') linked together by a variety of relationships. Despite this, large families of models within the cultural evolutionary literature tend to represent only a small number of traits, or traits without interrelationships. As such, these models may be unable to capture complex dynamics resulting from multiple interrelated traits. Here we put forward a systems approach to cultural evolutionary research-one that explicitly represents numerous cultural traits and their relationships to one another. Basing our discussion on simple graph-based models, we examine the implications of the systems approach in four domains: (i) the cultural evolution of decision rules ('filters') and their influence on the distribution of cultural traits in a population; (ii) the contingency and stochasticity of system trajectories through a structured state space; (iii) how trait interrelationships can modulate rates of cultural change; and (iv) how trait interrelationships can contribute to understandings of inter-group differences in realised traits. We suggest that the preliminary results presented here should inspire greater attention to the role of multiple interrelated traits on cultural evolution, and should motivate attempts to formalise the rich body of analyses and hypotheses within the humanities and social science literatures.

An Evolutionary Process Without Variation and Selection

“…3 For related approaches, see [1,5,57]. 4 Although we use the term 'mental representation,' our model is consistent with the view (common amongst ecological psychologists and in cognition and quantum cognition communities) that what we call mental representations do not 'represent' but instead act as contextually elicited bridges between mind and world. 5 Conceptual closure is the focus of another paper (in progress).…”

“…Such considerations have led some to develop network-based models of cultural evolution [4, 12, 17, 29, 28, 59, 65, 89]. This body of research suggests that horizontal transmission can significantly alter the pattern of relatedness.…”

Cultural change beyond adoption dynamics: Evolutionary approaches to the discontinuation of contraception

“…Henrich, 2004), it usually occurs at the population level and results from a cultural transmission error. Here we argue for the need to consider contraceptive dynamics at the individual level, which echoes other calls for a 'systems approach to cultural evolution' (Buskell et al, 2019).…”

Underappreciated features of cultural evolution

“…The facts that individuals acquire traits sequentially and that traits can interact may have important organising effects. The resulting developmental path dependence (see Section 3.2) can limit which traits an individual acquires, and so promote the evolution of cultural systems (Buskell et al, 2019;Claidière et al, 2014;Goldberg and Stein, 2018;Yeh et al, 2019, Jansson et al this issue). For instance, an individual might acquire a belief A about the world, which subsequently facilitates the acquisition of other beliefs that are consistent with A but leads to the rejection of beliefs that are not (Festinger, 1957).…”