Cultural Evolution: Readings

Question 1

nature and nurture refer to the debate-

Answer 1

whether a behaviour is due to nature (genetics) or nurture (socialisation).

it is rarely ever one or the other. most of the time they interact and co-evolve!

Question 2

neonativism vs teleosemantics?

Answer 2

are two opposing views in evolutionary psychology.

neonatavism refers to the belief that behaviours are innate.

teleosemantics is a conceptualisation of information to distinguish the nature vs nurtures contribution to development.

a key approach within teleosemantics is selectionists which is applied to behaviour and artifacts (gists) or cognitive mechanisms (mills) and how it can be applied to cultural evolutionary psychology.

Question 3

the teleosemantic view of biological information?

Answer 3

rooted in the Shannon method (i.e., if x carries information about y, then x covaries with y).

teleosemantic refines the Shannon theory and argues that the only gene’s which correlate with cultural evolution are those which have been selected through natural selection: biological structure of x (gene) holds information about y (behaviour), if they covary and x was selected and maintained over time because it aids reproductive success.

*this perspective allows us to view culture and genetics are sources of information about our cultural evolution.

Question 4

culture involves…

Answer 4

the interaction between genetic and their social environment contributes to human evolution over time.

Question 5

Historical view of culture…

popultional view replaced this view & has two schools of thought…

Answer 5

is a loose definition: the changes of cultural characteristics over time that makes populations distinct fro others.

populationist view culture as large scale changes in the distribution within a population in cultural practices or artifacts which can be viewed as the aggregated consequence of social learning (biggest difference between historical and populationist views of culture is that it is only learnt through social learning)

California
cultural evolution
emphasises the importance of interactions between genetics and culture in evolution.
gene-culture co-evolution.
i.e., socially learnt practices cause changes in selective pressures which influences gene which is selected and maintained & vice versa.
e.g., lactose tolerance and dairy farming.
uses mathematical models to compare culture and genetics contribute to development.

Paris
evolutionary psychology
emphasises genetics as being the only mechanism for evolution.

Question 6

why is cultural change and evolutionary concern?

Answer 6

1. culture is made through genetically inherited psychological mechanisms.
2. culture is constantly interacting with genetics
3. culture is able to be analysed with mathematical modelling by geneticists.

Question 7

darwins theory of natural selection is a ___ theory

Answer 7

single-factor and selectionist theory.

Question 8

memetics are

Answer 8

variations in beliefs and ideals in cultural groups.

Question 9

memetics are nested in…

Answer 9

selctionist approach which is nested within a populationist view with is nested within a historical perspective of culture.

cultural evolution theory is a selectionist theory (which argues the conditions for evolution; variance, inheritance and selection can be found within a cultural domain) that believe that cultural evolution is synonymous with genetic evolution. They interact with one another and co-evolve.

Question 10

cultural evolution of cognitive mechanisms (gists and mills)

Answer 10

gists- conceptual ideas and beliefs systems.
cognitive gists- are external components of our social world that become internalised and produced by human minds.

mills- the internal cognitive processes that produce grists.

populationist view of culture and a selectionsist view of inheretence can be used to explain the adaptivness of cognitive mechanisms (i..e, cultural evolution).

Question 11

(3) routes of inheritance:

Answer 11

vertical:parents
from parents to offspring.
i.e., religious beliefs

horizontal:peers
from individuals in the same generation (friends, family, co-workers).

oblique:non-parents
from individuals from one generation to the next, schools, aunts and uncles).
i.e., culinary skills

Question 12

are the (3) routes of inheritance mutually exclusive or complementary?

Answer 12

complementary.

routes of inheritance frequency in use varies across the developmental stages and by the type of trait itself; more vertical and oblique in early childhood, more horizontal and oblique in adolescence into adulthood)

Question 13

how to measure variance in the three routes of inheritance:

Answer 13

vertically inherited traits can be measured by comparing the number of offspring with a biological parent with that trait to those that don’t (mechanisms learnt by child from parents).

oblique pattern: specialised skills (grists) are learnt through master-apprenticeship relationships (i.e., special skills taught from someone in our own generation but is not a part of our family).
*not looked at at CE because it a mechanism NOT present in all humans and absent in all animals.

Question 14

primary mechanism of genetic inheritance is

Answer 14

DNA

Question 15

primary mechanism of cultural behavior is …

Answer 15

social learning (imitation)

Question 16

Two influences in development?

culture =

Answer 16

nature- genetics
nurture- environment

the co-evolution of culture and genetics.

Question 17

poverty or wealth of a stimulus?

does the environment provide insufficient (poverty) or sufficient (wealth) to produce enough information for a cognitive mechanism to be developed?

Answer 17

wealth: strong correlation between environment and stimulus (i.e., mill developed entirely due to social or cultural environmental information)
poverty: weak correlation between trait and environment indicating strong genetic influence on trait evolution.

Question 18

what is the difference between nurture and culture?

Answer 18

the difference is nurture involves unassisted learning whereas, culture require assisted learning.

Question 19

(4) ways that cognitive ability can vary?

Answer 19

Across time points in development-
multiple tests on the same people to see if mills are associated with stimulus wealth or poverty over time.

Groups or Individuals within a human population-
compares two groups at one point in time to see if mills can be traced back to opportunities for social or cultural learning. If it can it indicates stimulus wealth, if not, then stimulus poverty.

Human populations:
cross-cultural comparison to see if environmental and genetics variations are correlated with one another. If they covary = stimulus wealth and if not = stimulus poverty,

Species:
compare humans to non-human animals to see if they have culture. If culture is only in humans then it indicates stimulus wealth, if in both indicates stimulus poverty.
*if it mill correlates with ecological factors and not genetics than = convergent evolution

Question 20

Videos on Ancestor DNA kits

Answer 20

> mathematical modelling is an approximation, a best guess and explanation, it is not entirely accurate.
falsely advertised to be rigorous science but has many weaknesses (i.e., results vary over time as their databases update, people in their database which you are being compared to varies, the type of statistical model they use varies and only looks at a tiny faction of your DNA sequence).
advertised as being able to trace your ancestors from your DNA or identify disease risks in your DNA but the information you get is not accurate or useful = recreational science.
examples of mathematical models making predictions about reality.

Question 21

demography =

Answer 21

the study of statistics on factors such as birth rates, fertility, mortality rates, diseases which influence the structure of a population, and its change over time.

Question 22

the more frequent a trait is in the population the more…

Answer 22

opportunities there is to learn it through socialisation.

Question 23

cultural transmission occurs __ than genetic and over a ___ time period.

Answer 23

quicker and shorter time span.

Question 24

mathematical models can predict…

Answer 24

whether the environment is stable and will prefer genetic transmission or if it’s unstable and will prefer cultural transmission.

Question 25

in population genetics variation of genes within a population is vital but including culture into the model makes it

Answer 25

highly unpredictable, non-linear- conclusions need to be made with caution because of factors such as assortive mating that act as confounds (i.e., biased transmission).

Question 26

is mate selection random?

what is assortive mating?

Answer 26

no. people show a preference for mates who share a similar phenotype to us (i.e., eye colour, height, skin tone, education, IQ etc.)

this is referred to as assortive mating and is known to increase the correlation between culture and genes within a mate pairing- increases the genotype and phenotype variation within a population because people who are more alike tend to have more offspring which increases the reproductive success of the species.

transmission of cultural behaviors through social networks works better when people are more alike.

language can be used as a selection process in assortive mating (same language preference).

Question 27

biased transmission

Answer 27

> assortive mating (biological)
which individuals from the population is selected to be imitated (culture) ie., conformity bias, novelty bias, prestige or success bias.

Question 28

(4) ways cultural transmission is biased-

Answer 28

in the selection of the model of behavior for imitation.

Conformity bias:
modeling the behavior which is most frequent and normative within the population (i.e., stable traits that are ingrained into the environment).

Novelty bias:
tendency to imitate behaviors which are novel or rare (occur less frequently within the population) i.e., fashion trends which are unstable and change frequently.

Prestige Bias:
imitate the behavior which is modelled by prestigious members of society.

Success Bias:
individuals imitate the behavior of people who are visually successful because it’s better than learning through trial and error.

Question 29

ecological factors:

Answer 29

> human niche construction:
a process through which humans modify their environment to elevate selection pressures that influence human evolution.

cultural niche construction- formulation and practice of cultural traditions can shape people’s environment. Influences cultural and genetic tranmission.

including ecology into model allows for us to look at demography.

> Major cultural shifts:
revolutionary shifts from hunter-gatherers to agricultural practices.

the domestications of plants, and animals for agricultural purposes which influence predator and prey pressures.

> models of human behavioral ecology:
optimal behaviors which provide the most benefit with the least cost in the face of alternatives should be selected to boost survival of the fitness.

> Interspecies and Intergroup Dynamics:
replacement of neanderthals by humans was due to one cultural group outcompeting and replacing the other due to having cultural or genetic variation which produced better outcomes for survival.

> Culture and Microbes:
pathogen risk
cultural practices produce environments which increase the risk of pathogen exposure and increases the pressure for natural selection of pathogen resistant genes (i.e., slash and burn with malaria or cannibalism and kuru disease).

Question 30

Claims made by geneticists about the history of humans and their migration are not backed up by science:

Answer 30

> found broken pottery and remains buried in the Temu Islands which has become the oldest prehistoric site found in the pacific islands.
hoped they would explain how the original settlers came to settle in the pacific when it would have been so hard to get too (i.e., is geographically isolated island).
most linguistically diverse country with 140 indigenous languages being spoken.
were the original ancestors lapita cultural group?
cross-referencing bibical texts with geological clocks.
radiocarbon datong method was developed which allowed us to make statistical inferences on dates that were more accurate than cross-referenced estimates.
found that DNA from fossils could be compared to living organisms today to see how genetically related they are (found that the divergence in evolution between chimps and humans was much more recent than we once thought; only five million years ago).
population genetics does this by comparing the genetic mutations or variations of each group and seeing how many they have in common (the less mutations in common the less genetically related they are).
we can NOT determine tho when they mixed, where or how if we only look at modern DNA, we also need ancient DNA to find out when, where and why.
i.e., native americans have two sub-group cultural groups, and almost every cultural group apart from africans have Neanderthal DNA.
great cultural shifts/revolutions were found to not be due to two cultural groups coming together and diffusing practices but one outcompeting and removing the other.
lapita were not their ancestors, the first wave came from Asia and then the second waves of lapita came through.
jenna a linguistic researcher argues that there was constant stream of papuans and astulasions that coexisted (rather than outcompeting) which would allow diffusion and languages to spread, gradual, long term.
doing cultural groups a huge sense of injustice if you disregard the importance of culture in human evolution.