224 research outputs found
Data for Experiment 1 of Magid, Sarkol and Mesoudi (2017)
No full textData for Experiment 1 of Magid, Sarkol and Mesoudi (2017) Experimental priming of independent and interdependent activity does not affect culturally-variable psychological processes. Royal Society Open Science. See README file for variable descriptions
Data for Experiment 2 of Magid, Sarkol and Mesoudi (2017)
No full textData for Experiment 2 of Magid, Sarkol and Mesoudi (2017) Experimental priming of independent and interdependent activity does not affect culturally-variable psychological processes. Royal Society Open Science. See README file for variable descriptions
The Cultural Dynamics of Copycat Suicide
No full text© 2009 Mesoudi et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Do online voting patterns reflect evolved features of human cognition? An exploratory empirical investigation
No full textOnline votes or ratings can assist internet users in evaluating the credibility and appeal of the information which they encounter. For example, aggregator websites such as Reddit allow users to up-vote submitted content to make it more prominent, and down-vote content to make it less prominent. Here we argue that decisions over what to up- or down-vote may be guided by evolved features of human cognition. We predict that internet users should be more likely to up-vote content that others have also up-voted (social influence), content that has been submitted by particularly liked or respected users (model-based bias), content that constitutes evolutionarily salient or relevant information (content bias), and content that follows group norms and, in particular, prosocial norms. 489 respondents from the online social voting community Reddit rated the extent to which they felt different traits influenced their voting. Statistical analyses confirmed that norm-following and prosociality, as well as various content biases such as emotional content and originality, were rated as important motivators of voting. Social influence had a smaller effect than expected, while attitudes towards the submitter had little effect. This exploratory empirical investigation suggests that online voting communities can provide an important test-bed for evolutionary theories of human social information use, and that evolved features of human cognition may guide online behaviour just as it guides behaviour in the offline world
Testing the effect of circumscription on the evolution of social complexity in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, using agent-based models
No full textThe initial emergence of complex societies in the archaeological record has often been explained by cultural and environmental conditions. In this paper, we formally test whether the conditions of the highly circumscribed region of the Valley of Oaxaca in highland Mexico could have intensified the formation of social complexity. The Valley of Oaxaca shows some of the earliest evidence for territorial expansion and multiple levels of internal organisation, or social complexity, in Mesoamerica and is considered a classic example of the effects of environmental circumscription. We build on our previous abstract agent-based model (Williams and Mesoudi, submitted) by incorporating real-world archaeological and environmental data from the Valley of Oaxaca to explore social complexity formation and test the impact of factors for which there is little archaeological evidence. The model results suggest that the mountainous surroundings of the valley could have contributed to social complexity formation, if we assume warfare was present throughout the time periods. However, the model also suggests that observed differences in social complexity formation between the three subvalleys of the Valley of Oaxaca were unlikely to be due to differences in circumscribing conditions. The model highlights key forms of archaeological evidence that might confirm or reject the effect of geographical circumscription in the Valley of Oaxaca
Testing the effect of circumscription on the evolution of social complexity in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, using agent-based models
No full textThe initial emergence of complex societies in the archaeological record has often been explained by cultural and environmental conditions. In this paper, we formally test whether the conditions of the highly circumscribed region of the Valley of Oaxaca in highland Mexico could have intensified the formation of social complexity. The Valley of Oaxaca shows some of the earliest evidence for territorial expansion and multiple levels of internal organisation, or social complexity, in Mesoamerica and is considered a classic example of the effects of environmental circumscription. We build on our previous abstract agent-based model (Williams and Mesoudi, 2024) by incorporating real-world archaeological and environmental data from the Valley of Oaxaca to explore social complexity formation and test the impact of factors for which there is little archaeological evidence. The model results suggest that the mountainous surroundings of the valley could have contributed to social complexity formation, if we assume warfare was present throughout the time periods. However, the model also suggests that observed differences in social complexity formation between the three subvalleys of the Valley of Oaxaca were unlikely to be due to differences in circumscribing conditions. The model highlights key forms of archaeological evidence that might confirm or reject the effect of geographical circumscription in the Valley of Oaxaca
The Cultural Transmission of Great Basin Projectile-Point Technology II: An Agent-Based Computer Simulation
No full textWe present an agent-based computer simulation that extends a previous experimental simulation (Mesoudi and O"Brien 2008) of the cultural transmission of projectile-point technology in the prehistoric Great Basin, with participants replaced with computer-generated agents. As in the experiment, individual learning is found to generate low correlations between artifact attributes, whereas indirectly biased cultural transmission (copying the point design of the most successful hunter) generates high correlations between artifact attributes. These results support the hypothesis that low attribute correlations in prehistoric California resulted from individual learning, and high attribute correlations in prehistoric Nevada resulted from indirectly biased cultural transmission. However, alternative modes of cultural transmission, including conformist transmission and random copying, generated similarly high attribute correlations as indirect bias, suggesting that it may be difficult to infer which transmission rule generated this archaeological pattern. On the other hand, indirect bias out-performed all other cultural-transmission rules, lending plausibility to the original hypothesis. Importantly, this advantage depends on the assumption of a multimodal adaptive landscape in which there are multiple locally optimal artifact designs. Indeed, in unimodal fitness environments no cultural transmission rule outperformed individual learning, highlighting how the shape of the adaptive landscape within which cultural evolution occurs can strongly influence the dynamics of cultural transmission. Generally, experimental and computer simulations can be useful in answering questions that are difficult to address with archaeological data, such as identifying the consequences of different modes of cultural transmission or exploring the effect of different selective environments.</jats:p
Intelligent Design in Cultural Evolution
No full textIntelligent design, though unnecessary in the study of biological evolution, is essential to the study of cultural evolution. However, the intelligent designers in question are not deities or aliens but rather humans going about their lives. The role of intentionality in cultural evolution can be elucidated through the addition of signaling theory to the framework outlined in the target article.Peer reviewedOpen peer commentary on: Mesoudi, Alex, Whiten, Andrew and Laland, Kevin N. "Towards a Unified Science of Cultural Evolution." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29, no. 4 (2006): 329-383
When the transmission of culture is child's play
No full textBackground: Humans frequently engage in arbitrary, conventional behavior whose primary purpose is to identify with cultural in-groups. The propensity for doing so is established early in human ontogeny as children become progressively enmeshed in their own cultural milieu. This is exemplified by their habitual replication of causally redundant actions shown to them by adults. Yet children seemingly ignore such actions shown to them by peers. How then does culture get transmitted intra-generationally? Here we suggest the answer might be 'in play'. Principal Findings: Using a diffusion chain design preschoolers first watched an adult retrieve a toy from a novel apparatus using a series of actions, some of which were obviously redundant. These children could then show another child how to open the apparatus, who in turn could show a third child. When the adult modeled the actions in a playful manner they were retained down to the third child at higher rates than when the adult seeded them in a functionally oriented way. Conclusions: Our results draw attention to the possibility that play might serve a critical function in the transmission of human culture by providing a mechanism for arbitrary ideas to spread between children
Cultural selection and biased transformation: two dynamics of cultural evolution
No full textThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the Royal Society via the DOI in this record Here, I discuss two broad versions of human cultural evolution which currently exist in the literature and which emphasize different underlying dynamics. One, which originates in population-genetic-style modelling, emphasizes how cultural selection causes some cultural variants to be favoured and gradually increase in frequency over others. The other, which draws more from cognitive science, holds that cultural change is driven by the biased transformation of cultural variants by individuals in non-random and consistent directions. Despite claims that cultural evolution is characterized by one or the other of these dynamics, these are neither mutually exclusive nor a dichotomy. Different domains of human culture are likely to be more or less strongly weighted towards cultural selection or biased transformation. Identifying cultural dynamics in real-world cultural data is challenging given that they can generate the same population-level patterns, such as directional change or cross-cultural stability, and the same cognitive and emotional mechanisms may underlie both cultural selection and biased transformation. Nevertheless, fine-grained historical analysis and laboratory experiments, combined with formal models to generate quantitative predictions, offer the best way of distinguishing them
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