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Regulatory Traits: Cultural Influences on Cultural Evolution

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Evolution, Complexity and Artificial Life

Abstract

We use the term regulatory traits to indicate traits that both regulate cultural transmission (e.g., from whom to learn) and are themselves culturally transmitted. In the first part of this contribution we study the dynamics of some of these traits through simple mathematical models. In particular, we consider the cultural evolution of traits that determine the propensity to copy others, the ability to influence others, the number of individuals from whom one may copy, and the number of individuals one tries to influence. We then show how to extend these simple models to address more complex human cultural phenomena, such as in-group biases, the emergence of open or conservative societies, and of cyclical, fashion-like, increases and decreases of popularity of cultural traits. We finally discuss how the ubiquity of regulatory traits in cultural evolution impacts on the analogy between genetic and cultural evolution and therefore on the possibility of using models inspired by evolutionary biology to study human cultural dynamics.

An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37577-4_18

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We have verified in computer simulations that this assumption is not crucial for our general argument, as long as i’s set of models becomes more similar to that of her model as a result of the interaction.

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Acknowledgments

Work supported by the Uniquely Human project funded by the Swedish Research Council.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for the study of cultural evolution, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Alberto Acerbi

  2. Department of Psychology, Brooklyn College, New York, NY, USA

    Stefano Ghirlanda

  3. Centre for the study of cultural evolution, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Stefano Ghirlanda

  4. Centre for the study of cultural evolution and Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Magnus Enquist

Authors
  1. Alberto Acerbi
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  2. Stefano Ghirlanda
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  3. Magnus Enquist
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alberto Acerbi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Information Engineering, University of Parma, Parma, Italy

    Stefano Cagnoni

  2. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione, Rome, Italy

    Marco Mirolli

  3. Facoltà di Scienze della Comunicazione, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, Italy

    Marco Villani

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Acerbi, A., Ghirlanda, S., Enquist, M. (2014). Regulatory Traits: Cultural Influences on Cultural Evolution. In: Cagnoni, S., Mirolli, M., Villani, M. (eds) Evolution, Complexity and Artificial Life. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37577-4_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37577-4_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-37576-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-37577-4

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