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The pace of modern culture

Nature Human Behaviour volume 4, pages 352–360 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Here we investigate the evolutionary dynamics of several kinds of modern cultural artefacts—pop music, novels, the clinical literature and cars—as well as a collection of organic populations. In contrast to the general belief that modern culture evolves very quickly, we show that rates of modern cultural evolution are comparable to those of many animal populations. Using time-series methods, we show that much of modern culture is shaped by either stabilizing or directional forces or both and that these forces partly regulate the rates at which different traits evolve. We suggest that these forces are probably cultural selection and that the evolution of many artefact traits can be explained by a shifting-optimum model of cultural selection that, in turn, rests on known psychological biases in aesthetic appreciation. In sum, our results demonstrate the deep unity of the processes and patterns of cultural and organic evolution.

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Fig. 1: Evolutionary trajectories of artefact and organic populations.
Fig. 2: Estimating Haldane rates from time series.
Fig. 3: Rates of evolution of artefact and organic populations.
Fig. 4: Distribution of Haldane rates for cultural and organic traits.
Fig. 5: Why the long-term rate of evolution of culture varies.

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Data availability

The data used in the study are available from https://github.com/Armand1/Pace-of-Modern-Culture.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Burt, G. Bell, L. Cook, D. Coltman, P. Grant, K. Gotanda, M. Fortelius, A. Hendry, M. Johnson, G. Pigeon and M. Pagel for data, advice or comments on the manuscript. The authors received no specific funding for this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Ben Lambert

  2. National Centre for Text Mining, Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Georgios Kontonatsios & Sophia Ananiadou

  3. School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    Matthias Mauch

  4. Department of Computing, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Theodore Kokkoris

  5. College of Arts and Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA

    Matthew Jockers

  6. Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Armand M. Leroi

  7. Data Science Institute, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Armand M. Leroi

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Contributions

B.L. and A.M.L. designed the study, carried out analysis and wrote the paper. G.K., M.M., M.J. and S.A. supplied data and carried out analysis. T.K. supplied data.

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Correspondence to Armand M. Leroi.

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Lambert, B., Kontonatsios, G., Mauch, M. et al. The pace of modern culture. Nat Hum Behav 4, 352–360 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0802-4

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