Date: 2007.02.23 (Fri) 16:20-17:35
Place: Kashiwa Campus, General Research Building, Room 630.
Speaker: Yasuo Ihara
Title: Human as cultural animal
Keywords: culture, evolution, behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology, mathematical models

Affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, The University of Tokyo
Position: lecturer
Disciplines: evolutionary anthropology, population biology

Abstract:
A remarkable feature of human beings is their ability of social learning. No other animals modify their behavior based on behavior of conspecifics to the extent that humans do . Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (1981) formalized cultural transmission as a process where information is transferred between individuals by means of social learning. According to their view, differential transmission of cultural variants leads to cultural evolution, or changes in cultural composition of a population over time. Certain cultural variants may be more readily transmitted than others due to innate or acquired preferences possessed by individuals regarding characteristics of cultural variants. Differential transmission may also occur if, for example, individuals are predisposed to copy the majority (conformist bias) or the successful (prestige bias) (Boyd and Richerson 1985). Some of these preferences and predispositions, and the human neural structure that allows cultural transmission in the first place, have been shaped by natural selection. Hence, culture must have been enhancing reproductive success of human individuals on average. Nevertheless, the variation of situations with which people are confronted seems too enormous for them to always make adaptive decision. I will overview the current theories of cultural evolution and discuss the possibility of maladaptive cultural evolution using mathematical models.

References:
[1] Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., & Feldman, M. W. (1981) Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach. Princeton Univ. Press
[2] Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1985) Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Univ. Chicago Press.
[3] Durham, W. H. (1991) Coevolution: Genes, Culture, and Human Diversity. Stanford Univ. Press
[4] Ihara, Y., & Feldman, M. W. (2004) Theor. Popul. Biol. 65, 105-111.
[5] Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2005) Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Univ. Chicago Press.
[6] Borenstein, E., Kendal, J., & Feldman, M. W. (2006) Theor. Popul. Biol. 70, 92-104.