Oct 8, 2024

Mismatch Between Our Biologically Evolved Educative Instincts and Culturally Evolved Schools

Children are designed, by natural selection, to educate themselves. It is time we let them.

Sep 16, 2024

Barry-Wehmiller’s Bold Experiment in Prosocial Cultural Evolution

Join us for a discussion about a company that has created an extraordinary culture of caring for itself, and has replicated its culture in over 140 other adopted companies.

Jun 18, 2024

(Mis-) Communication in Medicine: A Preventive Way for Doctors to Preserve Effective Communication in Technologically-Evolved Healthcare Environments

Cultural evolution created technologically-advanced contexts that make it difficult for doctors to communicate with patients in manners concordant with our evolved, ancestrally-familiar modes of communication.

Mar 18, 2024

Williams’ Rule and Its Relevance for Positive Change Efforts

Williams’ Rule ought to be more widely known, which can improve any positive change effort, no matter what topic domain or scale. 

Mar 12, 2024

The Arts as a Communal Signaling Device

Why did early hunter-gatherers engage in the arts when that time could have been more profitably spent dealing with the demands of survival?

Jul 31, 2023

Cultural Evolution, Insight, and Fundamental Theories of Consciousness

Since cultural evolution is fueled by the creative efforts of human minds which, by anyone’s definition, are conscious, it would seem that consciousness plays a central role in cultural evolution.

Apr 4, 2023

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Truths of Being an Economist

An evolutionary perspective can bring back what’s missing from economic theory.

Mar 6, 2017

Can Cultural Evolution Help Integrate the Social Sciences?

If we combine evolution with embodiment and complexity, a coherent School of Social Sciences feels very much within reach.

Jan 3, 2017

Addressing the Field Site Concept: A Cognitive Anthropologist’s View

In order for us to understand culture, it is in relation to our environments, both biological—as stressed by evolutionary psychology—and social—as stressed by cultural evolution. A well validated theoretical perspective can generate insights and explanations that lab experiments alone cannot provide.

Jan 2, 2017

Bridging the Gap Between Laboratory and Field

To gain a holistic understanding of social evolution, we need to consider cumulative evidence, completing the puzzle one piece at a time. And to do that, we need to move back and forth between field and lab studies.

Dec 30, 2016

Defining and Implementing Field Sites in Cultural Evolution Science

If field sites are cross-cultural, multi-method, and collaborative across disciplines, however, they can improve the quality of our field, and help us make major steps toward understanding the evolution of human behavior.

Dec 27, 2016

On Field Sites for the Study of Cultural Evolution

How might we create a field site concept for cultural evolution that provides depth and breadth but that is based on new data?

Nov 10, 2016

Developing the Field Site Concept for the Study of Cultural Evolution: A Sociologist’s Perspective

If sociologists come to recognize that sociality and group process underlie the evolution of our species and are inherent in our biology, the use of field sites will become not just a means of framing sociological research but a clarion call for transdisciplinary recognition of the centrality of our discipline.

Oct 19, 2016

Developing the Field Site Concept for the Study of Cultural Evolution: An Anthropologist’s View

Cultural evolution research faces many challenges in the years to come. One of the most fundamental, perhaps, is to establish the extent to which cultural evolution is Darwinian.

Oct 19, 2016

Developing the Field Site Concept for the Study of Cultural Evolution: Introduction

Together with commentaries by authors with diverse perspectives on field research, we hope to catalyze the formation of field sites for the study of cultural evolution around the world.

Oct 3, 2016

Developing the Field Site Concept for the Study of Cultural Evolution: An Evolutionary Biologist’s View

The human capacity to transmit large amounts of learned information across generations is now properly seen as both a product of genetic evolution and a process of evolution in its own right.

Oct 21, 2015

Man Bites Dog: Cultural Evolution According to a Cultural Anthropologist

Mar 1, 2013

Dismantling The Paradigm In The Social Sciences

Joe Henrich and his colleagues are shaking the foundations of psychology and economics.

Feb 6, 2013

Genes Mix Faster Than Stories

Folk tales' 'DNA' shows that people would sooner have sex with strangers than tell their fables.

Jan 30, 2013

Cultural Evolution Changes Bird Song

Thanks to cultural evolution, male Savannah sparrows are changing their tune, partly to attract “the ladies.”

Dec 10, 2012

Culture: the Engine of Human Adaptation

Social Learning Leads to Our Greatest Achievements and Worst Errors.

Oct 11, 2012

War and Violence on the Decline in Modern Times

Political Scientist Joshua Goldstein and Psychologist Steven Pinker discuss arguments on the decline of violence.

Oct 5, 2012

Amazonian tribal warfare sheds light on modern violence

New evidence reveals similarities in Amazonian and modern warfare

Sep 25, 2012

The Pace of Cultural Evolution

Empirically demonstrating the pace of cultural evolution.

Sep 15, 2012

Conflict and ‘Boom-Bust’ Explain Humans’ Rapid Evolution

What explains the extraordinarily fast rate of evolution in the human lineage over the past two million years?

Sep 9, 2012

How Culture Drove Human Evolution

Why we need to stop distinguishing cultural and biological evolution as separate.

Jul 3, 2012

Use Woofound, Learn Evolution.

It is important to note that evolution is not just about biological change.

Jun 28, 2012

On the Evolution of Human Morality (a comment on Steven Pinker)

Why do fundamentally selfish beings, which is what humans are according to the selfish gene theory, accept cultural norms that contradict their natural strivings?

Apr 21, 2012

What it Means to be Human: Evolution of Intelligence by Cooperation and Teamwork

The evolution of intelligence and larger brain sizes can be driven by cooperation and teamwork.