Dual inheritance theory, (or DIT), in sharp contrast to the notion that "culture overrides biology," posits that humans are products of the interaction between biological evolution and cultural evolution. DIT assumes that culture, (including cultural transmission and cultural evolution), is both influenced by and constrained by genes via psychological adaptations and that culture, in turn, contributes to selection pressures on genes. The results of these interactions can be a mix of both adaptive and maladaptive traits within a population. Another way of conceiving DIT is as an approach that integrates evolutionary theory, cultural theory, and learning theory. A speculatively rooted phylogenetic tree of all living things, based on rRNA gene data, showing the separation of the three domains, bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes, as described initially by Carl Woese. ... Cultural evolution is the structural change of a society and its values over time. ... A psychological adaptation, also called an evolved psychological mechanism or EPM, is an aspect of a human or other animals psychology that serves a specific purpose, and was created and selected by evolutionary pressures. ... In psychology, a behavior or trait is adaptive when it helps an individual adjust and function well within their environment. ...

Evolution and Populations

Organic evolutionists began to use mathematical models to investigate the properties of evolution in the first quarter of the 20th Century. The aim of the effort was to take the micro-scale properties of individuals and genes, scale them up to a population of individuals and deduce the long run evolutionary consequences of the assumed micro level processes. Empiricists have a handle on both the micro scale processes and the long run results, but not on what happens over many generations in between. Moreover, human intuition is not so good at envisioning the behavior of populations over long spans of time. Hence mathematics proved an invaluable aid. Note: The term model is also given a formal meaning in model theory, a part of axiomatic set theory. ... This stylistic schematic diagram shows a gene in relation to the double helix structure of DNA and to a chromosome (right). ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Intuition has many but close meanings across many cultures, including: Quick and ready insight seemingly independent of previous experiences and empirical knowledge Immediate apprehension or cognition Knowledge or conviction gained immediately and without detailed consideration The power or faculty of attaining knowledge or cognition immediately without thought and inference. ... Mathematics is often defined as the study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. ...

Evolution and Culture

Beginning with the pioneering work of Lucca Cavalli-Sforza and Marcus Feldman (1981) in the early 1970s, these methods were adapted to study cultural evolution. The problem is somewhat the same as organic evolution.

• People acquire information from others by learning and teaching.
• Cultural transmission is imperfect, so the transmission is not always exact.
• People invent new cultural variants, making culture a system for the inheritance of acquired variation.
• People also pick and choose the cultural variants they adopt and use, processes that are not possible in the genetic system (although in the case of sexual selection individuals may choose mates with the objective of getting good genes for their offspring).

Social scientists know a fair amount about such things, enough to build reasonable mathematical representations of the micro-level processes of cultural evolution. The theory is of the form The word culture comes from the Latin root colere (to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honor). ... Illustration from The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex by Charles Darwin showing the Tufted Coquette Lophornis ornatus, female on left, ornamented male on right. ... Terms like SOSE (Studies of Society & the Environment) not only refer to social sciences but also studies of the environment. ...

p_{t + 1} = p_t + effects of forces

where p measures something interesting about the culture of a population, for example the fraction of employees who are earnest workers. Teaching and imitation, all else equal, tend to replicate culture. The fraction of workers in a culture who are earnest tends to remain similar from generation to generation. Earnest workers model earnest behavior for others to imitate and try to teach earnestness to new employees. The same can be said for slackers. Imitation is an advanced animal behavior whereby an individual observes anothers behavior and replicates it itself. ...

Typically, several processes we call forces will act simultaneously to change culture over time. For example, management may find it difficult to discover and sanction slacking. Earnest workers may experiment with slacking and find that there are seldom any adverse consequences. Hence, some earnest employees may become slackers. New employees may observe that some people slack and some work hard. They may tend to prefer the easier path.

At the same time, firms with a high frequency of slackers will tend to fail while those with many earnest workers may prosper. Prosperous firms will have the opportunity to socialize many more new workers than those that fail prematurely. The overall quality of the economy’s work force in the long run will be determined by the balance of forces favoring slacking versus those favoring earnestness. In psychology, socialization is the process by which children and others adopt the behavior patterns of the culture that surrounds them. ...

Theorists are interested in the abstract properties of such evolutionary models. Empiricists are interested in finding the models that best describe actual evolving systems. Real world practitioners are interested in predicting the outcomes of policies that might improve or harm the quality of a firm’s or an economy’s work force. Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

Topics of interset in dual inheritance theory

Substantive questions that have interested dual inheritance theorists include

• the adaptive costs and benefits of culture
• the apparent rarity of cultural learning mechanisms in nature
• the cognitive processes underlying cultural learning and transmimission, (i.e. social learning)
• the influence of gene-culture coevolution on human psychology and the histories of human societies
• rates of different kinds of cultural evolution
• the evolution of symbolic systems
• the role of culture in the evolution of cooperation

In psychology, a behavior or trait is adaptive when it helps an individual adjust and function well within their environment. ... Cognitive The scientific study of how people obtain, retrieve, store and manipulate information. ... Psychology (ancient Greek: psyche = soul or mind, logos/-ology = study of) is an academic and applied field involving the study of the human mind and human behavior. ...

Genes influence cultural evolution

Many of the analyses involve the coevolution of genes and culture (hence the term dual inheritance or gene-culture coevolution theory). Genes have an impact on cultural evolution via psychological predispositions that bias what people imitate, teach, or learn for themselves. Hence, a physically awkward type of tool is liable to be modified or abandoned in favor of one that better suits the human hand and arm. The facts that sex is pleasurable, that sweet things taste good, and that being cold and wet is miserable suggest how the structure of our nervous system will have an impact on such things as marriage customs, cuisine, and the construction of shelters. A psychological adaptation, also called an evolved psychological mechanism or EPM, is an aspect of a human or other animals psychology that serves a specific purpose, and was created and selected by evolutionary pressures. ... The nervous system of an animal coordinates the activity of the muscles, monitors the organs, constructs and processes input from the senses, and initiates actions. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards and appeal to a wider international audience, this article may require cleanup. ...

Culture influences biological evolution

However, the opposite is also true. Cultures create environments that in turn may select for genes that succeed in the cultural environment. One of the best worked out cases is adult lactose absorption. In populations with a long history of dairying, such as Northern Europeans and African cattle-keeping societies, most adults retain the ability to break down and hence digest the milk sugar lactose. Societies with no history of dairying, such as East Asians and Amerindians, retain the primitive mammalian genotype in which the body shuts down lactose production shortly after the normal age of weaning. Lactose is a disaccharide that makes up around 2-8% of the solids in milk. ... Dairy farming is a class of agricultural enterprise, raising female cattle for long-term production of milk, which may be either processed on-site or transported to a dairy for processing and eventual retail sale. ... This article is about the continent. ... World map showing location of Africa A satellite composite image of Africa Africa is the worlds second_largest continent in both area and population, after Asia. ... East Asia is a subregion of Asia. ... A Sioux in traditional dress including war bonnet, circa 1908. ... Orders Subclass Monotremata Monotremata Subclass Marsupialia Didelphimorphia Paucituberculata Microbiotheria Dasyuromorphia Peramelemorphia Notoryctemorphia Diprotodontia Subclass Placentalia Xenarthra Dermoptera Desmostylia Scandentia Primates Rodentia Lagomorpha Insectivora Chiroptera Pholidota Carnivora Perissodactyla Artiodactyla Cetacea Afrosoricida Macroscelidea Tubulidentata Hyracoidea Proboscidea Sirenia The mammals are the class of vertebrate animals primarily characterized by the presence of mammary... The genotype is the specific genetic makeup (the specific genome) of an individual, usually in the form of DNA. It codes for the phenotype of that individual. ... A breastfeeding infant Breastfeeding is the practice of a woman feeding an infant (or sometimes a toddler or a young child) with milk produced from her mammary glands, usually directly from the nipples. ...

According to some cultural evolutionists our social psychology was extensively remodeled by a long period of life in tribal scale social systems whose culturally transmitted rules encouraged much cooperation with non-relatives due to group selection on cultural variation. Darwin first proposed hypothesis much like this in the Descent of Man. This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Tribal refers to a culture or society based on tribes or clans. ... In evolutionary biology, group selection refers to the idea that alleles can become fixed or spread in a population because of the benefits they bestow on groups, regardless of the fitness of individuals within that group. ... The word Darwin, when used alone, has several possible meanings in the English language. ... The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex by British naturalist Charles Darwin was first published in 1871. ...

Research

Contemporary work in the dual inheritance/gene-culture coevolution tradition includes empirical studies designed to test ideas, (e.g. simulations, cross-cultural studies), derived from the mathematical theory. Empirical studies in social sciences are when the research ends are based on evidence and not just theory. ... In the scientific method, an idiot is a person with a lot of issues who doesn;t know anything, for example, me The word is derived from the Latin id- + iot, issues. // An experiment in baking As a simple example, consider that many bakers have noticed that the amount of... Population dynamics is the study of marginal and long-term changes in the numbers, individual weights and age composition of individuals in one or several populations, and biological and environmental processes influencing those changes. ...

See also

• Cultural evolution
• Evolutionary psychology
• Human behavioral ecology
• List of publications on evolution and human behavior
• Meme
• Sociobiology

Cultural evolution is the structural change of a society and its values over time. ... Evolutionary psychology (abbreviated ev-psych or EP) proposes that animal psychology can be better understood in light of evolution. ... Human behavioral ecology (HBE) or human evolutionary ecology applies the principles of evolutionary theory and optimization to the study of human behavioral and cultural diversity. ... Intro to Evolutionary psychology Buss, D. M. (1995). ... This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Sociobiology is a synthesis of scientific disciplines that attempts to explain behaviour in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages of social behaviours. ...

References

• Boyd, Rob & Richerson, Peter J. (1985). Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago University Press.

• Boyd, R. & Richerson, P.J. (2001). Built For Speed, Not for Comfort: Darwinian Theory and Human Culture. In History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 23: 423-463.

• Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., & Feldman, M. W. (1981). Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

• Henrich, J., & McElreath, R. (2003). The Evolution of Cultural Evolution. Evolutionary Anthropology, 12, 123-135.

• Smith, Eric Alden (1999). Three Styles in the Evolutionary Analysis of Human Behavior in Lee Cronk, Napoleon Chagnon and William Irons Adaptation and Human Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective, 27-48, New York: Aldine de Gruyter.