#228 Alex Mesoudi: Studying Cultural Evolution, Migration, And Transmission
Dr. Alex Mesoudi is an Associate Professor of Cultural Evolution at the Human Behaviour and Cultural Evolution Group at the University of Exeter’s Cornwall Campus, UK. He studies cultural evolution, both in the lab and by constructing models and simulations of it. He’s also the author of the book Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian Theory Can Explain Human Culture and Synthesize the Social Sciences.
In this episode, we talk about some of the theoretical foundations of cultural evolution. We first discuss the relationship between culture and biology, and how we can get differences between groups. We refer to cultural group selection. Also, to issues regarding traditional social science. We talk about integrating lab studies and ethnographic studies. We then get into the differences and similarities between cultural evolution and modern synthesis genetic evolution. Finally, we talk about Galton’s problem and how to be sure that the cultures we are studying are independent, and also about migration and cultural transmission.
Time Links:
Culture, and its relationship with biology
Ways of getting behavioral differences between groups
Issues with cultural group selection
Evolutionary psychology and the Standard Social Science Model
Understanding how the mind works to study cultural evolution
The importance of lab studies and ethnographic studies
Differences and similarities between cultural evolution and genetic evolution
Phylogenetic approaches to cultural evolution
Galton’s problem, and being sure that cultures are independent
Migration, cultural transmission, and WEIRD psychology
Follow Dr. Mesoudi’s work!
Follow Dr. Mesoudi’s work:
Faculty Page: http://bit.ly/2YiXf2W
Website: http://alexmesoudi.com/
ResearchGate profile: http://bit.ly/2M4z7e4
Twitter handle: @amesoudi
Books on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2Z5cqtV
Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian Theory Can Explain Human Culture and Synthesize the Social Sciences: https://amzn.to/32FxoS9