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SUMMARY:Chinese Whispers and Virtual Arrowheads: What cultural transmissio
 n experiments can tell us about cultural evolution - Alex Mesoudi\, SPS
DTSTART:20071106T130000Z
DTEND:20071106T140000Z
UID:TALK8113@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Julain Oldmeadow
DESCRIPTION:In the first part of this talk\, I will discuss some experimen
 ts that I have conducted which use Bartlett’s (1932) transmission chain 
 method (aka the method of serial reproduction) to simulate cultural transm
 ission in the lab. For example\, in one of these studies (Mesoudi\, Whiten
  & Dunbar\, 2006\, Brit. J. Psychol. 97\, 405-423) I found that informatio
 n about third-party social relationships was passed on with greater accura
 cy and in greater quantity than equivalent non-social information. This so
 cial bias in cultural transmission was attributed to ‘social brain’ hy
 potheses concerning the evolution of human cognition. In the second half o
 f the talk I will argue that such findings can be used to inform a theory 
 of cultural evolution\, the idea that human culture changes in a manner co
 mparable to that in which biological species evolve (Mesoudi\, Whiten & La
 land\, 2004\, Evolution 58\, 1-11\; 2006\, Beh. Brain Sci. 29\, 329-383). 
 Cultural transmission experiments\, which reveal the micro-evolutionary de
 tails of who copies what from whom and how\, can be extrapolated to the po
 pulation level in order to explain long-term and large-scale aspects of cu
 ltural change\, just as evolutionary biologists extrapolate from the micro
 evolutionary forces of natural selection\, sexual selection\, drift etc. u
 p to biological macroevolution. This is illustrated by a recent experiment
  (Mesoudi & O’Brien\, in press\, American Antiquity) in which participan
 ts designed “virtual arrowheads”\, with different phases of the experi
 ment simulating different forms of cultural transmission. Matching our exp
 erimental data to actual archaeological data allowed us to identify the un
 derlying (microevolutionary) transmission mechanisms behind (macroevolutio
 nary) archaeological patterns.\n
LOCATION:SPS Seminar Room
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