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CATEGORIES:Social and Developmental Psychology (SDP) Seminar 
 Series
SUMMARY:Chinese Whispers and Virtual Arrowheads: What cult
 ural transmission experiments can tell us about cu
 ltural evolution - Alex Mesoudi\, SPS
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20071106T130000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20071106T140000
UID:TALK8113AThttp://talks.cam.ac.uk
URL:http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/8113
DESCRIPTION:In the first part of this talk\, I will discuss so
 me experiments that I have conducted which use Bar
 tlett’s (1932) transmission chain method (aka the 
 method of serial reproduction) to simulate cultura
 l transmission in the lab. For example\, in one of
  these studies (Mesoudi\, Whiten & Dunbar\, 2006\,
  Brit. J. Psychol. 97\, 405-423) I found that info
 rmation about third-party social relationships was
  passed on with greater accuracy and in greater qu
 antity than equivalent non-social information. Thi
 s social bias in cultural transmission was attribu
 ted to ‘social brain’ hypotheses concerning the ev
 olution of human cognition. In the second half of 
 the talk I will argue that such findings can be us
 ed to inform a theory of cultural evolution\, the 
 idea that human culture changes in a manner compar
 able to that in which biological species evolve (M
 esoudi\, Whiten & Laland\, 2004\, Evolution 58\, 1
 -11\; 2006\, Beh. Brain Sci. 29\, 329-383). Cultur
 al transmission experiments\, which reveal the mic
 ro-evolutionary details of who copies what from wh
 om and how\, can be extrapolated to the population
  level in order to explain long-term and large-sca
 le aspects of cultural change\, just as evolutiona
 ry biologists extrapolate from the microevolutiona
 ry forces of natural selection\, sexual selection\
 , drift etc. up to biological macroevolution. This
  is illustrated by a recent experiment (Mesoudi & 
 O’Brien\, in press\, American Antiquity) in which 
 participants designed “virtual arrowheads”\, with 
 different phases of the experiment simulating diff
 erent forms of cultural transmission. Matching our
  experimental data to actual archaeological data a
 llowed us to identify the underlying (microevoluti
 onary) transmission mechanisms behind (macroevolut
 ionary) archaeological patterns.\n
LOCATION:SPS Seminar Room
CONTACT:Dr Julain Oldmeadow
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