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Cultural Transmission

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2390-1

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C
Cultural Transmission
Mitchell B Whitaker
Baker College, Cadillac, MI, USA
Synonyms
Cultural evolution; Cultural learning; Social
learning
Definition
The transmission of preferences, ideas, beliefs,
and norms of behavior as a result of an interaction
between biological predispositions and social
interaction between and within generations.
Introduction
In his landmark work, The Selfish Gene, biologist
Richard Dawkins describes living things as “sur-
vival machines” that do the work of our inherited
genetic material (Dawkins 2006). Under this con-
cept, these survival machines simply seek to sur-
vive and reproduce, a process that leads to the
primary motivations of all living things, human,
or otherwise.
If we are, as Dawkins says, merely survival
machines for our genetic material, it suggests
that we are not unique in any real way. However,
# Springer International Publishing AG 2016
T.K. Shackelford, V.A. Weekes-Shackelford (eds.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2390-1
that seems not to be the case, an admission that
Dawkins makes freely. For Dawkins, “most of
what is unusual about man can be summed up in
one word: culture” (Dawkins 2006, p. 189).
Description
From a sociological perspective, culture is the
language, beliefs, values, norms, behaviors, and
even material objects that characterize a group
(Henslin 2015). Cultural transmission occurs
when those elements of culture are passed from
one generation to the next. On its surface, it would
appear that culture works independently of bio-
logical evolution but in a very similar format.
However, this dualistic view represents a pre-
modern approach to biology – an approach
whose intellectual integrity has since been
compromised (Cosmides and Tooby 1992). In
fact, research has uncovered a symbiotic relation-
ship between genes and culture (Bolwes and
Gintis 2004; Gintis et al. 2008; Wind 1990),
suggesting that culture and evolution work in
concert to produce an interaction that determines
either cultural or biological evolution or both
(Bisin and Verdier 2005; Dick 2007; Jacobson
2009).
Where Dawkins speaks of culture as a uniquely
human enterprise, others have found that it exists
in chimpanzees (Whiten et al. 1999) with cultural
transmission serving as a fundamental, albeit
primitive, element of chimpanzee life. This
2 Cultural Transmission
suggests that the concept of culture is older than
humans themselves – a concept that makes cul-
ture, or our ability to perpetuate it, of genetic
origin.
Despite differences in complexity, culture in
humans and chimpanzees works in a similar
manner.
Darwinism holds that genes are self-replicating
units that transmit biological data from one gen-
eration to the next. This is the bedrock of biolog-
ical evolution. It can be seen as analogous to the
hardware of a computer. But a computer requires
software to run, software that requires updating
from time to time throughout the life of the unit
itself. Culture is that software and its basic unit of
transmission is the meme, a term coined by
Dawkins himself. Much like the gene, the meme
is self-replicating, autonomous, and lacks fore-
sight. The meme is tricky, however. It does not
replicate well (low fidelity), like genes do, and is
difficult to track, leading some to disregard the
concept altogether. It’s important to understand
that memes are a paradigm through which to
understand the concept of cultural transmission.
Critics of evolutionary psychology often point
to cultural adaptation and differences within cul-
tures and between individuals as evidence that
culture is not a biological universal, nor is it an
adaptive trait. From early iterations such as
Murdock (1932) to more recent arguments such
as that of Lewontin et al. (1984) and Wood and
Eagly (2002), critics often fail to recognize the
symbiotic relationship between genetics and the
environment in which they operate.
As humans we are born with a set of genetic
material contributed by our parents. This material
stays with us throughout our lives and determines
a good deal of what we become, but it does not
and cannot do it alone. Cultural transmission
occurs when a social unit of replication (meme)
is conveyed to us by someone. Historically, those
transmitters were family and close friends, mem-
bers of a group, tribe, community,
etc. Sociologists call these conveyors our agents
of socialization (Henslin 2015). With increased
globalization, our world has gotten smaller, and
our pool of transmitters has gotten much larger. As
such, the memetic selection pressures are much
different than they were even 25 years ago.
Conclusion
Cultural transmission is responsible for variations
in language, diet, political ideology, social norms,
fashion, and even part of our idea of what’s attrac-
tive, offensive, or acceptable. In some extreme
cases, cultural transmission can create ideologies
that are difficult to alter, such as racism, religious
beliefs, and political ideologies.
Cross-References
▶ Cosmides and Tooby (1992, 2005)
▶ Cultural Evolution
▶ Cultural Universality
▶ Group Socialization
▶ How the Mind Works
▶ Memes
▶ Selfish Gene, The
▶ Social Exchange Theory
▶ Social Learning
▶ Symbolic Culture
▶ Transmitted Culture
References
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Bolwes, S., & Gintis, H. (2004). The origins of human
cooperation. In P. Hammerstein (Ed.), Genetic and
cultural origins of human cooperation. Cambridge,
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Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1992). The psychological foun-
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Dawkins, R. (2006). The selfish gene: 30th anniversary
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Dick, D. M. (2007). Parental monitoring moderates the
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Gintis, H., Bowles, S., Boyd, R., & Fehr, E. (2008). Gene-
culture coevolution and the emergence of altruistic
behavior in humans. In C. Crawford (Ed.), The
Cultural Transmission
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Lewontin, R., Rose, S., & Kamin, L. J. (1984). Not in our
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Murdock, G. (1932). The science of culture. American
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Whiten, A., Goodall, J., McGrew, W. C., Nishida, T.,
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