TY - JOUR
T1 - Four misunderstandings about cultural attraction
AU - Scott-Phillips, Thom
AU - Blancke, Stefaan
AU - Heintz, Christophe
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
PY - 2018/7/1
Y1 - 2018/7/1
N2 - Cultural attraction theory (CAT) is a research agenda the purpose of which is to develop causal explanations of cultural phenomena. CAT is also an evolutionary approach to culture, in the sense that it treats culture as a population of items of different types, with the frequency of tokens of those types changing over time. Now more than 20 years old, CAT has made many positive contributions, theoretical and empirical, to the naturalization of the social sciences. In consequence of this growing impact, CAT has, in recent years, been the subject of critical discussion. Here, we review and respond to these critiques. In so doing, we also provide a clear and concise introduction to CAT. We give clear characterizations of CAT's key theoretical notions, and we outline how these notions are derived from consideration of the natural character of cultural phenomena (Box). This naturalistic quality distinguishes CAT from other evolutionary approaches to culture.
AB - Cultural attraction theory (CAT) is a research agenda the purpose of which is to develop causal explanations of cultural phenomena. CAT is also an evolutionary approach to culture, in the sense that it treats culture as a population of items of different types, with the frequency of tokens of those types changing over time. Now more than 20 years old, CAT has made many positive contributions, theoretical and empirical, to the naturalization of the social sciences. In consequence of this growing impact, CAT has, in recent years, been the subject of critical discussion. Here, we review and respond to these critiques. In so doing, we also provide a clear and concise introduction to CAT. We give clear characterizations of CAT's key theoretical notions, and we outline how these notions are derived from consideration of the natural character of cultural phenomena (Box). This naturalistic quality distinguishes CAT from other evolutionary approaches to culture.
KW - cognition
KW - cultural attraction
KW - cultural evolution
KW - culture
KW - evolution
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85051856440&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/evan.21716
DO - 10.1002/evan.21716
M3 - Review Article
C2 - 30099809
AN - SCOPUS:85051856440
SN - 1060-1538
VL - 27
SP - 162
EP - 173
JO - Evolutionary Anthropology
JF - Evolutionary Anthropology
IS - 4
ER -