Evolutionary Psychology and Cultural Transmission

Abstract

This article is an evaluation of how evolutionary psychology can contribute to the description and explanation of cultural material as a continuation of other research frameworks that connected genetic inheritance and cultural evolution. Evolutionary psychology provides a proximate explanation of cultural transmission in that it is based on a description of the cognitive mechanisms involved in acquisition of cultural representations. To illustrate this point, the author uses the example of religious concepts. A better understanding of cultural acquisition processes will probably require new descriptive models for anthropological data.