Looks like I will have to seek out "The Meme Machine" for some good
reading this summer.
Dawkins and Dennett see meme selection as a process that conforms to
the laws of natural selection exactly. As an aspiring social
psychologist, I have to disagree. This doesn't fit with the massive
attitudes and persuasion literature. I have great respect for Dawkin's
research, but the meme model may be an overgeneralization of the
evolutionary paradigm. Evolutionary psychology and Darwinian anthropology
also address culture with an evolutionary model.
Darwinian anthropology sees culture as the product of inclusive
fitness maximization. Darwinian anthropologists derive behavioral
predictions from theories of evolutionary biology, and gather data to test
these predictions (e.g. status seeking and resource accrual, with respect
to their effects on male reproductive success). The human capacity for
culture is an adaptation that enables individuals to track their
environment and adaptively adjust their behavior as conditions change.
Individuals consciously or subconsciously weigh the value of behavioral
choices in terms of their consequences for biological fitness.
Implication: people may develop customs that enhance their biological
fitness, but as the drive to maximize fitness is largely unconscious, the
customs are explained in terms of religious or moral reasons.
Evolutionary psychologists hold that the mind is composed of
evolved psychological information-processing mechanisms that were shaped
by natural selection in ancestral environments. These mental mechanisms
evolved in response to particular adaptive problems faced by early humans.
The Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA) is the enduring social
and physical conditions under which a particular adaptation arose. There
has not been enough time since the Pleistocene EEA to change the complex
mental mechanisms, thus in contrast to Darwinian anthropologists,
evolutionary psychologists would not be surprised to find maladaptive
behaviors in the current environment. Also, given that current B may or
may not be adaptive, studying the structure of mental adaptations should
be of more use than studying the adaptiveness of behaviors.
Evolutionary psychologists describe the innate mechanisms of the
mind in terms of decision rules or algorithms. They reject the
possibility of a mind consisting of a domain-general, context-independent
mechanisms. The mind can be divided into many distinct (although
interacting) modules, containing cognitive mechanisms that process
information from specific context areas such as social exchange and mate
choice. These mechanisms have little genetic variability, but are
sensitive to environmental contingencies. Individuals are not passive
recipients of culture, behaviors, symbolic representations, and cognitions
are both generated and responded to by the evolved mental programs in our
minds.
Most of the above is stolen from the excellent reference below, found in a
book certainly worth checking out.
Janicki, M. & Krebs, D. (1998). Evolutionary approaches to
culture. In C. Crawford & D. Krebs (Eds.) Handbook of Evolutionary
Psychology: Issues, Ideas, and Applications (pp. 163-207). Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Daniel J. Kruger
Department of Psychology
Loyola University Chicago
