Modelling cultural evolution

TL;DR

This paper reviews formal models of cultural evolution, explaining their importance, types, and how they connect individual cognition to macro-level cultural dynamics, offering a comprehensive framework for understanding cultural change.

Contribution

It introduces a general template for modeling cultural evolution that links micro-level cognitive processes with macro-level societal outcomes.

Findings

Four families of models are surveyed, covering micro to macro levels.

A unified template connects system states, cognition, behavior, and outcomes.

Models support a pluralist but coherent understanding of cultural change.

Abstract

Formal modelling provides a toolkit for understanding cultural dynamics, from individual decisions to recurring patterns of change. This chapter explains what models are and why they matter. Using a precise, shared language, they aid thinking and communication by turning fuzzy assumptions into clear, comparable, testable claims. The chapter describes the modelling process, trading explanatory clarity against predictive specificity. Four families of models are surveyed, from the micro-level with optimising agents to macro-level dynamics with heuristic or even implicit agents, covering reasoning (Bayesian inference, game theory), adaptive updating (reinforcement learning, evolutionary games), mean-field approaches (compartmental models, population dynamics), and complex systems (agent-based models, social networks). Building on these, a general template for modelling cultural evolution is outlined that connects system states, cognitive processes, behaviour, and macro-level outcomes in dynamic loops, linking individuals, groups, institutions, and their environments. Taken together, these tools support a pluralist but coherent understanding of cultural change.