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Culture’s building blocks: investigating cultural evolution in a LEGO construction task

One of the most essential but theoretically vexing issues regarding the notion of culture is that of cultural evolution and transmission: how a group’s accumulated solutions to invariant challenges develop and persevere over time. But at the moment, the notion of applying evolutionary theory to cult...

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Autores principales: McGraw, John J., Wallot, Sebastian, Mitkidis, Panagiotis, Roepstorff, Andreas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4162372/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25309482
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01017
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author McGraw, John J.
Wallot, Sebastian
Mitkidis, Panagiotis
Roepstorff, Andreas
author_facet McGraw, John J.
Wallot, Sebastian
Mitkidis, Panagiotis
Roepstorff, Andreas
author_sort McGraw, John J.
collection PubMed
description One of the most essential but theoretically vexing issues regarding the notion of culture is that of cultural evolution and transmission: how a group’s accumulated solutions to invariant challenges develop and persevere over time. But at the moment, the notion of applying evolutionary theory to culture remains little more than a suggestive trope. Whereas the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory has provided an encompassing scientific framework for the selection and transmission of biological adaptations, a convincing theory of cultural evolution has yet to emerge. One of the greatest challenges for theorists is identifying the appropriate time scales and units of analysis in order to reduce the intractably large and complex phenomenon of “culture” into its component “building blocks.” In this paper, we present a model for scientifically investigating cultural processes by analyzing the ways people develop conventions in a series of LEGO construction tasks. The data revealed a surprising pattern in the selection of building bricks as well as features of car design across consecutive building sessions. Our findings support a novel methodology for studying the development and transmission of culture through the microcosm of interactive LEGO design and assembly.
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spelling pubmed-41623722014-10-10 Culture’s building blocks: investigating cultural evolution in a LEGO construction task McGraw, John J. Wallot, Sebastian Mitkidis, Panagiotis Roepstorff, Andreas Front Psychol Psychology One of the most essential but theoretically vexing issues regarding the notion of culture is that of cultural evolution and transmission: how a group’s accumulated solutions to invariant challenges develop and persevere over time. But at the moment, the notion of applying evolutionary theory to culture remains little more than a suggestive trope. Whereas the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory has provided an encompassing scientific framework for the selection and transmission of biological adaptations, a convincing theory of cultural evolution has yet to emerge. One of the greatest challenges for theorists is identifying the appropriate time scales and units of analysis in order to reduce the intractably large and complex phenomenon of “culture” into its component “building blocks.” In this paper, we present a model for scientifically investigating cultural processes by analyzing the ways people develop conventions in a series of LEGO construction tasks. The data revealed a surprising pattern in the selection of building bricks as well as features of car design across consecutive building sessions. Our findings support a novel methodology for studying the development and transmission of culture through the microcosm of interactive LEGO design and assembly. Frontiers Media S.A. 2014-09-12 /pmc/articles/PMC4162372/ /pubmed/25309482 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01017 Text en Copyright © 2014 McGraw, Wallot, Mitkidis and Roepstorff. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
McGraw, John J.
Wallot, Sebastian
Mitkidis, Panagiotis
Roepstorff, Andreas
Culture’s building blocks: investigating cultural evolution in a LEGO construction task
title Culture’s building blocks: investigating cultural evolution in a LEGO construction task
title_full Culture’s building blocks: investigating cultural evolution in a LEGO construction task
title_fullStr Culture’s building blocks: investigating cultural evolution in a LEGO construction task
title_full_unstemmed Culture’s building blocks: investigating cultural evolution in a LEGO construction task
title_short Culture’s building blocks: investigating cultural evolution in a LEGO construction task
title_sort culture’s building blocks: investigating cultural evolution in a lego construction task
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4162372/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25309482
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01017
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