Alex Mesoudi
  • Bio
  • Research
  • Books
  • Publications
  • Lab
  • Tutorials
  • Talks
  • Media
  • Publications
    • On the originality of subjective selection and the importance of payoff-biased diffusion and migration in shaping the cultural manifold. A comment on Singh
    • Variable cultural acquisition costs may explain contextual variation in peer cultures. A comment on Lew-Levy and Amir
    • Limited evidence that reputation-based partner choice facilitates information sharing in humans
    • Testing evolutionary theories of human cooperation via meta-analysis of microfinance repayment
    • From information free-riding to information sharing: how have humans solved the cooperative dilemma at the heart of cumulative cultural evolution?
    • Testing the effect of circumscription on the evolution of social complexity in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, using agent-based models
    • Social learning preserves both useful and useless theories by canalizing learners' exploration
    • A formal test using agent-based models of the circumscription theory for the evolution of social complexity
    • Trade-offs, control conditions, and alternative designs in the experimental study of cultural evolution
    • Cultural evolution
    • Decoding the dynamics of cultural change: A cultural evolution approach to the psychology of acculturation
    • Experimental studies of cultural evolution
    • Beyond collective intelligence: Collective adaptation
    • Untenable propositions and alternative avenues. Comment on “Blind alleys and fruitful pathways in the comparative study of cultural cognition” by Andrew Whiten.
    • Sentiment analysis of the Twitter response to Netflix's Our Planet documentary
    • Simulation models of cultural evolution in R [online tutorial]
    • Individual-based models of cultural evolution: A step-by-step guide using R
    • Trusting the experts: The domain-specificity of prestige-biased social learning
    • Analogy as a catalyst for cumulative cultural evolution
    • What is cumulative culture, and how should it be tested? A comment on Vaesen and Houkes
    • Banking on cooperation: An evolutionary analysis of microfinance loan repayment behaviour
    • Blind and incremental or directed and disruptive? On the nature of novel variation in human cultural evolution.
    • Cultural selection and biased transformation: two dynamics of cultural evolution
    • When do people prefer dominant over prestigious political leaders?
    • The cultural transmission of prestige and dominance social rank cues: An experimental simulation
    • Cumulative cultural evolution within evolving population structures
    • Prestige does not affect the cultural transmission of novel controversial arguments in an online transmission chain experiment
    • The emergence and adaptive use of prestige in an online social learning task
    • No evidence that omission and confirmation biases affect the perception and recall of vaccine-related information
    • Cultural evolution of football tactics: strategic social learning in managers’ choice of formation
    • Individual-based models of cultural evolution. A step-by-step guide using R
    • The study of culture and evolution across disciplines
    • Understanding agriculture within the frameworks of cumulative cultural evolution, gene-culture co-evolution, and cultural niche construction
    • Causal understanding is not necessary for the improvement of culturally evolving technology
    • Prestige-biased social learning: current evidence and outstanding questions
    • Cultural evolution and cultural psychology
    • Cultural evolution of emotional expression in 50 years of song lyrics
    • Prestige and dominance-based hierarchies exist in naturally occurring human groups, but are unrelated to task-specific knowledge
    • Migration, acculturation, and the maintenance of between-group cultural variation
    • What is cumulative cultural evolution?
    • Cultural Evolution
    • Pursuing Darwin’s curious parallel: Prospects for a science of cultural evolution
    • Differences in manufacturing traditions and assemblage-level patterns: The origins of cultural differences in archaeological data
    • Experimental priming of independent and interdependent activity does not affect culturally variable psychological processes
    • The nature and development of mathematics: Cross disciplinary perspectives on cognition, learning and culture
    • Cultural evolution: a review of theory, findings and controversies
    • Multilevel processes and cultural adaptation: Examples from past and present small-scale societies
    • Social learning solves the problem of narrow-peaked search landscapes: experimental evidence in humans
    • Evolving the human niche
    • Factors affecting Acheulean handaxe variation: Experimental insights, microevolutionary processes, and macroevolutionary outcomes
    • Copying error, evolution, and phylogenetic signal in artifactual traditions: An experimental approach using model artifacts
    • Cultural diffusion in humans and other animals
    • The evolution of individual and cultural variation in social learning
    • Cultural evolution: Integrating psychology, evolution and culture
    • How do people become W.E.I.R.D.? Migration reveals the cultural transmission mechanisms underlying variation in psychological processes
    • Understanding cumulative cultural evolution
    • The impact of imitative versus emulative learning mechanisms on artifactual variation: implications for the evolution of material culture
    • If we are all cultural Darwinians what’s the fuss about? Clarifying recent disagreements in the field of cultural evolution
    • Do online voting patterns reflect evolved features of human cognition? An exploratory empirical investigation
    • Cultural Evolution Overview
    • Higher frequency of social learning in China than in the West shows cultural variation in the dynamics of cultural evolution
    • Introduction to "Learning strategies and cultural evolution during the Palaeolithic"
    • Learning in the Acheulean: Experimental insights using handaxe form as a model organism
    • Learning strategies and cultural evolution during the palaeolithic
    • Transmission of cultural variants in the North American Paleolithic
    • From cultural traditions to cumulative culture: Parameterizing the differences between human and nonhuman culture
    • An experimental demonstration of the effect of group size on cultural accumulation
    • Considering the role of time budgets on copy-error rates in material culture traditions: An experimental assessment
    • Experimental and theoretical models of human cultural evolution
    • Cultural evolution in more than two dimensions: Distinguishing social learning biases and identifying payoff structures. A comment on Bentley et al. (2014)
    • Copying error and the cultural evolution of additive vs. reductive material traditions: An experimental assessment
    • Experimental studies of modern human social and individual learning in an archaeological context: People behave adaptively, but within limits
    • Sex-biased sound symbolism in English-language first names
    • Mass shooting and mass media : does media coverage of mass shootings inspire copycat crimes?
    • Is non-genetic inheritance just a proximate mechanism? A corroboration of the extended evolutionary synthesis
    • Making sense of culture. Book review of Culture Evolves by Whiten et al.
    • Studying cultural transmission within an interdisciplinary cultural evolutionary framework
    • The cultural evolution of technology and science
    • An experimental test of the accumulated copying error model of cultural mutation for Acheulean handaxe size
    • Adult learners in a novel environment use prestige-biased social learning
    • Culture and the evolution of human sociality
    • Statistical analyses cannot be divorced from archaeological theory: A reply to Potter (2012)
    • An experimental comparison of human social learning strategies: payoff-biased social learning is adaptive but underused
    • Cultural evolution: How Darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences
    • Beyond DNA: integrating inclusive inheritance into an extended theory of evolution
    • Culture and the Darwinian Renaissance in the social sciences and humanities
    • Integrating genetic and cultural evolutionary approaches to language
    • Variable cultural acquisition costs constrain cumulative cultural evolution
    • Cultural traits as units of analysis
    • Evolutionary synthesis in the social sciences and humanities
    • Studying cultural innovation in the psychology lab
    • Why aren't the social sciences Darwinian?
    • The cultural dynamics of copycat suicide
    • How cultural evolutionary theory can inform social psychology and vice versa
    • Placing archaeology within a unified science of cultural evolution
    • Random copying, frequency-dependent copying and culture change
    • NERD and norms: Framework and experiments
    • Establishing an experimental science of culture: animal social diffusion experiments
    • An experimental simulation of the 'copy-successful-individuals' cultural learning strategy: adaptive landscapes, producer–scrounger dynamics, and informational access costs
    • Ethics, evolution and culture
    • Foresight in cultural evolution
    • The cultural transmission of Great Basin projectile point technology I: An experimental simulation
    • The cultural transmission of Great Basin projectile-point technology II: an agent-based computer simulation
    • The experimental study of cultural transmission and its potential for explaining archaeological data
    • The learning and transmission of hierarchical cultural recipes
    • The multiple roles of cultural transmission experiments in understanding human cultural evolution
    • A Darwinian theory of cultural evolution can promote an evolutionary synthesis for the social sciences
    • Has mental time travel really affected human culture? A comment on Suddendorf and Corballis (2007)
    • Culturally transmitted paternity beliefs and the evolution of human mating behaviour
    • Biological and cultural evolution: Similar but different
    • Extended evolutionary theory makes human culture more amenable to evolutionary analysis. A comment on Jablonka and Lamb (2007)
    • Extending the behavioral sciences framework: Clarification of methods, predictions and concepts. A comment on Gintis (2007)
    • Science, evolution and cultural anthropology: A response to Ingold (2007)
    • Using the methods of social psychology to study cultural evolution
    • A bias for social information in human cultural transmission
    • Towards a unified science of cultural evolution
    • The transmission and evolution of human culture
    • Is human cultural evolution Darwinian? Evidence reviewed from the perspective of The Origin of Species
    • The hierarchical transformation of event knowledge in human cultural transmission

On the originality of subjective selection and the importance of payoff-biased diffusion and migration in shaping the cultural manifold. A comment on Singh

Jul 6, 2026·
Alex Mesoudi
Alex Mesoudi
· 0 min read
PDF Cite DOI URL
Type
Journal article
Publication
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 49, e301
Last updated on Jul 6, 2026
Alex Mesoudi
Authors
Alex Mesoudi
Professor of Cultural Evolution
Variable cultural acquisition costs may explain contextual variation in peer cultures. A comment on Lew-Levy and Amir Jul 6, 2026 →

© 2026 Alex Mesoudi. This work is licensed under CC BY NC ND 4.0

Published with Hugo Blox Builder — the free, open source website builder that empowers creators.