@article{ref1,
title="Five misunderstandings about cultural evolution",
journal="Human nature",
year="2008",
author="Henrich, Joseph and Boyd, Robert and Richerson, Peter J.",
volume="19",
number="2",
pages="119-137",
abstract="Recent debates about memetics have revealed some widespread misunderstandings about Darwinian approaches to cultural evolution. Drawing from these debates, this paper disputes five common claims: (1) mental representations are rarely discrete, and therefore models that assume discrete, gene-like particles (i.e., replicators) are useless; (2) replicators are necessary for cumulative, adaptive evolution; (3) content-dependent psychological biases are the only important processes that affect the spread of cultural representations; (4) the &quot;cultural fitness&quot; of a mental representation can be inferred from its successful transmission; and (5) selective forces only matter if the sources of variation are random. We close by sketching the outlines of a unified evolutionary science of culture.<p /><p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1045-6767",
doi="10.1007/s12110-008-9037-1",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12110-008-9037-1"
}