From: derek gatherer (dgatherer2002@yahoo.co.uk)
Date: Fri 07 Nov 2003 - 09:10:20 GMT
Yes, 'emotional selection' as they call it, could be a
case of 'cultural selection' (which is the more
general term of Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman). I
mentioned this Heath/Bell/Sternberg paper briefly in
my last JoM paper - it's down at the bottom of the
rather rambling paragraph below....
Basically, it seems that cultural selection occurs,
but the question in a lot of cases is why. One answer
is that it is because of emotional selection, but
again you could ask why some things are emotionally
selected.
and the paragraph:
from
http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/2002/vol6/gatherer_d.html
It is clear that a `random walk' pattern of meme
incidence over the iterations is more common than the
`contagionist paradigm' sigmoid curve, which only
occurs in rather `pure' situations. Random walk-like
effects may be genuinely random because of the
stochastic nature of the system (simulation 3),
because of balanced rules in a deterministic system
(simulation 4), or be anchored pseudo-random walks
because of fluctuations around an equilibrium
(simulations 10 and 11). Good `epidemiological'
sigmoid curves in culture seem to require either
arbitrary contagiousness (simulations 1 and 2), or a
powerful selective force (the unopposed
self-fulfilling prophecy of simulation 5). Some
aspects of human life may be arbitrarily contagious,
for example crowd hysteria (see reviews by Levy & Nail
1993; Marsden 1998). Several authors have worked
within the `contagionist paradigm', producing models
of traits that spread in an epidemic manner. For
instance, Takahasi (1998, 1999) refers to `biased
cultural transmission', Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman
(1984) to `cultural selection', and Sperber (1985,
1996) to the `epidemiology of representations'. In
these cases, it is taken for granted that the epidemic
trait is either arbitrarily contagious or, in the case
of Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman's `cultural selection',
that some powerful, and usually unspecified,
psychological factor is promoting the spread of the
trait. The self-fulfilling prophecy phenomenon of
simulation 5 would presumably therefore be a case of
`cultural selection'. Another example might be
`prestige-based transmission' (Heinrich 2001) where
certain individuals are far more widely copied than
others, or `emotional selection' (Heath et al 2001).
Blackmore (1999) gives extensive further examples.
Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (1984) also refer to
`natural selection' on culture, where a cultural trait
spreads through genuine adaptiveness in the absence of
either arbitrary `biased cultural transmission' or
psychological `cultural selection'. Powerful natural
selective forces of this kind do indeed also operate
in culture, resulting in some sigmoid incidence curves
for possession of, in modern times, mobile phones and
other useful paraphernalia (Rogers 1995), or, in the
Bronze Age, for bronze knives (Renfrew 1987). Hewlett
and Cavalli-Sforza (1983) describe an epidemic spread
of the use of the crossbow among Pygmies, conferring a
great hunting advantage over the traditional bow and
arrow.
--- William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com> wrote: >
>
http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/press_releases/december_2001/psp8161028.html
>
> Emotional Selection in Memes: The Case of Urban
> Legends
>
> Chip Heath
> Graduate School of Business
> Stanford University
>
> Chris Bell and Emily Sternberg
> Fuqua School of Business
> Duke University
>
> ABSTRACT
> This article explores how much memes like urban
> legends succeed on the
> basis of informational selection (i.e., truth or a
> moral lesson) and
> emotional selection (i.e., the ability to evoke
> emotions like anger, fear,
> or disgust). The article focuses on disgust because
> its elicitors have been
> precisely described. In Study 1, with controls for
> informational factors
> like truth, people were more willing to pass along
> stories that elicited
> stronger disgust. Study 2 randomly sampled legends
> and created versions that
> varied in disgust; people preferred to pass along
> versions that produced the
> highest level of disgust. Study 3 coded legends for
> specific story motifs
> that produce disgust (e.g., ingestion of a
> contaminated substance) and found
> that legends that contained more disgust motifs were
> distributed more widely
> on urban legend Web sites. The conclusion discusses
> implications of
> emotional selection for the social marketplace of
> ideas.
>
>
>
===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list
> associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of
> Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g.
> unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
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===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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