From: William Benzon (bbenzon@mindspring.com)
Date: Sun 25 Jan 2004 - 14:15:46 GMT
If you google the name "Joseph Henrich" you might come up with a web-page
where you can get a PDF of the following paper:
Joseph Henrich, Cultural Transmission & the Diffusion of Innovations
Adoption dynamics indicate that biased cultural transmission is the
predominate force in behavioral change, American Anthropologist 103(4):
992-1013.
Abstract
In challenging the pervasive model of individual actors as cost-benefit
analysts who adapt their behavior by learning from the environment, this
paper analyzes the temporal dynamics of both environmental (individual)
learning and biased cultural transmission processes by comparing these
dynamics with the robust ³S-shaped² curves that emerge from the diffusion of
innovations research. The analysis shows three things: 1) that environmental
learning alone never produces the S-shaped adoption dynamics typically
observed in the spread of novel practices, ideas and technologies; 2) that
biased cultural transmission always produces the S-shaped temporal dynamics;
and 3) that a combination of environmental learning and biased cultural
transmission can generate S-dynamics, but only when biased cultural
transmission is the predominate force in the spread of new behaviors. These
findings suggest that biased cultural transmission processes are much more
important to understanding the diffusion of innovations and sociocultural
evolution than is often assumed by most theorists.
-- William L. Benzon 708 Jersey Avenue, Apt. 2A Jersey City, NJ 07302 201 217-1010 "You won't get a wild heroic ride to heaven on pretty little sounds."--George Ives Mind-Culture Coevolution: http://asweknowit.ca/evcult/ =============================================================== 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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