No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Will cultural evolution regain its sight?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 July 2026
Abstract
The field of cultural evolution has long emphasized forms of social learning where learners are “blind” to payoffs of cultural traits, while neglecting “sighted” processes like guided variation. We review new insights that could inform psychologically enriched models of social learning. These insights reveal new ways that blindness creeps into selection, even when agents appraise the payoffs of cultural traits.
Information
- Type
- Open Peer Commentary
- Information
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press
Target article
Subjective selection, super-attractors, and the origins of the cultural manifold
Related commentaries (27)
Basic emotions underlie both proximal and distal behaviors, resulting in social institutions that are either adaptive, vestigial, or a little of both
Beyond usefulness: Symbolic super-attractors in the cultural manifold
Core knowledge shapes what actions are considered and how others will perceive them
Cultural affordances
Cultural evolution by revealed preferences – from status signals to alien porn
Cultural super-attractors in critical care: The intensive care unit as a living manifold of meaning
From attractors to ecological strategies: Embedding subjective selection in an evolutionary-ecological framework
From selection to surgery: Aesthetic chills bridge subjective functionalism and cognitive calibration
Functionalism versus the structuralist tradition
Healing rituals and dietary practices as cultural super-attractors
If lullabies and hero stories are super-attractors, what are music and language? Absolute universals imply genetic mechanisms
Language is a super-attractor: Does it evolve through subjective selection?
Moral progress as a counter-attractor
On the originality of subjective selection and the importance of payoff-biased diffusion and migration in shaping the cultural manifold
Reasons to be fussy about subjective selection and super-attractors
Silent forces: How normative ecologies reshape super-attractors
Spandrels in the cathedral of the mind
Subjective selection as an outcome of natural selection
Subjective selection is a mechanistic and behaviorally integrative account of group-level selection, not a replacement
Subjective selection needs context: Culture shapes goal selection, evaluations of usefulness, and “actual” effectiveness
Subjective selection needs socially transmitted goals and culturally evolving problems
Subjective selection requires objective constraints
The nature of goals in subjective selection: Origins, shaping forces, and salience
The pros and cons of reverting to methodological individualism
Western jurisprudence and criminal justice systems as superstitious belief
Whose subjectivity? Power and inequality in cultural selection
Will cultural evolution regain its sight?
Author response
Goals, power, and selection: Foundational issues in the naturalistic study of culture