Cultural Evolution with Social Categories

Abstract

This chapter looks at evolutionary models capable of representing the emergence of conventions between actors in different social groups. From a starting point of uncoordinated behavior, groups move toward states where everyone follows unified patterns in a way that tends to lead to successful outcomes. This cultural evolution is driven by social learning. Once groups have arrived at these coordinated behaviors they tend to remain there, so that the patterns of behavior persist over time. As the chapter shows, the addition of social categories radically changes the cultural evolutionary process. In particular, groups with categories reach the inequitable, but efficient, outcomes described in the last chapter.