Mason Youngblood
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
From psychology to phylogeny: bridging levels of analysis in cultural evolution
Cultural evolution, or change in the socially learned behavior of a population over time, is a fascinating phenomenon that is widespread in humans and present in some non-human animals. In my research, I focus on understanding how psychological biases, environmental factors, and interaction patterns that influence cultural transmission between individuals scale up to affect cultural evolution and phylogenetic structure at the population level. Computational methods from data science and complex systems make it possible to bridge these two levels of analysis. For example, one can infer what processes between individuals led to the particular cultural patterns of populations by comparing large-scale simulations to real data. In this talk, I will discuss some of my work in a wide variety of research models including music, extremism, and birdsong.
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Zoom link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/94212153925?pwd=djBJQ1RCQWNkUW14enVyNTZNVS9Fdz09
Passcode: 514720