Neighbours and relatives
Accounting for Spatial Distribution When Testing Causal Hypotheses in Cultural Evolution
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6146033 |
|---|---|
| Authors | L Bromham (0000-0003-2202-2609, Australian National University, corresponding author), Keaghan J Yaxley (0000-0001-6091-8794, Australian National University) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Pages | e27-e27 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Evolutionary Human Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2513-843X • E-ISSN: 2513-843X |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/ehs.2023.23 |
| PMID | 37829289 |
| OpenAlex | W4386421652 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 87 |
Many important and interesting hypotheses about cultural evolution are evaluated using cross-cultural correlations: if knowing one particular feature of a culture (e.g. environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity or parasite load) allows you to predict other features (e.g. language features, religious beliefs, cuisine), it is often interpreted as indicating a causal link between the two (e.g. hotter climates carry greater disease risk, which encourages belief in supernatural forces and favours the use of antimicrobial ingredients in food preparation; dry climates make the production of distinct tones more difficult). However, testing such hypotheses from cross-cultural comparisons requires us to take proximity of cultures into account: nearby cultures share many aspects of their environment and are more likely to be similar in many culturally inherited traits. This can generate indirect associations between environment and culture which could be misinterpreted as signals of a direct causal link. Evaluating examples of cross-cultural correlations from the literature, we show that significant correlations interpreted as causal relationships can often be explained as a result of similarity between neighbouring cultures. We discuss some strategies for sorting the explanatory wheat from the co-varying chaff, distinguishing incidental correlations from causal relationships
Distribution (mathematics · Econometrics · Economics · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Language and cultural evolution · Mathematics · Psychology
Paternal investment and economic inequality predict cross-cultural variation in male choice
Did alcohol facilitate the evolution of complex societies
Conflict by latitude
Population Size and Language Change
Cultural Differences and Interdependencies in Climate Change Mitigation Efforts and Their Psychological Antecedents Across 63 Countries
The world has gone mad
Statistical Rethinking
Phylogenies and the Comparative Method
A global index of biocultural diversity
The Church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation
A History of the Concept of Spatial Autocorrelation
Methods to account for spatial autocorrelation in the analysis of species distributional data
Cultural Evolution
Applied Spatial Econometrics
Parasite stress and pathogen avoidance relate to distinct dimensions of political ideology across 30 nations
GlmmTMB Balances Speed and Flexibility Among Packages for Zero-inflated Generalized Linear Mixed Modeling
Governance and the loss of biodiversity
Ape 5.0
Spatial Causality
Quantifying Evidence for—and against—Granger Causality with Bayes Factors
Chield
Language Diversity in West Africa
Causal inference in regression
A workflow for causal inference in cross-cultural psychology
Galton's Problem as Spatial Autocorrelation
Comparative Methods for Studying Cultural Trait Evolution
Global, Regional, and Local Network Autocorrelation in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample
Exploring the Roots of Culture Using Spatial Autocorrelation
The Comparative Method in Anthropology [and Comments and Reply]
No universals in the cultural evolution of kinship terminology
Correlational Studies in Typological and Historical Linguistics
What Can Cross-Cultural Correlations Teach Us about Human Nature
There is little evidence that spicy food in hot countries is an adaptation to reducing infection risk
| Citations per year | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |