Reading focus
Syllabus: How Are Cultures Learned, Transmitted and Changed?
Separate describing a trend from identifying its cause.
Why you’re reading it. Connect transmission with historical conditions.
A question to consider. What observations would distinguish changing opportunities for learning from changing demand for a practice?
Why this reading
Varnum and Grossmann connect cultural transmission with changes in social and physical conditions. Their review moves from describing a trend to asking which process could explain it.
Before you read
A time series follows a measure across successive occasions. Autocorrelation means observations remain related across time; two rising trends can appear connected without one causing the other.
Read for
- Distinguish transmission mechanisms from proposed ecological pressures and possible feedback between them.
- Examine whether archival indicators preserve their meaning and coverage across periods.
Consider afterwards
- What would you need beyond parallel trends in urbanization and individualist language to argue for a causal connection?
Editorial context
This is a theoretical synthesis, not a decisive causal test of its examples. Historical associations and retrospective explanations require comparison with alternatives. Forecasting is a proposed test, not an established ability to predict particular events. The authors’ 2026 chapter extends the program and discusses measurement and inference limits across levels and time.