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Related Experiment Videos

Random drift and culture change.

R Alexander Bentley1, Matthew W Hahn, Stephen J Shennan

  • 1AHRB Centre for the Evolutionary Analysis of Cultural Behaviour, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK. r.bentley@ucl.ac.uk

Proceedings. Biological Sciences
|August 13, 2004
PubMed
Summary
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Cultural trends in names, pottery, and patents follow power laws due to random drift. This suggests many cultural and economic choices are value-neutral, impacting social science research.

Area of Science:

  • Social Sciences
  • Cultural Evolution
  • Economic Behavior

Background:

  • Cultural variants, such as first names, archaeological artifacts, and patent applications, exhibit diverse frequency distributions.
  • Understanding the underlying mechanisms driving these distributions is crucial for social science research.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the frequency distributions of cultural variants across different domains.
  • To determine if a simple model can explain observed cultural variant distributions.
  • To explore the implications of these findings for understanding cultural and economic choices.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of frequency distributions of three distinct real-world datasets: first names, archaeological pottery, and technology patent applications.
  • Application of a simple model of random drift to explain the observed power-law distributions.

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Main Results:

  • Frequency distributions in all three datasets consistently follow power laws.
  • The observed power-law distributions are effectively explained by a model of random drift.
  • This suggests that random processes play a significant role in shaping cultural variants.

Conclusions:

  • Cultural and economic choices often result from a value-neutral decision process.
  • The findings provide a parsimonious explanation for the prevalence of power laws in cultural data.
  • This research offers testable implications for various fields within social science research.