The development of risk behaviors and their cultural transmission

We use cultural evolutionary models to examine how individual experiences and culturally inherited information jointly shape risk-taking behavior under environmental uncertainty. We find that learning processes not only generate considerable variation in risk beliefs and behaviors, but also that conservative learning strategies-emphasizing the preservation of generational knowledge-excel in high-risk settings, promoting risk avoidance and long-term survival but limiting growth when conditions improve. In contrast, exploratory learning strategies-leveraging juvenile exploration and peer influence-foster risk tolerant behaviors that thrive in affluent, low-risk settings where wealth buffers and social safety nets reduce the costs of miscalculations. Introducing economic stratification to the model reveals how wealth disparities and interclass interactions reinforce these patterns, exacerbating differences in learning strategies and risk-taking behaviors within populations, and perpetuating socioeconomic inequalities through the cultural inertia of excessive risk avoidance. By uniting developmental, social, and evolutionary perspectives, our framework provides a novel lens on the cultural evolution of risk-taking behavior and its broader societal implications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).