4.7 Culture, religion, and the evolved mind

Culture is sometimes set against biology, as if the two were rivals. The evolutionary view dissolves the opposition: culture is generated, transmitted, and constrained by evolved minds, and it co-evolves with our genes.

Evoked vs. transmitted culture

Tooby and Cosmides distinguish evoked culture — variation produced when a universal psychology meets different local conditions (different environments evoke different responses from the same programs) — from transmitted culture — ideas and practices passed from mind to mind by learning. Both depend on evolved psychology: the first as the program, the second as the learning machinery.

Gene-culture coevolution

Genes and culture shape each other. A cultural practice (dairying) can create a selection pressure that changes gene frequencies (lactase persistence), and evolved biases shape which cultural variants spread. Humans are the great imitators, equipped with biases to copy the successful, the prestigious, and the majority — biases that make cumulative culture possible.

The byproduct theory of religion

Religion is widespread but puzzling. One influential account treats religious belief as a byproduct of ordinary cognitive systems: a hyperactive agency-detection device (we see intentions everywhere), a theory of mind that can imagine disembodied minds, and a tendency toward dualism. Minimally counterintuitive concepts — a person who is invisible, a statue that hears prayers — are especially memorable and transmissible. Other researchers argue religion also has adaptive functions, promoting cooperation and group cohesion.

A grounding example

Cross-culturally, the gods people most invest in tend to be morally concerned and to care about how people treat one another. Ara Norenzayan's "big gods" research argues that belief in powerful, watchful, punishing deities expanded as societies grew, because the sense of being constantly observed by a moralizing god promoted honesty and cooperation among strangers — relationships too large and anonymous for reciprocity and reputation alone to police. Whether byproduct, adaptation, or both, religion is built out of, and constrained by, the standard equipment of the evolved mind.