Cultural Evolution

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Overview

Cultural evolution examines how people inherit, modify, and spread ideas, practices, and artifacts, and how these processes shape societies. Researchers use iterated-learning experiments, evolutionary and agent-based models, and statistical analyses of historical records and digital traces to study transmission, innovation, selection, and cultural diversity. Applications range from language, music, and writing systems to economic change and societies of interacting AI agents. A central challenge is explaining how social learning and selection interact with creativity, institutions, and changing environments—and how AI can both influence culture and serve as a model of cultural dynamics.

Latest papers

CardsList

18 papers2 papers in the last four weeks, against 2 the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Preservation and loss of algorithmic structure in experimental diffusion of joint-action norms

    Oct 16, 2026Dhara Yu, Bill D. ThompsonCultural EvolutionSocial Reasoning

    Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley

  2. Artificial Intelligence and the New Science of Culture

    Oct 5, 2026Douglas R. Guilbeault, Bhargav Srinivasa Desikan, James A. EvansCultural EvolutionComputational Social Science

    Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, U.S. · Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, U.K. · Sociology & Data Science, University of Chicago, U.S.

  3. Population Ecology of Tunes

    Sep 8, 2026John M. McBride, Armand. M. LeroiCultural EvolutionCultural Heritage

    Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria · Acoustic Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Science, Vienna, Austria · Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, London, UK +1

  4. Accurate in space, unreliable in time: how LLMs represent national cultural change

    Sep 1, 2026Yalda Daryani, Miranda Bogen, Madeleine I. G. DaeppLLM EvaluationCultural Evolution

    Department of Psychology, University of Southern California · Center for Democracy and Technology

  5. SwarmWorld: Stigmergic technological evolution in societies of language-model agents

    Aug 26, 2026Subhadeep Pal, Fiona Y. Wang, Markus J. BuehlerEmergent Behavior in Multi-Agent SystemsMulti-Agent Coordination

    Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics (LAMM), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA · Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA · Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA +2

  6. Modeling Stylistic Co-evolution in Symbolic Music Heritage Collections

    Jul 27, 2026Yulong He, Ivan Smirnov, Yanming LiComputational MusicologyLatent Dynamics Modeling

    St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia · ITMO University, St. Petersburg, Russia · St. Petersburg State Institute of Culture, St. Petersburg, Russia

  7. Contrasting statistical patterns in melodic and molecular evolution reveal distinctive constraints in a culturally evolving system

    Jul 14, 2026John M McBride, W Tecumseh FitchCultural EvolutionMusic Information Retrieval

    Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

  8. Economic Transformation and Cultural Change: Evidence from Two Centuries of French Drama

    Jun 19, 2026T. D. Oliveira, L. A. Attilio, M. J. Davila-FernandezCultural Evolution

    Centre for Digital Humanities, University of Tartu · Federal University of Ouro Preto · Colorado State University

  9. Model Collapse as Cultural Evolution

    May 21, 2026Dongxin Guo, Jikun Wu, Siu Ming YiuCultural EvolutionSelf-Training for Language Models

    The University of Hong Kong · Hong Kong, China · Stellaris AI Limited

  10. Emergence of agriculture in an artificial society of reinforcement learning agents

    May 21, 2026Gautier Hamon, Martí Sánchez-Fibla, Clément Moulin-Frier +1Cultural EvolutionEmergent Behavior in Multi-Agent Systems

    Flowers AI and CogSci lab, Inria, Université de Bordeaux, France · Department of Information and Communications Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 08018, Barcelona, Spain · Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, IIIA (CSIC), Campus de la UAB, Bellaterra, Barcelona, 08193, Spain +4

  11. Dynamics of collective creativity in AI art competitions

    May 16, 2026Mason Youngblood, Jeff Nusz, Joel SimonCultural EvolutionComputational Creativity

    Institute for Advanced Computational Science, Stony Brook University, NY, USA · Morphogen, CA, USA

  12. A molecular clock for writing systems reveals the quantitative impact of imperial power on cultural evolution

    Apr 13, 2026Hiroki FukuiCultural Evolution

    Research Institute of Criminal Psychiatry / Sex Offender Medical Center · Dept. Neuropsychiatry, Kyoto University

  13. Social Reality Construction via Active Inference: Modeling the Dialectic of Conformity and Creativity

    Apr 10, 2026Kentaro Nomura, Takato HoriiComputational Social ScienceCultural Evolution

    The University of Osaka, Japan · IRCN, The University of Tokyo, Japan

  14. TerraLingua: Emergence and Analysis of Open-endedness in LLM Ecologies

    Mar 6, 2026Giuseppe Paolo, Jamieson Warner, Hormoz Shahrzad +3Open-Ended EvolutionEmergent Behavior in Multi-Agent Systems

    Cognizant AI Lab · The University of Texas at Austin

  15. Social physics in the age of artificial intelligence

    Mar 4, 2026The Anh Han, Joel Z. Leibo, Tom Lenaerts +4Computational Social ScienceAI Governance

    School of Computing, Engineering and Digital Technologies, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, UK. · Google DeepMind, London, UK · Machine Learning Group, Universit´e Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium +9

  16. Evaluating Collective Behaviour of Hundreds of LLM Agents

    Feb 18, 2026Richard Willis, Jianing Zhao, Yali Du +1Social DilemmasMulti-Agent LLM Systems

    King’s College London London, United Kingdom · King’s College London · Turing Institute +1

  17. The Ratchet Effect in Silico: How Interaction Drives Cumulative Intelligence in Large Language Models

    Jul 25, 2025Ren ZhuangCultural EvolutionMulti-Agent LLMs

    School of Information Science and Technology, Hangzhou Normal University

  18. Empirical evidence of Large Language Model's influence on human spoken communication

    Sep 3, 2024Hiromu Yakura, Ezequiel Lopez-Lopez, Levin Brinkmann +7Cultural Evolution

    Center for Humans and Machines, Max-Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany · Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max-Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany · Center Synergy of Systems, TUD Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany +1