The cognitive foundations of cultural stability and diversity

Dan Sperber (1) , Lawrence Hirschfeld

1 IJN - Institut Jean-Nicod

The very existence and the diversity of human cultures are made possible by human species-specific cognitive capacities. But how? Do cultures emerge and diverge as a result of the deployment, over generations and in different populations, of general abilities to learn, to imitate, and to communicate? What role if any do domain specific evolved cognitive abilities play in the emergence and evolution of cultures? These questions have been approached from different vantage points in different disciplines. Here we present a view currently developing out of the converging works of developmental psychologists, evolutionary psychologists, and cognitive anthropologists.

Mots clés: culture; cognition; modularity

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Dan Sperber, Lawrence Hirschfeld. The cognitive foundations of cultural stability and diversity. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2004, 8 (1), pp.40-46. ⟨10.1016/j.tics.2003.11.002⟩. ⟨ijn_00000448⟩