Abstract
The traditional sociological view of culture has been almost exclusively that of transmitted culture decoupled from biology. The concept of evoked culture brings biology “back in” since it identifies ecological challenges that evoked certain practices based on evolutionary imperatives. The practices are then passed on to subsequent generations as normative, and individuals best suited to these normative practices will enjoy greater fitness benefits than those less suited. In other words, practices will be transmitted genetically as well as culturally. This paper provides several examples of how evoked and transmitted culture are tightly bound (nature evoked by culture, and culture evoked by nature) as well as identifying two specific genetic polymorphisms associated with adaptive approach-avoidance behaviors and found in highly variable frequencies in different cultures around the world. We argue that an appreciation of evoked culture complements transmitted culture and deepens and broadens our understanding of cultural life and practices.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Evolutionary Sociology and Biosociology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Sociology
This paper provides several examples of how evoked and transmitted culture are tightly bound as well as identifying two specific genetic polymorphisms associated with adaptive approach–avoidance behaviors and found in highly variable frequencies in different cultures around the world
Chiao and Blizinsky (2010:3) build on this and argue that attitudes and behaviors serving an anti-pathogen function should serve an anti-psychopathology function, and that both functions are served in part by a high prevalence of the short allele of the 5-HTTLPR in the population: “Collectivist cultural values serve an adaptive function by reducing the probability of environmental stress, a known catalyst for negative affect, leading to genetic selection of the S allele within collectivist cultures.”
Summary
Serotonin [5-hydroxytriptamine (5-HT)] is the most studied neurotransmitter in behavioral science (Chiao and Blizinsky, 2010). Excess neurotransmitters have to be quickly removed from the synaptic cleft after signaling to prevent confusion between that signal and subsequent signals. This is accomplished by the 5-HT transporter (5-HTT), which transports 5-HT back into the presynaptic knob where it is repackaged. The 5-HTT gene contains a region known as 5-HTTLPR (“serotonin transporter-linked polymorphous region”) that comes in short (S) and long (L) versions. There have been a number of failures to replicate, and another meta-analysis reports that there is a small effect (as one would expect from examining a single polymorphism) and that publication bias may cloud the issue (Clarke et al, 2010). We cannot get into all these nuanced processes here, focusing as we do on the broad issue of the influence of the prevalence of the 5-HTTLPR on cultural differences in specific behaviors
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