Abstract
How do migration and acculturation (i.e. psychological or behavioral change resulting from migration) affect within- and between-group cultural variation? Here I address this question by drawing analogies between genetic and cultural evolution. Population genetic models show that migration rapidly breaks down between-group genetic structure. In cultural evolution, however, migrants or their descendants can acculturate to local behaviors via social learning processes such as conformity, potentially preventing migration from eliminating between-group cultural variation. An analysis of the empirical literature on migration suggests that acculturation is common, with second and subsequent migrant generations shifting, sometimes substantially, towards the cultural values of the adopted society. Yet there is little understanding of the individual-level dynamics that underlie these population-level shifts. To explore this formally, I present models quantifying the effect of migration and acculturation on between-group cultural variation, for both neutral and costly cooperative traits. In the models, between-group cultural variation, measured using F statistics, is eliminated by migration and maintained by conformist acculturation. The extent of acculturation is determined by the strength of conformist bias and the number of demonstrators from whom individuals learn. Acculturation is countered by assortation, the tendency for individuals to preferentially interact with culturally-similar others. Unlike neutral traits, cooperative traits can additionally be maintained by payoff-biased social learning, but only in the presence of strong sanctioning mechanisms (e.g. institutions). Overall, the models show that surprisingly little conformist acculturation is required to maintain realistic amounts of between-group cultural diversity. While these models provide insight into the potential dynamics of acculturation and migration in cultural evolution, they also highlight the need for more empirical research into the individual-level learning biases that underlie migrant acculturation.
Highlights
Humans exhibit extensive between-group cultural variation [1,2,3] as documented by anthropologists [4], psychologists [5] and economists [6] in domains such as languages, customs, marriage practices, cooperative norms, religious beliefs and social organization
These two phenomena—extensive between-group cultural variation and frequent migration—are contradictory. It is well known in population genetics that even small amounts of migration can rapidly break down between-group genetic structure [13,14]
If migration acts on cultural variation in the same way as it acts on genetic variation, we would expect that our species’ frequent migration would rapidly destroy between-group cultural variation, resulting in a homogenous mass world culture
Summary
Humans exhibit extensive between-group cultural variation [1,2,3] as documented by anthropologists [4], psychologists [5] and economists [6] in domains such as languages, customs, marriage practices, cooperative norms, religious beliefs and social organization. In the modern era, improved transportation technologies such as steamships allowed mass migration to transform the USA in the early 20th century [11], while international migration has increased in volume (number of migrants) and scope (diversity of destinations) in the last century [12]. In a sense, these two phenomena—extensive between-group cultural variation and frequent migration—are contradictory. We would expect similar levels of between-group cultural variation as between-group genetic evolution, yet the former is more than an order of magnitude greater than the latter [3]
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