Human cultural transmission

Mapping the science behind human culture and social learning

IHO research scientist Thomas Morgan leads a team of scientists investigating how, when and why humans learn from each other and how these decisions drive the large-scale cultural changes that shape societies and allow us to flourish in a complex and changing environment. To answer these questions Morgan combines formal evolutionary models with laboratory studies of human behavior. 

He co-created the online experiment platform Dallinger, which allows for large-scale cultural evolutionary experiments. In these studies groups of tens or even hundreds of participants can be linked together to form online microsocieties which serve as testbeds for predictions about the relationship between individual decision making and long-term societal outcomes. Participants can also be assigned simulated genomes, enabling experimental study of the co-evolution of genes and culture. His findings have linked the human tendency to copy prestigious individuals to large-scale inequalities in social influence, suggested that human cultural transmission emerges from general-purpose cognitive mechanisms rather than learning mechanisms specialized for culture, and found that human psychology generates “cultural inertia” which inhibits adaptation to environmental changes.

Through systematic experimental and theoretical studies, Morgan’s work has shed light on the cognitive and evolutionary foundations of human culture and how patterns of social learning shape collective behavior over time. By linking individual learning decisions to large-term cultural dynamics, this research helps explain both the extraordinary adaptability of human societies and the constraints that impede cultural change.