Ep 3: Joseph Henrich & Cultural Evolution: Culture, Cultural Evolution and the Scaling of Societies
Channel: Life Itself
Date: 21/09/2023

In this episode, Rufus Pollock sits down with Professor Joseph Henrich to continue the discussion on the study of cultural evolution.

In this episode the significance of family structures and the church takes center stage in their role towards shaping human societies. Joseph explains that different kinship networks influence behaviors, trust, and cooperation within societies and how the Catholic Church played an unintentionally role in shaping Western societies by implementing rules against cousin marriage and polygyny. These rules inadvertently fostered individualism, trust in non-kin relationships, and analytic thinking. These cultural shifts and networks of horizontal connections led to the development of "WEIRD" psychology – Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic, a topic discussed in Henrich’s latest book. These cultural transformations resulted in the development of different psychological traits that help to explain the remarkable economic success, innovations, and current challenges faced by Western societies. 

This conversation forms part of the Cultural Evolution: A New Discipline is Born Series.
You can learn more here: https://lifeitself.org/learn/culturology
To view the full transcript please visit our dedicated podcast page: https://lifeitself.org/podcast/cultural-evolution-culture-cultural-evolution-and-the-scaling-of-societies

Chapters
2:52 - What do we mean by cultural evolution?
7:33 - What is ‘WEIRD’?
10:30 - Psychological factors that cause weirdness
18:10 - Kinship networks and the relationship to public goods problems
29:10 - Polygyny, the Church and self help societies
36:31 - Cultural changes in the West
41:00 - The law and clans
42:46 - The power of intention, religion and cultural conformity
49:05 - The dark matter of history
56:46 - The evolution of human rights
58:36 - wrap up

Joseph Henrich is a Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He is author of several books, most recently 'The Weirdest People in the World' and 'The Secret of Our Success'. His research focuses on evolutionary approaches to psychology, decision-making and culture, and includes topics related to cultural learning, cultural evolution, culture-gene coevolution, human sociality, prestige, leadership, large-scale cooperation, religion and the emergence of complex human institutions.


Rufus Pollock is an entrepreneur, activist and author. He has founded several for-profit and nonprofit initiatives including Life Itself, Open Knowledge Foundation, and Datopian. His book Open Revolution is about making a radically freer and fairer information age. Previously he has been the Mead Fellow in Economics at the University of Cambridge as well as a Shuttleworth and Ashoka Fellow. A recognized global expert on the information society, he has worked with G7 governments, IGOs like the UN, Fortune 500s as well as many civil society organizations. He holds a PhD in Economics and a double first in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge. Find out more about his work on his website: ⁠⁠⁠rufuspollock.com⁠⁠⁠.
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