Have you ever noticed yourself picking up the knowledge, beliefs, and values of the people around you? Are you concerned with how social media may lead to “echo chambers” of political opinions? Cultural evolutionary theory can help us to understand how behaviors and ideas spread through groups of people.

Over the last several years, there has been a flurry of exciting research about how human cognition shapes the cultural transmission of everything from conspiracy theories to pottery traditions, and how digital media may be influencing this process. In this workshop, we will explore how computational methods from the field of cultural evolution can be used to investigate these and other questions about cultural transmission in human populations.

Specifically, we will be using simulations to investigate how different forms of cultural transmission bias, such as conformity, influence the spread of behaviors and ideas through populations. All of the coding and visualization will be done in RStudio, using the framework outlined in Acerbi and colleagues’ free digital book entitled “Individual-based models of cultural evolution”: https://acerbialberto.com/IBM-cultevo/.

Participants should have a basic knowledge of coding, preferably in the R programming language, and install both R and RStudio prior to the workshop (instructions here: https://rstudio-education.github.io/hopr/starting.html).

Your registration gets you access to the live Zoom class, along with a recording of the class to view afterwards.

ACCESSIBILITY: Genspace is committed to ensuring that our online classes, events, and workshops are as accessible as possible, and can meet the ever-changing needs of our community. As we navigate the opportunities and challenges of online programming, we are constantly learning and adjusting our workflows to prioritize accessibility, and we’d love to hear any feedback our community might have. Please contact us if you have specific accessibility requests or questions.

Simulating the Spread of Behaviors and Ideas

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