Definition
Cultural inheritance is an inheritance system characterized by the storage and transmission of information by communication, imitation, teaching, and learning.
Introduction
Cultural inheritance is an inheritance system characterized by the storage and transmission of information by communication, imitation, teaching, and learning (Peedicayil 2001). The communication can take place by different routes – visual, auditory, and other routes. The communication can occur by speech, by writing, by a tape recorder (Bonner 1980), and, in today’s world, by television, cell phones, and the Internet. The communication can also take place over a considerable distance and over a considerable span of time (Bonner 1980). The communication can be fast or slow. This inheritance system was first proposed by the noted American geneticist and Nobel Laureate Thomas Hunt Morgan (1932). Cultural inheritance is widely present...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Blackmore, S. (1999). The meme machine. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bonduriansky, R., & Day, T. (2009). Nongenetic inheritance and its evolutionary implications. Annual Review of Ecology and Evolutionary Systems, 40, 103–125.
Bonner, J. T. (1980). The evolution of culture in animals. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Buss, D. (2008). Evolutionary psychology. The new science of the mind. New Delhi: Pearson Education.
Crow, T. J. (2008). The “big bang” theory of the origin of psychosis and the faculty of language. Schizophrenia Research, 102, 31–52.
Crow, T. J. (1995). A Darwinian approach to the origins of psychosis. British Journal of Psychiatry, 167, 12–25.
Danchin, É., Charmantier, A., Champagne, F. A., Mesoudi, A., Pujol, B., & Blanchet, S. (2011). Beyond DNA: Integrating inclusive inheritance into an extended theory of evolution. Nature Reviews Genetics, 12, 475–486.
De Duve, C. (2002). Life evolving. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fernald, L. D., & Fernald, P. S. (2007). Introduction to Psychology. Dubuque: William C. Brown.
Foley, R. (1995). Humans before humanity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Jablonka, E., & Lamb, M. J. (1995). Epigenetic inheritance and evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jablonka, E., & Szathmáry, E. (1995). The evolution of information storage and heredity. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 10, 206–211.
Lee, R., & Avramopoulos, D. (2014). Introduction to epigenetics in psychiatry. In J. Peedicayil, D. R. Grayson, & D. Avramopoulos (Eds.), Epigenetics in psychiatry (pp. 3–25). Waltham, MA: Elsevier.
Lieberman, P. (2016). The evolution of language and thought. Journal of Anthropological Sciences, 94, 127–146.
Manning, A., & Dawkins, M. S. (1992). An introduction to animal behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Maynard Smith, J., & Warren, N. (1982). Models of cultural and genetic change. Evolution, 36, 620–627.
Morgan, T. H. (1932). The scientific basis of evolution. London: Faber & Faber.
Nowak, M. A., & Krakauer, D. C. (1999). The evolution of language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 96, 8028–8033.
Peedicayil, J. (2001). The importance of cultural inheritance. Medical Hypotheses, 56, 158–159.
Peedicayil, J. (2002). The importance of cultural inheritance in psychiatric genetics. Medical Hypotheses, 58, 164–166.
Peedicayil, J. (2004). Psychosocial factors in the pathogenesis of mental disorders. British Journal of Psychiatry, 185, 520.
Peedicayil, J. (2008). Psychosocial factors may act via epigenetic mechanisms in the pathogenesis of mental disorders. Medical Hypotheses, 70, 700–701.
Peedicayil, J. (2012). Role of epigenetics in pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy and nutritional management of mental disorders. Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 37, 499–501.
Peedicayil, J. (2015). Epigenetics as a link between psychosocial factors and mental disorders. Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 57, 218.
Peedicayil, J. (2017). The role of epigenetics in social psychiatry. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 63, 14–20.
Pilbeam, D., & Gould, S. J. (1974). Size and scaling in human evolution. Science, 186, 892–901.
Plotkin, H. (2010). Evolutionary worlds without end. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rendell, L., & Whitehead, H. (2001). Culture in whales and dolphins. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 309–324.
Sadock, B. J., Sadock, V. A., & Ruiz, P. (2015). Kaplan & Sadock’s synopsis of psychiatry. Philadelphia: Walters Kluwer.
Szathmáry, E., & Maynard Smith, J. (1995). The major evolutionary transitions. Nature, 374, 227–232.
Wilson, E. O. (2000). Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Peedicayil, J. (2018). Cultural Inheritance. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1089-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1089-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences