From Psychology to Phylogeny: Bridging Levels of Analysis in Cultural Evolution

<p>Cultural evolution, or change in the socially learned behavior of a population over time, is a fascinating phenomenon that is widespread in humans and present in some non-human animals. In this dissertation, I present an array of cultural evolutionary studies that bridge pattern and process in a wide range of research models including music, extremism, and birdsong. The first chapter is an introduction to the field of cultural evolution, including a bibliometric analysis of its structure. The second and third chapters are studies on the cultural dynamics of music sampling traditions in hip-hop and electronic music communities and far-right extremism in the United States, using social network analysis and epidemiological modeling, respectively. The fourth and fifth chapters are studies on how cultural transmission biases influence population-level changes in music sampling traditions and house finch song, using a combination of agent-based modeling and machine learning. The sixth chapter is a technical report on computerized birdfeeders that were used to remotely collect data on the social network structure of a wild house finch population. Lastly, the seventh chapter applies a novel phylogenetic method based on dynamic community detection to reconstruct the cultural evolution of electronic music.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2021

Author dc:creator

• Youngblood, Mason

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David Lahti

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Carolyn Pytte
• Stefano Ghirlanda

• Behavior and Ethology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Comparative Psychology
• Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
• Human Ecology
• Social Psychology and Interaction
• Theory and Philosophy
• cultural evolution
• animal behavior
• phylogenetics
• computational social science

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4309

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-5358