Publications

Alice J. Williams, Alex Mesoudi (2024). A formal test using agent-based models of the circumscription theory for the evolution of social complexity. Journal of Archaeological Science 172, 106090.

Maxime Derex, Pierce Edmiston, Gary Lupyan, Alex Mesoudi (2024). Trade-offs, control conditions, and alternative designs in the experimental study of cultural evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121, e2322886121.

Alex Mesoudi (2024). Cultural evolution. In M. C. Frank & A. Majid (Eds.), Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. MIT Press.

Jonas R. Kunst, Alex Mesoudi (2024). Decoding the dynamics of cultural change: A cultural evolution approach to the psychology of acculturation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10888683241258406.

Alex Mesoudi, Angel v. Jimenez, Keith Jensen, Lei Chang (2024). From information free-riding to information sharing: how have humans solved the cooperative dilemma at the heart of cumulative cultural evolution? [preprint]. OSF.

Alex Mesoudi (2023). Experimental studies of cultural evolution. In Jamshid J. Tehrani, Jeremy Kendal, and Rachel Kendal (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution. Oxford Academic.

Alex Thornton, Alex Mesoudi (2023). Untenable propositions and alternative avenues. Comment on “Blind alleys and fruitful pathways in the comparative study of cultural cognition” by Andrew Whiten.. Physics of Life Reviews 44, 51-53.

Mirta Galesic, Daniel Barkoczi, Andrew M. Berdahl, Dora Biro, Giuseppe Carbone, Ilaria Giannoccaro, Robert L. Goldstone, Cleotilde Gonzalez, Anne Kandler, Albert B. Kao, Rachel Kendal, Michelle Kline, Eun Lee, Giovanni Francesco Massari, Alex Mesoudi, Henrik Olsson, Niccolo Pescetelli, Sabina J. Sloman, Paul E. Smaldino, Daniel L. Stein (2023). Beyond collective intelligence: Collective adaptation. Journal of The Royal Society Interface 20, 20220736.

Alex Mesoudi (2023). Simulation models of cultural evolution in R [online tutorial].

Alberto Acerbi, John Burns, Unal Cabuk, Jakub Kryczka, Bethany Trapp, John Joseph Valletta, Alex Mesoudi (2023). Sentiment analysis of the Twitter response to Netflix's Our Planet documentary. Conservation Biology 37(4), e14060.

Alberto Acerbi, Alex Mesoudi, Marco Smolla (2022). Individual-based models of cultural evolution: A step-by-step guide using R. Routledge.

Charlotte O. Brand, Alex Mesoudi, Thomas J. H. Morgan (2021). Trusting the experts: The domain-specificity of prestige-biased social learning. PLOS ONE 16(8), e0255346.

Alex Mesoudi (2021). What is cumulative culture, and how should it be tested? A comment on Vaesen and Houkes. Current Anthropology 62, 225-226.

Ángel v. Jiménez, Adam Flitton, Alex Mesoudi (2021). When do people prefer dominant over prestigious political leaders?. Evolutionary Human Sciences 3, e16.

Alex Mesoudi (2021). Cultural selection and biased transformation: two dynamics of cultural evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 376, 20200053.

Alex Mesoudi (2021). Blind and incremental or directed and disruptive? On the nature of novel variation in human cultural evolution.. American Philosophical Quarterly 58, 7-20.

Ángel v. Jiménez, Alex Mesoudi (2020). The cultural transmission of prestige and dominance social rank cues: An experimental simulation. Evolutionary Psychological Science 7, 189-199.

Ángel v. Jiménez, Alex Mesoudi (2020). Prestige does not affect the cultural transmission of novel controversial arguments in an online transmission chain experiment. Journal of Cognition and Culture 20, 238-261.

Maxime Derex, Alex Mesoudi (2020). Cumulative cultural evolution within evolving population structures. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 24, 654-667.

Charlotte O. Brand, Stephen Heap, Thomas J. H. Morgan, Alex Mesoudi (2020). The emergence and adaptive use of prestige in an online social learning task. Scientific Reports 10, 12095.

Ángel v. Jiménez, Alex Mesoudi, Jamshid J. Tehrani (2020). No evidence that omission and confirmation biases affect the perception and recall of vaccine-related information. PLOS ONE 15, e0228898.

Alex Mesoudi (2020). The study of culture and evolution across disciplines. In Workman, Reader & Barkow (Eds). Cambridge handbook of evolutionary perspectives on human behavior, pp.61-74.

Alberto Acerbi, Alex Mesoudi, Marco Smolla (2020). Individual-based models of cultural evolution. A step-by-step guide using R.

Alex Mesoudi (2020). Cultural evolution of football tactics: strategic social learning in managers’ choice of formation. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2, e25.

Stefan Gehrig, Alex Mesoudi, Shakti Lamba (2020). Banking on cooperation: An evolutionary analysis of microfinance loan repayment behaviour. Evolutionary Human Sciences 3, e2.

Arie Altman, Alex Mesoudi (2019). Understanding agriculture within the frameworks of cumulative cultural evolution, gene-culture co-evolution, and cultural niche construction. Human Ecology 47, 483-497.

Maxime Derex, Jean-François Bonnefon, Robert Boyd, Alex Mesoudi (2019). Causal understanding is not necessary for the improvement of culturally evolving technology. Nature Human Behaviour 3, 446–452.

Ángel v. Jiménez, Alex Mesoudi (2019). Prestige-biased social learning: current evidence and outstanding questions. Palgrave Communications 5, 20.

Charlotte O. Brand, Alex Mesoudi (2019). Prestige and dominance-based hierarchies exist in naturally occurring human groups, but are unrelated to task-specific knowledge. Royal Society Open Science 6, 181621.

Charlotte O. Brand, Alberto Acerbi, Alex Mesoudi (2019). Cultural evolution of emotional expression in 50 years of song lyrics. Evolutionary Human Sciences 1, e11.

Alex Mesoudi (2019). Cultural evolution and cultural psychology. In Kitayama S. and Cohen D. (Eds), Handbook of Cultural Psychology 2nd edition. Guilford Press.

Alex Mesoudi (2018). Migration, acculturation, and the maintenance of between-group cultural variation. PLOS ONE 13, e0205573.

Alex Mesoudi, Alex Thornton (2018). What is cumulative cultural evolution?. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 285, 20180712.

Alex Mesoudi (2018). Cultural Evolution. eLS (Encyclopedia of Life Sciences).

Alex Mesoudi (2017). Pursuing Darwin’s curious parallel: Prospects for a science of cultural evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, 7853-7860.

Kerstin Schillinger, Alex Mesoudi, Stephen J. Lycett (2017). Differences in manufacturing traditions and assemblage-level patterns: The origins of cultural differences in archaeological data. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 24, 640-658.

John Adams, Patrick Barmby, Alex Mesoudi (2017). The nature and development of mathematics: Cross disciplinary perspectives on cognition, learning and culture. Routledge.

Kesson Magid, Vera Sarkol, Alex Mesoudi (2017). Experimental priming of independent and interdependent activity does not affect culturally variable psychological processes. Royal Society Open Science 4, 161025.

Victoria Reyes-Garcia, A. L. Balbo, E. Gomez-Baggethun, M. Gueze, Alex Mesoudi, Peter J. Richerson, Xavier Rubio-Campillo, I. Ruiz-Mallén, Stephen Shennan (2016). Multilevel processes and cultural adaptation: Examples from past and present small-scale societies. Ecology and Society 21, 2.

Alex Mesoudi (2016). Cultural evolution: a review of theory, findings and controversies. Evolutionary Biology 43, 481-497.

Alberto Acerbi, Claudio Tennie, Alex Mesoudi (2016). Social learning solves the problem of narrow-peaked search landscapes: experimental evidence in humans. Royal Society Open Science 3, 160215.

Stephen J. Lycett, Kerstin Schillinger, Metin I. Eren, Noreen Von Cramon-Taubadel, Alex Mesoudi (2016). Factors affecting Acheulean handaxe variation: Experimental insights, microevolutionary processes, and macroevolutionary outcomes. Quaternary International 411, 386-401.

Erle C. Ellis, Peter J. Richerson, Alex Mesoudi, Jens-Christian Svenning, John Odling-Smee, William R. Burnside (2016). Evolving the human niche. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, E4436-E4436.

Kerstin Schillinger, Alex Mesoudi, Stephen J. Lycett (2016). Copying error, evolution, and phylogenetic signal in artifactual traditions: An experimental approach using model artifacts. Journal of Archaeological Science 70, 23-34.

Andrew Whiten, Christine a Caldwell, Alex Mesoudi (2016). Cultural diffusion in humans and other animals. Current Opinion in Psychology 8, 15-21.

Alex Mesoudi, Lei Chang, Sasha R. X. Dall, Alex Thornton (2016). The evolution of individual and cultural variation in social learning. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 31, 215-225.

Alex Mesoudi (2016). Cultural evolution: Integrating psychology, evolution and culture. Current Opinion in Psychology 7, 17-22.

Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, Maxime Derex, Michelle A. Kline, Alex Mesoudi, Michael Muthukrishna, Adam T. Powell, Stephen J. Shennan, Mark G. Thomas (2016). Understanding cumulative cultural evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, E6724-E6725.

Alex Mesoudi, Kesson Magid, Delwar Hussain (2016). How do people become W.E.I.R.D.? Migration reveals the cultural transmission mechanisms underlying variation in psychological processes. PLOS ONE 11, e0147162.

Kerstin Schillinger, Alex Mesoudi, Stephen J. Lycett (2015). The impact of imitative versus emulative learning mechanisms on artifactual variation: implications for the evolution of material culture. Evolution and Human Behavior 36, 446-455.

Alberto Acerbi, Alex Mesoudi (2015). If we are all cultural Darwinians what’s the fuss about? Clarifying recent disagreements in the field of cultural evolution. Biology and Philosophy 30, 481-503.

Maria Priestley, Alex Mesoudi (2015). Do online voting patterns reflect evolved features of human cognition? An exploratory empirical investigation. PLOS ONE 10, e0129703.

Michael J. O’Brien, Briggs Buchanan, Matthew T. Boulanger, Alex Mesoudi, Mark Collard, Metin I. Eren, R. Alexander Bentley, R. Lee Lyman (2015). Transmission of cultural variants in the North American Paleolithic. In Mesoudi & Aoki (Eds) Learning strategies and cultural evolution during the palaeolithic pp. 121-143. Springer Japan.

Alex Mesoudi, Kenichi Aoki (2015). Learning strategies and cultural evolution during the palaeolithic. Springer Japan.

Stephen J. Lycett, Kerstin Schillinger, Marius Kempe, Alex Mesoudi (2015). Learning in the Acheulean: Experimental insights using handaxe form as a model organism. In Mesoudi, A. & Aoki, K. (Eds) Learning strategies and cultural evolution during the Palaeolithic. Springer.

Kenichi Aoki, Alex Mesoudi (2015). Introduction to "Learning strategies and cultural evolution during the Palaeolithic". In Mesoudi, A. & Aoki, K. (Eds) Learning strategies and cultural evolution during the Palaeolithic. Springer.

Alex Mesoudi, Lei Chang, Keelin Murray, Hui Jing Lu (2015). Higher frequency of social learning in China than in the West shows cultural variation in the dynamics of cultural evolution. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 282, 20142209.

Marius Kempe, Stephen J. Lycett, Alex Mesoudi (2014). From cultural traditions to cumulative culture: Parameterizing the differences between human and nonhuman culture. Journal of Theoretical Biology 359, 29-36.

Marius Kempe, Alex Mesoudi (2014). An experimental demonstration of the effect of group size on cultural accumulation. Evolution and Human Behavior 35, 285-290.

Kerstin Schillinger, Alex Mesoudi, Stephen J. Lycett (2014). Considering the role of time budgets on copy-error rates in material culture traditions: An experimental assessment. PLOS ONE 9, e97157.

Marius Kempe, Alex Mesoudi (2014). Experimental and theoretical models of human cultural evolution. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 5, 317–326.

Alex Mesoudi (2014). Cultural evolution in more than two dimensions: Distinguishing social learning biases and identifying payoff structures. A comment on Bentley et al. (2014). Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37, 91-92.

Alex Mesoudi (2014). Experimental studies of modern human social and individual learning in an archaeological context: People behave adaptively, but within limits. In Akazawa et al. (Eds), Dynamics of Learning in Neanderthals and Modern Humans Volume 2: Cognitive and Physical Perspectives. Springer Japan.

Kerstin Schillinger, Alex Mesoudi, Stephen J. Lycett (2014). Copying error and the cultural evolution of additive vs. reductive material traditions: An experimental assessment. American Antiquity 79, 128-143.

Benjamin J. Pitcher, Alex Mesoudi, Alan G. McElligott (2013). Sex-biased sound symbolism in English-language first names. PLOS ONE 8, e64825.

Alex Mesoudi (2013). Mass shooting and mass media : does media coverage of mass shootings inspire copycat crimes?. International Human Press.

Alex Mesoudi, Kevin N. Laland, Robert Boyd, Briggs Buchanan, Emma Flynn, Robert N. McCauley, Jürgen Renn, Victoria Reyes-Garcia, Stephen Shennan, Dietrich Stout, Claudio Tennie (2013). The cultural evolution of technology and science. In Peter J. Richerson and Morten H. Christiansen (Eds), Cultural evolution: society, technology, language, and religion. MIT Press.

Alex Mesoudi (2013). Studying cultural transmission within an interdisciplinary cultural evolutionary framework. In Ellen, Lycett & Johns (Eds). Cultural transmission: A critical anthropological synthesis, pp. 131-147.

Alex Mesoudi (2013). Making sense of culture. Book review of Culture Evolves by Whiten et al.. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 11, 626-627.

Alex Mesoudi, Simon Blanchet, Anne Charmantier, Etienne Danchin, Laurel Fogarty, Eva Jablonka, Kevin N. Laland, Thomas J. H. Morgan, Gerd B. Muller, F. John Odling-Smee (2013). Is non-genetic inheritance just a proximate mechanism? A corroboration of the extended evolutionary synthesis. Biological Theory 7, 189-195.

Marius Kempe, Stephen Lycett, Alex Mesoudi (2012). An experimental test of the accumulated copying error model of cultural mutation for Acheulean handaxe size. PLOS ONE 7, e48333.

Curtis Atkisson, Michael J. O'Brien, Alex Mesoudi (2012). Adult learners in a novel environment use prestige-biased social learning. Evolutionary Psychology 10, 519-537.

Alex Mesoudi, Michael J. O'Brien (2012). Statistical analyses cannot be divorced from archaeological theory: A reply to Potter (2012). American Antiquity 77, 372-375.

Alex Mesoudi, Keith Jensen (2012). Culture and the evolution of human sociality. In Vonk & Shakelford (Eds) The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Evolutionary Psychology, pp. 419-433. Oxford University Press.

Alex Mesoudi (2011). Cultural evolution: How Darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences. University of Chicago Press.

Alex Mesoudi (2011). An experimental comparison of human social learning strategies: payoff-biased social learning is adaptive but underused. Evolution and Human Behavior 32, 334-342.

Étienne Danchin, Anne Charmantier, Frances A. Champagne, Alex Mesoudi, Benoit Pujol, Simon Blanchet (2011). Beyond DNA: integrating inclusive inheritance into an extended theory of evolution. Nature Reviews Genetics 12, 475-486.

Alex Mesoudi (2011). Culture and the Darwinian Renaissance in the social sciences and humanities. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 2, 109-124.

Alex Mesoudi (2011). Variable cultural acquisition costs constrain cumulative cultural evolution. PLOS ONE 6, e18239.

Alex Mesoudi, Alan G. McElligott, David Adger (2011). Integrating genetic and cultural evolutionary approaches to language. Human Biology 83, 141-151.

Alex Mesoudi (2010). Evolutionary synthesis in the social sciences and humanities. Cultural Science Journal 3.

Michael J. O'Brien, R. Lee Lyman, Alex Mesoudi, Todd L. VanPool (2010). Cultural traits as units of analysis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 365, 3797-3806.

Alex Mesoudi, Djuke Veldhuis, Robert A. Foley (2010). Why aren't the social sciences Darwinian?. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 8, 93-104.

Alex Mesoudi (2010). Studying cultural innovation in the psychology lab. In O’Brien & Shennan (Eds) Cultural innovation: Contributions from evolutionary anthropology pp. 175-191. MIT Press.

Alex Mesoudi (2009). The cultural dynamics of copycat suicide. PLOS ONE 4, e7252.

Alex Mesoudi, Stephen J. Lycett (2009). Random copying, frequency-dependent copying and culture change. Evolution and Human Behavior 30, 41-48.

Alex Mesoudi, M. J. O'Brien (2009). Placing archaeology within a unified science of cultural evolution. In Shennan (ed) Pattern and process in cultural evolution, pp. 21-32. UCL Press.

Alex Mesoudi (2009). How cultural evolutionary theory can inform social psychology and vice versa. Psychological Review 116, 929-952.

Peter Danielson, Alex Mesoudi, Roger Stanev (2008). NERD and norms: Framework and experiments. Philosophy of Science 75, 830–842.

Andrew Whiten, Alex Mesoudi (2008). Establishing an experimental science of culture: animal social diffusion experiments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363, 3477-3488.

Alex Mesoudi (2008). An experimental simulation of the 'copy-successful-individuals' cultural learning strategy: adaptive landscapes, producer–scrounger dynamics, and informational access costs. Evolution and Human Behavior 29, 350-363.

Alex Mesoudi, Andrew Whiten (2008). The multiple roles of cultural transmission experiments in understanding human cultural evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363, 3489-3501.

Alex Mesoudi, Michael J. O'Brien (2008). The learning and transmission of hierarchical cultural recipes. Biological Theory 3, 63-72.

Alex Mesoudi (2008). The experimental study of cultural transmission and its potential for explaining archaeological data. In O’Brien (Ed), Cultural transmission and archaeology: Issues and case studies. pp. 91-101. SAA Press.

Alex Mesoudi, Michael J. O'Brien (2008). The cultural transmission of Great Basin projectile-point technology II: an agent-based computer simulation. American Antiquity 73, 627-644.

Alex Mesoudi, Michael J. O'Brien (2008). The cultural transmission of Great Basin projectile point technology I: An experimental simulation. American Antiquity 73, 3-28.

Alex Mesoudi (2008). Foresight in cultural evolution. Biology and Philosophy 23, 243-255.

Alex Mesoudi, Peter Danielson (2008). Ethics, evolution and culture. Theory in Biosciences 127, 229-240.

Alex Mesoudi (2007). A Darwinian theory of cultural evolution can promote an evolutionary synthesis for the social sciences. Biological Theory 3, 263-275.

Alex Mesoudi (2007). Has mental time travel really affected human culture? A comment on Suddendorf and Corballis (2007). Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30, 326-327.

Alex Mesoudi, Kevin N Laland (2007). Culturally transmitted paternity beliefs and the evolution of human mating behaviour. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 1615, 1273-1278.

Alex Mesoudi (2007). Using the methods of social psychology to study cultural evolution. Journal of Social, Evolutionary and Cultural Psychology 1, 35-58.

Alex Mesoudi, Andrew Whiten, Kevin N. Laland (2007). Science, evolution and cultural anthropology: A response to Ingold (2007). Anthropology Today 23, 18.

Alex Mesoudi, Kevin N. Laland (2007). Extending the behavioral sciences framework: Clarification of methods, predictions and concepts. A comment on Gintis (2007). Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30, 36-37.

Alex Mesoudi (2007). Extended evolutionary theory makes human culture more amenable to evolutionary analysis. A comment on Jablonka and Lamb (2007). Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30, 374.

Alex Mesoudi (2007). Biological and cultural evolution: Similar but different. Biological Theory 2, 119-123.

Alex Mesoudi, Andrew Whiten, Robin Dunbar (2006). A bias for social information in human cultural transmission. British Journal of Psychology 97, 405–423.

Alex Mesoudi, Andrew Whiten, Kevin N. Laland (2006). Towards a unified science of cultural evolution. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29, 329-383.

Alex Mesoudi (2005). The transmission and evolution of human culture.

Alex Mesoudi, Andrew Whiten (2004). The hierarchical transformation of event knowledge in human cultural transmission. Journal of Cognition and Culture 4, 1-24.

Alex Mesoudi, Andrew Whiten, Kevin N. Laland (2004). Is human cultural evolution Darwinian? Evidence reviewed from the perspective of The Origin of Species. Evolution 58, 1-11.