Evolutionary foundations of cultural variation: Evoked culture and mate preferences

We articulate an evolutionary perspective on cultural variation, centering on the concept of evoked culture. We then demonstrate how the framework of evoked culture has been used to predict and explain cultural variation and report new tests of hypotheses about cultural variation in mate preferences. These tests demonstrate the predictive power of ecological variables such as parasite prevalence that are implicated by evolutionary psychological theories. New empirical tests provided little support for the predictions advanced by competing social role theories (e.g., Eagly & Wood, 1999), with some findings running opposite to those predicted by such theories. We propose that a well-articulated evolutionary perspective on cultural variation may be particularly useful because it can specify how variation in cultural practice itself may emerge. We conclude that discussions of cultural variation should move beyond false dichotomies of social versus biological and suggest that evolutionary psychology provides frameworks that transcend these dichotomies.