A bibliometric analysis of the interdisciplinary field of cultural evolution

Mason Youngblood1 & David Lahti1,2 1The Graduate Center, City University of New York 2Queens College, City University of New York

Introduction Phylogenetics, dual Results 2 inheritance theory, etc… The interdisciplinary study of cultural evolution, or change in socially Overall collaboration in the field is increasing, as shown by the learned traits over time, has historically been approached from a increased ratio of authors to articles (Fig. 1). Network analysis based variety of fields, such as: on co-authorship showed five distinct clusters of collaboration in the • Evolutionary biology literature (Fig. 2), approximately corresponding to: • Anthropology Comparative psychology, Evolutionary psychology, • 1 - comparative psychology, evolutionary biology, etc. evolutionary biology, etc… linguistics, etc… • Psychology • 2 - phylogenetics, dual inheritance theory, etc. • Archaeology 1 3 • 3 - evolutionary psychology, linguistics, etc. • Sociology • 4 - theoretical biology, animal behavior, etc. • 5 - evolutionary archaeology, anthropology, etc. In the last decade efforts have been made to bridge the historical Based on the degree in citation overlap (Fig. 3), groups 4 and 5 are the divisions between these approaches to develop a unified field of most intellectually isolated from the rest of the field. cultural evolution (Mesoudi, 2015), but much of this has been based upon subjective perceptions of how the field is structured in terms of 4 community effects collectivism norms supernatural beliefs aggression prosociality collaboration, co-citation, etc. A quantitative analysis of the field would Theoretical biology, 5 teaching demography ancestral states imitation comparative method collective action evolution of cooperation multi−objective optimization social complexity cultural norms music conformism sustainability animal behavior, etc… computer model provide valuable information about what parts of field actually require anthropology kinship human evolution cultural evolution Evolutionary archaeology, theory game theory evolutionary psychology cultural change Group 2 cognition fairness alzheimer's disease further integration. phylogenetics cultural group selection cognitive evolution anthropology, etc… cross−cultural networks cultural diversity cultural evolution coevolution individual differences dementia parochialism hunter−gatherers punishment geoarchaeology development ethics tsimane ethnicity language evolution cultural heritage strong reciprocity foragers late pleistocene costly signaling institutions dual inheritance theory chimpanzees behavior

Bibliometrics, or the statistical analysis of published materials, has children social evolution phylogenetic comparative methods phylogeny population genetics anthropology ancient dna altruism cross−cultural u−series dating been extensively used to quantify the intellectual structure of fields. In Figure 2. Co-authorship network of all authors with a minimum of 100 citations. Five clusters were denial conformity prestige austronesian cultural transmission emotion learning bias atheism tool use identified and color-coded using VOSviewer (red: n = 47; green: n = 44; blue: n = 38; yellow: n = 24; rodinia cultural phylogenetics social learning Group 1 combination with network and cluster analysis, as well as modern data transmission biases holocene development children violet: n = 24). language evolution religion evolution cultural transmission visualization techniques, it can be an invaluable tool for analyzing fertility context cultural algorithm iterated learning africa cooperation religion great apes collaboration and citation patterns (Liu & Xia, 2015; Machado et al., learning agriculture demography cumulative culture innovation culture fiji ritual human evolution phylogeny art china 2015; Sweileh et al., 2016). Dataset & Methods danger social learning neolithic traditions evolution evolution cultural social learning culture differential evolution tradition imitation

religion cooperation england language north china cognition The aim of this study was to generate recommendations for future The complete metadata from every journal article published on the chimpanzees innovation cultural evolution learning attraction integration of the field of cultural evolution by analyzing co-authorship, topic of “cultural evolution” on WoS between 1990-2015 was used for gender Group 3 cladistics citation overlap, and keyword usage in the literature. Co-authorship this analysis. In total, this included 5753 articles and 11643 authors. tsimane' croatia acculturationcultural evolution was chosen as the key metric for the cluster analysis because it is fiji cultural transmission VOSviewer and R were used for data analysis and visualization (van imitation culture archaeology laws power natural selection natural

cognition animal culture often used as a direct measure of collaboration (Uddin et al., 2011). Eck & Waltman, 2010). stereotypes evolution human evolution communication cultural evolution bolivia cooperation handaxes diffusion chain emulation evolution narrative bayesian inference irish social learning adaptation chimpanzee game theory human evolution markets child care africa social transmission altriciality learning Number of Authors and Articles by Year culturalbias transmissionaltruism random genetic drift 798 evolutionary psychology learning culture fashion random copying 756 anticipation culture 3000 745 750 phylogeny evolution cumulative culture Auth. computation evolutionary model communication social learning Group 5 Art. altruism social learning

innovation chimpanzees gene−culture coevolution phylogeny tool use discourse adaptation niche construction gender conformity lethal raiding

2500 teaching human evolution bird song ecology agent−based simulation innovation insectivory 500 language change tradition bromme culture 472 narratives brand 464 mathematical model demography algorithmscultural

cooperation early modern humans song learning human culture social learning mathematical modeling diffusion fertility incest taboo group evolutionary archaeology individual learning darwinism 2000 song archaeology conformity relatedness 338 cultural diversity Group 4 baby names imitation whale gene−culture coevolution late glacial neuroimaging foraging social learning strategy cultural accumulation cultural evolution individual−based model cultural diversity evolutionary game theory sexual selection 250 cultural background cultural learning music consumer behavior speciation material culture 1500 181

Number of Shared Cited References 169

117 94 Figure 4. Wordcloud depicting keyword frequency among the five groups identified using VOSviewer. Word size corresponds to the frequency of keyword use; word color corresponds to group identity. 1000 0

Group5

500 Group4 • Mesoudi, A. (2015). Cultural Evolution: A Review of • Sweileh, W. M., Al-Jabi, S. W., Sawalha, A. F., & Group3 Theory, Findings and Controversies. Evolutionary Zyoud, S. H. (2016). Bibliometric profile of the Group2 Biology, 43(4). global scientific research on autism spectrum Group1 • Liu, P., & Xia, H. (2015). Structure and evolution of disorders. SpringerPlus, 5(1480). 0 • 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 12000 8000 4000 0 co-authorship network in an interdisciplinary Uddin, S., Hossain, L., Abbasi, A., & Rasmussen, K. Number of Cited References research field. Scientometrics, 103(1). (2011). Trend and efficiency analysis of co- Year • Machado, R. d. N., Vargas-Quesada, B., & Leta, J. authorship network. Scientometrics, 90(2). (2015). Intellectual structure in stem cell research: • van Eck, N. J., & Waltman, L. (2010). Software Figure 1. Number of total authors and articles published on the topic of cultural evolution between Figure 3. Degree of overlap between the cited references of each of the five groups identified with exploring Brazilian scientific articles from 2001 to survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for 1990 and 2015. VOSviewer. The dots in the matrix below the bar graph identify which groups are being compared by 2010. Scientometrics, 106(2). bibliometric mapping. Scientometrics, 84. each bar. The smaller bar graph to the left shows the total number of cited references in each group.

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