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CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Cultural evolutionary public policy

Interventions to reverse harmful traditions, such as female genital cutting, have had mixed success, sometimes backfiring. Policymakers’ intentions collide with cultural traditions and the ethics of tolerance collide with universal human rights. New research introduces a cultural evolutionary modelling framework to explain previous results and guide future campaigns for endogenous change.

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Fig. 1: Prevalence of FGC among women aged 15 to 49 across the globe.

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Correspondence to Michael Muthukrishna.

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Muthukrishna, M. Cultural evolutionary public policy. Nat Hum Behav 4, 12–13 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0780-6

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