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CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Cultural evolutionary public policy

Nature Human Behaviour volume 4, pages 12–13 (2020)Cite this article

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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.

Public policies for changing behaviour at scale are stymied by sticky forces that maintain those behaviours: norms, traditions, values, identities, and other aspects of culture. Some of the most challenging examples include child marriage, domestic violence, preference for sons, and female genital cutting. In each of these cases, the effect of culture is clear, but how to change these behaviours is not. Moreover, there are ethical considerations: policymakers face a trade-off between tolerance for cultural diversity and the promotion and protection of universal human rights.

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

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  1. Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London, UK

    Michael Muthukrishna

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  1. Michael Muthukrishna
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Correspondence to Michael Muthukrishna.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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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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