期刊名称：Gruter Institute Working Papers on Law, Economics, and Evolutionary Biology
出版年度：2001
卷号：2
出版社：Bepress
摘要：The paper develops an
evolutionary selection model of the cultural transmission of preferences,
focusing on the survival probability of certain preference types. The fitness of
a preference is defined in terms of the ease with which its carrier can transmit
the preference to the young. For example, a taste for work gives its carriers
more income than is obtained by those who carry a taste for leisure. If higher
income allows a given carrier to transmit her preferences more easily, then
those with a taste for work will be more likely to transmit their preferences to
the young; hence a taste for work will be more evolutionarily fit than a taste
for leisure. In general, cultural transmission of preferences will favor any
tastes that facilitate their own transmission, especially tastes for social
achievements such as income, power, mass communication, and knowledge. The
resulting pattern of tastes can be biased in the following sense: if the young
generation were not influenced by achievement effects, they would choose
preferences that would make them happier.
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