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Cultural evolutionary theory is not enough: Ambiguous culture, neglect of structure, and the absence of theory in behavior genetics.

Callie H Burt
Published in: The Behavioral and brain sciences (2022)
Uchiyama et al. propose a unified model linking cultural evolutionary theory to behavior genetics (BG) to enhance generalizability, enrich explanation, and predict how social factors shape heritability estimates. A consideration of culture evolution is beneficial but insufficient for purpose. I submit that their proposed model is underdeveloped and their emphasis on heritability estimates misguided. I discuss their ambiguous conception of culture, neglect of social structure, and the lack of a general theory in BG.
Keyphrases
  • healthcare
  • genome wide
  • gene expression