Evidence map›Paper›PMID 28713188›Full record

ArticleBiology & philosophy2017

What are cultural attractors?

Andrew Buskell

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Biology & philosophy, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
19citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

19 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Base structures across lexical and notational numeral modalities.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Review
  8. Rethinking Norm Psychology.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2024
    Article
  9. Underappreciated features of cultural evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021
    Review
  10. Cultural selection and biased transformation: two dynamics of cultural evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021
    Review
  11. Culture without copying or selection.Evolutionary human sciences · 2021
    Article
  12. Review
  13. Review
  14. The evolution of high-fidelity social learning.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020
    Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Enquire within: cultural evolution and cognitive science.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018
    Review
  18. Pursuing Darwin's curious parallel: Prospects for a science of cultural evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017
    Article
  19. Complex dynamics of social learning in groups of wild Arabian babblers.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author.

Andrew BuskellDepartment of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RH UK.ORCID 0000-0001-6939-2848

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Concepts from cultural attractor theory are now used in domains far from their original home in anthropology and cultural evolution. Yet these concepts have not been consistently characterised. I here distinguish four ways in which the cultural attractor concept has been used and identify three kinds of factors of attraction typically appealed to. Clarifying these explanatory concepts identifies problems and ambiguities in the work of cultural epidemiologists and commentators alike.

Indexed as

Cultural attractor theoryCultural epidemiologyCultural evolution

Identifiers

PMID28713188
PMCPMC5491627

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.