Cultural Attraction

Abstract Cultural attraction theory, also known as the ‘Paris school’ in cultural evolution, has gained popularity over the past few decades as a framework for understanding cultural evolution. Cultural attraction emphasizes the role of transformation as the key mechanism in cultural evolution, in contrast to other frameworks that rely more heavily on analogies with biological evolution. Transformations routinely occur as part of cultural transmission episodes and contribute both to cultural stability and cultural change. At the heart of cultural attraction theory are also the concepts of cultural causal chains, cultural attractors, and factors of attraction. Cultural attraction theory can be used as a pluralistic framework in cultural evolution by articulating these three concepts. In particular, several empirical case studies in different domains have successfully used cultural attraction theory to relate cultural phenomena (attractors) to their causes (factors of attraction). Finally, cultural attraction theory has implications for cultural evolution at large, including by calling to consider a larger diversity of mechanisms as relevant to understand cultural evolution.