http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.04.027 0003-3472/ 2014 The Authors. Published on behalf license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) Cultural variation can be conceptualized in two main ways: as culture-specific qualitative differences in behavioural form, and also as quantitative variation in performance of constellations of universal behaviours (cultural style). Despite obse...

Culture-gene coevolutionary theory posits that cultural values have evolved, are adaptive and influence the social and physical environments under which genetic selection operates. Here, we examined the association between cultural values of individualism-collectivism and allelic frequency of the serotonin transporter functional polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) as well as the role this culture-gene asso...

OBJECTIVES (i) To examine attitudes of medical and nursing staff towards reporting incidents (adverse events and near-misses), and (ii) to identify measures to facilitate incident reporting. DESIGN Qualitative study. In March 2002, semistructured questions were administered to five focus groups--one each for consultants, registrars, resident medical officers, senior nurses, and junior nurses....

In Australia, hetero-masculine drag is a generally accepted cultural practice associated with laddish behaviour. This mode of drag consists of hetero-masculine, cisgendered men performing deliberately erroneous feminine imitation with the intention of being funny. For example, a crowd of mates out on a stag night might wear dresses and wigs to enliven a pub-crawl. It is a mode of drag enacted f...

Many psychologists and philosophers have suggested that religious ideas emerge because they are motivationally attractive. This paper attempts to support a version of the motivational thesis by relying on religious creeds as a source of historical evidence. This simple source of evidence indicates that the cultural evolution of religious ideas is partly a function of the motivational attractive...

Research in cultural evolution has focused on the spread of intuitive or minimally counterintuitive beliefs. However, some very counterintuitive beliefs can also spread successfully, at least in some communities-scientific theories being the most prominent example. We suggest that argumentation could be an important factor in the spread of some very counterintuitive beliefs. A first experiment ...