This thesis is concerned with the evolution of musical behaviour in humans, considered on a broad theoretical level. Drawing on key theoretical developments in the evolution of human cultural behaviour, and the potential interaction between culture and biological evolution, I propose that music has evolved through a feedback process between human cultural systems and human physiology, that plac...

A growing body of theoretical and empirical research has examined cultural transmission and adaptive cultural behaviour at the individual, within-group level. However, relatively few studies have tried to examine proximate transmission or test ultimate adaptive hypotheses about behavioural or cultural diversity at a between-societies macro-level. In both the history of anthropology and in prese...

Behaviour change models in HIV prevention tend to consider that risky sexual behaviours reflect risk assessments and that by changing risk assessments behaviour can be changed. Risk assessment is however culturally constructed. Individuals use heuristics or bounded cognitive devices derived from broader cultural meaning systems to rationalize uncertainty. In this study, we identify some of the ...

introduction: fasting during ramadan provides an opportunistic setting for smoking cessation intervention. smokers find it easy to cease smoking during ramadan due to the religion, cultural and environmental influences. this study aims to determine the changes in smoking behaviour during ramadan among malay muslim male students who were current smokers. methods: this is cross sectional study us...

Cumulative cultural evolution is the term given to a particular kind of social learning, which allows for the accumulation of modifications over time, involving a ratchet-like effect where successful modifications are maintained until they can be improved upon. There has been great interest in the topic of cumulative cultural evolution from researchers from a wide variety of disciplines, but un...