Book

Mesoudi, A. (2011) Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Link to website

Journal Articles 

2011

Danchin, E., Charmantier, A., Champagne, F.A., Mesoudi, A., Pujol, B., Blanchet, S. (2011). Beyond DNA: integrating inclusive inheritance into an extended theory of evolution. Nature Reviews Genetics, 12, 475-486.

Mesoudi, A. (2011) Variable cultural acquisition costs constrain cumulative cultural evolution. PLoS ONE 6, e18239.

Mesoudi, A. (2011) An experimental comparison of human social learning strategies: Payoff-biased social learning is adaptive but under-used. Evolution and Human Behavior 32, 334-342.

Mesoudi, A. (2011) Culture and the Darwinian Renaissance in the social sciences and humanities. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 9(2), 109-124.

Mesoudi, A., McElligott, A. & Adger, D. (2011) Integrating genetic and cultural evolutionary approaches to language. Human Biology, 83(2), 141-151.

2010

O'Brien, M.J., Lyman, R.L., Mesoudi, A. & VanPool, T.L. (2010) Cultural traits as units of analysis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 365, 3797-3806.

Mesoudi, A., Veldhuis, D. & Foley, R.A. (2010) Why aren't the social sciences Darwinian? Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 8(2), 93-104.

Mesoudi, A. (2010) Evolutionary synthesis in the social sciences and humanities. Cultural Science 3(1).

2009

Mesoudi, A. (2009) How cultural evolutionary theory can inform social psychology, and vice versa. Psychological Review, 116(4), 929-952.

Mesoudi, A. (2009) The cultural dynamics of copycat suicide. PLoS ONE, 4(9), e7252.

Mesoudi, A. & Lycett, S.J. (2009) Random copying, frequency-dependent copying and culture change. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30(1), 41-48.

2008

Mesoudi, A. & O’Brien, M.J. (2008) The learning and transmission of hierarchical cultural recipes. Biological Theory, 3(1), 63-72.

Danielson, P., Mesoudi, A. & Stanev, R. (2008) N.E.R.D. and norms: Framework and experiments. Philosophy of Science 75(5), 786-798.

Mesoudi, A. & Whiten, A. (2008) The multiple roles of cultural transmission experiments in understanding human cultural evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 363, 3489-3501.

Whiten, A. & Mesoudi, A. (2008) Establishing an experimental science of culture: animal social diffusion experiments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 363, 3477-3488.

Mesoudi, A. & O'Brien, M.J. (2008) The cultural transmission of Great Basin projectile point technology II: An agent-based computer simulation. American Antiquity, 73(4), 627-644.

Mesoudi, A. (2008) An experimental simulation of the "copy-successful-individuals" cultural learning strategy: Adaptive landscapes, producer-scrounger dynamics and informational access costs. Evolution and Human Behavior, 29(5), 350-363.

Mesoudi, P. & Danielson, P. (2008) Ethics, evolution and culture. Theory in Biosciences, 127(3), 229-240.

Mesoudi, A. (2008) Foresight in cultural evolution. Biology and Philosophy 23(2), 243-255.

Mesoudi, A. & O'Brien, M.J. (2008) The cultural transmission of Great Basin projectile point technology I: An experimental simulation. American Antiquity 73(1), 3-28.

2007

Mesoudi, A. (2007) A Darwinian theory of cultural evolution can promote an evolutionary synthesis for the social sciences. Biological Theory 2(3), 263-275.

Mesoudi, A. (2007) Biological and cultural evolution: Similar but different. Biological Theory 2(2), 119-123.

Mesoudi, A. & Laland, K.N. (2007) Culturally transmitted paternity beliefs and the evolution of human mating behaviour. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 274, 1273-1278.

Mesoudi, A. (2007) Using the methods of experimental social psychology to study cultural evolution. Journal of Social, Evolutionary and Cultural Psychology 1(2), 35-58.

2006

Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A. & Dunbar, R. (2006) A bias for social information in human cultural transmission. British Journal of Psychology 97(3), 405-423.

Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A. & Laland, K.N. (2006) Towards a unified science of cultural evolution. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29(4), 329-383.

2004

Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A. & Laland, K.N. (2004). Is human cultural evolution Darwinian? Evidence reviewed from the perspective of The Origin of Species. Evolution, 58(1), 1-11.

Mesoudi, A. & Whiten, A. (2004). The hierarchical transformation of event knowledge in human cultural transmission. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 4(1), 1-24.

Short Articles, Commentaries & Book Reviews

Dawson, E.H. & Mesoudi, A. (in press) Democratic decision-making by the hive mind (book review of Seeley, T., Honeybee Democracy). Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

Chittka, L. & Mesoudi, A. (2011) Insect swarm intelligence (book review of Seeley, T., Honeybee Democracy). Science 331, 401-402.

Mesoudi, A. (2011) Evolutionary psychology meets cultural psychology. Book review of Schaller, Norenzayan, Heine, Yamagishi & Kameda: Evolution, Culture and the Human Mind. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 9, 83-87.

Mesoudi, A. (2007) Extended evolutionary theory makes human culture more amenable to evolutionary analysis. Commentary on Jablonka, E. & Lamb, M. J., Précis of Evolution in Four Dimensions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30(4), 374.

Mesoudi, A. (2007) Has mental time travel really affected human culture? Commentary on Suddendorf, T. & Corballis, M. C. The evolution of foresight: What is mental time travel and is it unique to humans? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30(3), 326-327. 

Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A. & Laland, K.N. (2007) Science, evolution and cultural anthropology. Anthropology Today 22, p.18. (A response to Ingold [2007] The trouble with "evolutionary biology")

Mesoudi, A. & Laland, K.N. (2007) Extending the behavioral sciences framework: clarification of methods, predictions and concepts. Commentary on H. Gintis, A framework for the unification of the behavioral sciences, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30(1), 36-37.

Mesoudi, A. (2007) Book review of Levinson, S.C. and Jaisson, P. Evolution and Culture. Quarterly Review of Biology 82(1), 45.

Mesoudi, A. (2005) Book review of Richerson, P.J. and Boyd, R. Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Quarterly Review of Biology 80(4), 506-507.

Book Chapters

Mesoudi, A. & Jensen, K. (in press). Culture and the evolution of human sociality. In: The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Evolutionary Psychology, edited by J. Vonk & T. Shackelford. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Mesoudi, A. (2010) Studying cultural innovation in the psychology lab. In Cultural Innovation: Contributions from Evolutionary Anthropology, edited by M.J. O’Brien and S.J. Shennan (pp.175-191). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Mesoudi, A. & O'Brien, M.J. (2009) Placing archaeology within a unified science of cultural evolution. In Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution, edited by S.J. Shennan (pp. 21-32). Berkeley: University of California Press. 

Mesoudi, A. (2008) The experimental study of cultural transmission and its potential for explaining archaeological data. In Cultural Transmission and Archaeology: Issues and Case Studies, edited by M.J. O'Brien. Washington, D.C.: Society for American Archaeology Press. 

PhD Thesis

Mesoudi, A. (2005) The transmission and evolution of human culture. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of St Andrews, UK.