ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author presents the fact that everyone's behavior is shaped by evolutionary history and the culture that we grow up and live in. He looks at the consequences of evolution and then turn to the role of culture. Evolution by natural selection relies on several things: variation, meaning that different individuals are different in their traits, abilities, characteristics, preferences, and so on; inheritance, meaning that offspring inherit similar traits to their parents. Food and water are essential to survival, and much time would have been spent in evolutionary history trying to find enough of them. Game theory has developed tools specific for modeling evolution, which we can illustrate with a hawk–dove game introduced to model animal conflict. In the same way that good strategies or behaviors might be favored by genetic evolution, good ideas might be favored by cultural evolution. Culture can still play its part, if boys and girls are raised and educated relative to stereotype.
