A Framework for Modeling Inheritance of Social Traits

Abstract

Transmission of cultural traits behaves superficially like genetic transmission, but is substantially more complicated, since transmission is influenced by the population at large, as is disease transmission. We present a framework for modeling cultural transmission by a system of ordinary differential equations, with nonlinearities both in the transmission and in the formation of pairs. The framework is illustrated with a simple example, which can be analyzed in depth. The importance of tying models to data is emphasized, and we discuss the subtleties of collecting and interpreting the data. An example of determination of real mixing patterns is given.

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