Cultural selection and human food preferences

Artificial selection for food colour preferences.

Colour is an important factor in food detection and acquisition by animals using visually based foraging. Colour can be used to identify the suitability of a food source or improve the efficiency of food detection, and can even be linked to mate choice. Food colour preferences are known to exist, but whether these preferences are heritable and how these preferences evolve is unknown. Using the ...

Preferences in Human Mate Selection

In this article we examine preferences in mate choice within the broader context of the human mating system. Specifically, we discuss the consequences of mate preferences for the processes of assortative mating and sexual selection. In Study 1 (N = 184) we document (a) the mate characteristics that are consensually more and less desired, (b) the mate characteristics that show strong sex differe...

Cultural sexual selection in monogamous human populations

In humans, both sexes sometimes show peculiar mating preferences that do not appear to increase their fitness either directly or indirectly. As humans may transmit their preferences and target culturally, and these may be artificially modifiable, I develop theoretical models where a preference and/or a trait are culturally transmitted with a restriction of the trait modification. I assume a mon...

Human Communication Systems Evolve by Cultural Selection

Human communication systems, such as language, evolve culturally [Chater et al. 2009; Croft 2000]; their components undergo reproduction and variation. However, a role for selection in cultural evolutionary dynamics is less clear. Often neutral evolution (also known as 'drift') models, are used to explain the evolution of human communication systems [Blythe 2012; Nettle 1999; Reali and Griffith...

Human Food Intake and Choice: Biological, Psychological and Cultural Perspectives