PSYA02H3 Chapter 16: CHAPTER 16.doc

• School: UTSC
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYA02H3
• Professor: Steve Joordens

Document Summary

Cultural evolution is a culture"s adaptive change to recurrent environmental pressures. Unlike biological evolution, cultural evolution is driven mainly psychological forces. It is a product of human intellect and physical capacity (both very genetic). As a culture faces new problems, solutions are proposed and test and the working solutions are passed down from generation to generation. Some solutions are modified to increase effectiveness and others may be abandoned for better solutions. It is a primary agent involved in shaping lifestyle the aggregate behaviour of a person or the way they lead their life. For our prehistoric ancestors, lifestyle was the same for everyone. They all had the same motives to stay alive. Culture evolution has resulted in a much higher standard of living but at the same time produced threats to our health and safety (e. g. being hit by cars; cars creating pollution). Lifestyles, while providing us with healthy means of survival, also provide unhealthy means of survival.