Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Musings on Culture from a Darwinist Perspective

I am not sure what prompted this, but lately I have been thinking about the cultures of countries from a Darwinist perspective. More specifically, I have been thinking about North American and Australian cultures relative to each other and the European countries that so many of our immigrants came from.

If genetic selection leads to behavior, then it seems to me that immigration/emigration influences gene pools. So, what characterizes those who are most likely to immigrate? Those factors must be both social and personal:

  • Conditions in the home country must not be to the immigrant's liking. So, I would expect that those who are poorer, who have less access to the cultural definition of success, who have value systems at odds with the majority culture, etc, to be the ones most likely to immigrate.
  • They must have the means to immigrate. Early history, this was the indentured, condemned, enslaved and the well-to-do. Current conditions probably favor the middle class, as they have the money to travel without being in an economic hierarchy, those whose locality allows physical travel, and those able to access social networks. Legal immigrants probably come in 2 groups: those with means and those with social networks. Those with both means and networks are probably those who are most likely to come directly. Those with means but fewer destination social networks are probably those who can afford to come for education and then stay. Illegal immigrants probably come from a different combination of groups: locality and networks that allow them to find and arrange for transportation and integration into the community.
  • Personalities that are risk takers, more action oriented, and more comfortable away from family and location of origin. Our current policy also selects those who are more likely to be intellectually bright and educated. Emigrating requires a willingness to take on the unknown, to give up that which you know for chances in an unknown set of conditions. There are probably hundreds to millions who face the same conditions as the emigrants, but who never leave the conditions that prompted emigration. These individuals are probably more risk adverse, more passive (or more external locus of control), and/or more attached to people and place. Those traits that lead to at least modest success in the home culture are those that are most likely to allow the accumulation of capital necessary for travel.

If these are true, then I would expect that the genetic pools of Europe and North America to have developed differential levels of these traits. Since the US, for example, is predominately populated by immigrants, it should have a higher genetic disposition for risk taking, etc. And because emigrants contribute less, on average, to the gene pool of the home country, Europe should have experienced a decrease in the genetic predisposition for risk taking.

Of course, that just talks about the genetics. The social factors are probably just as important, but it is intriguing to think about how immigration/emigration could influence the genetics of population groups.