Natural selection built cultural learning that can overwrite innate preferences

Evidence

Our reliance on cultural transmission, however, goes much deeper. In addition to acquiring practices and beliefs, which may violate our intuitive understandings, we can also acquire tastes, preferences, and motivations. These too can be acquired in the face of our instinctual or innate inclinations. Such acquisitions do not mean we lack instincts or innate inclinations, but merely that natural selection has endowed our cultural learning systems with the ability to, under the right conditions, overwrite or work around them. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 365

Categorization

• XREF: Sets up preference-acquisition contrast with the conformist-bias/CMS material the reader is tracking; cultural learning overrides instincts. — connects to: Cultural learning can transmit behaviors that natural selection eliminates. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 185; Mentalizing may have evolved for cultural learning rather than for social manipulation — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 191; Cumulative cultural evolution drives selection for brains specialized to acquire cultural information. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 218 (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• Innate aversions to capsaicin can be overridden by cultural learning #exemplifies (0.95) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 373
• Selection favors learning mechanisms acquiring the locally favored behavior. #corroborates (0.91) — Joe Henrich and Robert Boyd, The Evolution of Conformist…, 33
• Culture is a genetically evolved consequence of social learning adaptations. #corroborates (0.88) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 139
• Human evolution selected for learnability and behavioral malleability, not fixedness #corroborates (0.86)
• Natural selection shaped psychological mechanisms that determine which cultural beliefs persist. #expands (0.82) — Joe Henrich and Robert Boyd, The Evolution of Conformist…, 3
• Cultural evolution fills in god content within evolved mentalizing constraints #exemplifies (0.80)
• Cultural evolution can create selection pressures stronger than natural ones #complicates (0.78) — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 282
• Human cumulative culture emerges from evolved domain-specific cognitive adaptations for social learning #qualifies (0.76) — Joe Henrich and Robert Boyd, The Evolution of Conformist…, 16
• Cultural learning skills drove rapid human adaptation across all habitats #expands (0.75) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 125
• Cultural adaptation physically rewires the brain and perception #expands (0.74) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2238