IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v14y2025i1p24-d1563253.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economic Change and Cultural Evolution: The Ultimate Influence of Human Cognitive Limitations

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Bordonaba-Bosque

    (Aragon Health Sciences Institute (IACS), 50009 Zaragoza, Spain)

  • María A. González-Álvarez

    (Grupo CASETEM, Facultad de Economía y Empresa, Universidad de Zaragoza, 50005 Zaragoza, Spain)

  • Pedro C. Marijuán

    (Independent Scholar Affiliated to Bioinformation Group, Aragon Health Sciences Institute (IACS), 50009 Zaragoza, Spain)

  • Jorge Navarro

    (Grupo Decisión Multicriterio Zaragoza (GDMZ), Departamento de Economía Aplicada, Facultad de Economía y Empresa, Universidad de Zaragoza, 50005 Zaragoza, Spain)

Abstract

How cognitive limitations of individuals may affect the dynamics of cultural evolution under the effects of economic and technological forces is explored here. In particular, the extraordinary economic growth during the industrial and scientific revolutions of the last two centuries has been accompanied by an extraordinary acceleration of cultural changes. We will propose that these changes are due to competition, decay and replacement processes among the different kinds of cultural contents, ultimately resulting from our cognitive limitations. Different laws have been proposed recently for the decay of individualized cultural items and for the underlying competition processes, which will be discussed herein. With respect to the informational/cognitive limitations of individuals, the cognitive psychology views will be complemented—and somehow quantified—from the angle of the “social brain” or “sociotype” hypothesis. The generational phenomenon also emerges, by which differentiated generations develop a remarkable divergence in ways of life, aspirations, ideals, values, and often in the use of communication technologies. It is in this interactive individual–generational context of competitive processes that the acceleration of cultural change during the few last decades might be investigated by considering the vastly increased economic output and the widespread use of new communication technologies.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Bordonaba-Bosque & María A. González-Álvarez & Pedro C. Marijuán & Jorge Navarro, 2025. "Economic Change and Cultural Evolution: The Ultimate Influence of Human Cognitive Limitations," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 14(1), pages 1-15, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:14:y:2025:i:1:p:24-:d:1563253
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/1/24/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/1/24/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George A. Akerlof, 2009. "How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1175-1175.
    2. Pan, Raj K. & Petersen, Alexander M. & Pammolli, Fabio & Fortunato, Santo, 2018. "The memory of science: Inflation, myopia, and the knowledge network," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 656-678.
    3. Andrew Lawson, 2013. "An Emotional History Of The Business Cycle," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(1), pages 30-44, February.
    4. Cristian Candia & C. Jara-Figueroa & Carlos Rodriguez-Sickert & Albert-László Barabási & César A. Hidalgo, 2019. "The universal decay of collective memory and attention," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 3(1), pages 82-91, January.
    5. Jean-Pascal Daloz, 2008. "Towards The Cultural Contextualization Of Social Distinction," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(3), pages 305-320, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stern, Nicholas, 2018. "Public economics as if time matters: Climate change and the dynamics of policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 4-17.
    2. Jang, Tae-Seok & Sacht, Stephen, 2017. "Modeling consumer confidence and its role for expectation formation: A horse race," Economics Working Papers 2017-04, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    3. Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Alex Plastun, 2019. "Price overreactions in the cryptocurrency market," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 46(5), pages 1137-1155, August.
    4. Roy, Saktinil & Kemme, David M., 2012. "Causes of banking crises: Deregulation, credit booms and asset bubbles, then and now," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 270-294.
    5. Klodt, Henning & Lehment, Harmen (ed.), 2009. "The Crisis and Beyond," Kiel E-Books, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), number 60981.
    6. Dow Alexander & Dow Sheila C., 2011. "Animal Spirits Revisited," Capitalism and Society, De Gruyter, vol. 6(2), pages 1-25, December.
    7. Benjamin Enke & Florian Zimmermann, 2019. "Correlation Neglect in Belief Formation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(1), pages 313-332.
    8. Hendrik Dalen & Kène Henkens, 2013. "Dilemmas of Downsizing During the Great Recession: Crisis Strategies of European Employers," De Economist, Springer, vol. 161(3), pages 307-329, September.
    9. George Kapetanios & James Mitchell & Yongcheol Shin, 2010. "A Nonlinear Panel Model of Cross-sectional Dependence," Working Papers 673, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    10. Andreia Tolciu, 2010. "The Economics of Social Interactions: An Interdisciplinary Ground for Social Scientists?," Forum for Social Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(3), pages 223-242, January.
    11. J. E. King, 2010. "Keynes and ‘Psychology’," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 29(1), pages 1-12, March.
    12. Paul de Grauwe, 2013. "Design Failures in the Eurozone: Can they be fixed?," Europe in Question Discussion Paper Series of the London School of Economics (LEQs) 7, London School of Economics / European Institute.
    13. Kenji Nishizaki & Toshitaka Sekine & Yoichi Ueno, 2014. "Chronic Deflation in Japan," Asian Economic Policy Review, Japan Center for Economic Research, vol. 9(1), pages 20-39, January.
    14. Venkatasubramanian, Venkat & Luo, Yu & Sethuraman, Jay, 2015. "How much inequality in income is fair? A microeconomic game theoretic perspective," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 435(C), pages 120-138.
    15. Ulrich van Suntum, "undated". "Economic Confidence, Negative Interest Rates, and Liquidity: Towards Keynesianism 2.0," Working Papers 200108, Institute of Spatial and Housing Economics, Munster Universitary.
    16. Koppl, Roger, 2010. "Some epistemological implications of economic complexity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 859-872, December.
    17. Dirk Helbing, 2013. "Economics 2.0: The Natural Step towards A Self-Regulating, Participatory Market Society," Papers 1305.4078, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2013.
    18. Yochanan Shachmurove, 2012. "Failing Institutions Are at the Core of the U.S. Financial Crisis," PIER Working Paper Archive 12-040, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    19. Marc Hayford & Anastasios Malliaris, 2010. "Asset Prices and the Financial Crisis of 2007--09: An Overview of Theories and Policies," Forum for Social Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(3), pages 279-286, January.
    20. Chao Gu & Cyril Monnet & Ed Nosal & Randall Wright, 2019. "On the Instability of Banking and Other Financial Intermediation," Working Papers 19.04, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:14:y:2025:i:1:p:24-:d:1563253. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.