Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T02:27:14.689Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The wealth→life history→innovation account of the Industrial Revolution is largely inconsistent with empirical time series data

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2019

Michael E. W. Varnum Open the ORCID record for Michael E. W. Varnum [Opens in a new window]  and
Igor Grossmann Open the ORCID record for Igor Grossmann [Opens in a new window]
Michael E. W. Varnum
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ [email protected]
Igor Grossmann
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 3G1. [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Baumard proposes a model to explain the dramatic rise in innovation that occurred during the Industrial Revolution, whereby rising living standards led to slower life history strategies, which, in turn, fostered innovation. We test his model explicitly using time series data, finding limited support for these proposed linkages. Instead, we find evidence that rising living standards appear to have a time-lagged bidirectional relationship with increasing innovation.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 42 , 2019 , e212
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Jebb, A. T., Tay, L., Wang, W. & Huang, Q. (2015) Time series analysis for psychological research: Examining and forecasting change. Frontiers in Psychology 6:727.Google Scholar
McCleary, R., Hay, R. A., Meidinger, E. E. & McDowall, D. (1980) Applied time series analysis for the social sciences. Sage.Google Scholar
Tiokhin, L. & Hruschka, D. (2017) No evidence that an Ebola outbreak influenced voting preferences in the 2014 elections after controlling for time-series autocorrelation: A Commentary on Beall, Hofer, and Schaller (2016). Psychological Science 28(9):1358–60.Google Scholar
Varnum, M. E. W. & Grossmann, I. (2019) Using time series to understand the how and why of cultural change. Presented at the Evolutionary Psychology Preconference at the 20th annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Portland, OR. https://osf.io/n9qbx/Google Scholar
Varnum, M. E. W. & Grossmann, I. (2017) Cultural change: The how, and the why. Perspectives on Psychological Science 12:956–72.Google Scholar
Varnum, M. E. W., Krems, J. A., Morris, C. & Grossmann, I. (2019) Linking information saturation to cultural shifts in preferences for simpler cultural products. Manuscript submitted for publication. OSF Preprints. DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/52fpz.Google Scholar