Rohan Kapitany

My PhD is broadly focused on understanding the factors which help ideas spread. I am interested in which social, cognitive and biological mechanisms allow ideas to be refined, propagated, and integrated within culture. I hope to address both the proximal causes (what immediate casual factors influence the spread of an idea) and ultimate causes (what in our evolutionary history facilitated the spread of ideas) of this question.

Current research is aimed at determining at what point in development children begin to understand the quality and implications of ideas as adults do, and at what point in our biological and cultural history such factors gained traction. My research will examine religious-like thought and ritual, but the principles underlying the uptake and spread of cultural elements ought to be universally applicable.