After three decades in which debates on cultural evolution were dominated by models emphasizing social learning, cultural group selection, and niche construction, Singh pushes the discussion in a different direction: culture as the product of individual psychology. This re-centering on individual preferences and evaluations is refreshing, and it opens the way for more productive dialogue between cultural evolutionists and psychologists, especially evolutionary psychologists, whose perspectives have often been marginalized.

Yet the article deprives itself of the full resources of evolutionary theory. Singh demonstrates how people adopt cultural variants they perceive as useful, but he stops short of asking why humans find certain variants compelling in the first place. The preferences guiding these evaluations are not arbitrary. They are the product of natural selection, shaped to motivate humans toward actions that historically enhanced survival and reproduction (e.g., securing food, attracting mates, caring for offspring, building alliances, managing uncertainty) (Tooby & Cosmides, Reference Tooby and Cosmides1992).

In each domain, Singh identifies the proximate goals that cultural forms appear to satisfy, but he stops halfway: the crucial step is to explain why and how these goals are valued, which requires linking them to the evolved reward systems that make them subjectively compelling (Dubourg et al., Reference Dubourg, Chambon and Baumard2025). Shamanic rituals persist not only because they seem to manage uncertainty but also because threat-detection systems reward any practice that promises agency under risk. Lullabies converge not only because they calm infants but also because the parental care system delivers intrinsic rewards when distress signals are reduced.

The strength of an evolutionary framework is not only that it explains why certain goals feel compelling but also that it allows us to predict what cultural forms will emerge and under which conditions they will vary. Take judicial institutions, one example beautifully studied by Singh. Human cooperation is structured by reciprocity and proportionality. As a result, punitive practices in small-scale societies serve primarily to restore reciprocal cooperation: sanctions are calibrated to the severity of the offense, often combine punishment with compensation, and include procedures to prevent escalation (Baumard et al., Reference Baumard, Fitouchi, André, Nettle and Scott-Philipps2023; Fitouchi & Singh, Reference Fitouchi and Singh2023).

The evolutionary perspective explains not only the recurrence of cultural “super-attractors”

across societies but also systematic divergences. Motivational systems are universal, yet their expression shifts with adaptive trade-offs across age, sex, and life-history stage and with ecological conditions that alter costs and benefits (Boon-Falleur et al., Reference Boon-Falleur, Baumard and André2025; Ko & Neuberg, Reference Ko and Neuberg2025; Sng et al., Reference Sng, Neuberg, Varnum and Kenrick2018). Romantic love ideals vary historically as mating strategies respond to demographic and institutional change; lullabies adapt to caregiving ecologies, and judicial practices evolve with group size and kinship structures (Baumard et al., Reference Baumard, Huillery, Hyafil and Safra2022). Evolutionary reasoning thus makes both stability and variability intelligible, as two sides of the same adaptive logic.

Consider also stories, another example discussed by Singh. Imaginary worlds in fiction recruit exploration-based curiosity (Dubourg et al., Reference Dubourg, Thouzeau, de Dampierre, Mogoutov and Baumard2023). These systems evolved because they motivate individuals to seek information, expand social knowledge, and prepare for novel situations. Because imaginary stories are most appealing to people who are psychologically oriented toward exploration, their cultural prominence varies with ecology: in safe and resource-rich environments, where the costs of exploration are low and innovation is rewarded, exploratory drive increases and audiences demand more speculative fiction; in harsher, riskier ecologies, where exploratory behaviors are more costly, cultural production shifts toward familiar, realistic, and morally didactic narratives (Dubourg & Baumard, Reference Dubourg and Baumard2022; Dubourg et al., Reference Dubourg, Chambon and Baumard2025). In the end, cultural products are best understood as emergent phenotypes: cultural forms generated by evolved motivational systems and modulated by ecological conditions and historical legacies (Baumard et al., Reference Baumard, Fitouchi, André, Nettle and Scott-Philipps2023).

Importantly, the evolutionary approach helps explain not only why cultural products are adopted (because they are useful to consumers) but also why they are created (because they serve the interests of producers) (André et al., Reference André, Baumard and Boyer2023; see also Nettle & Heinz, Reference Nettle and Heintz2025). Ritual specialists, storytellers, or artists invest in costly cultural productions because these productions bring them prestige, allies, resources, or mating opportunities. From this perspective, super-attractors are not only emergent phenotypes shaped by evolved motivations and ecological conditions – they are also joint phenotypes, stabilized because they benefit both sides of the cultural exchange, albeit in different ways.

Integrating the producer’s standpoint into Singh’s framework helps explain why some traditions persist even when their direct utility to consumers is ambiguous. Costly rituals, for instance, may endure less because of their benefits to participants than because they reliably channel status and resources to ritual specialists (which would explain why their knowledge is specialized and secretive; see Lightner et al., Reference Lightner, Heckelsmiller and Hagen2021). Here again, subjective selection plays a role, but only as part of a broader ecology of motivations and interests.

Seen in this light, subjective selection is best understood not as a freestanding mechanism but as the proximal face of an ecological-evolutionary process. People evaluate cultural variants as useful because they are guided by evolved motivations; those motivations are reliable because they historically tracked fitness-relevant outcomes, and cultural forms persist because they also align with the strategic interests of producers within specific ecologies (Baumard & André, Reference Baumard and André2025).

This perspective has at least three advantages. First, by specifying which evolved goal is engaged, and whose interests are at stake (producers, consumers, or both), we can generate sharper predictions about cultural forms. Not all domains of culture should converge equally; only those anchored in strong, universal motivations will produce super-attractors. Second, linking subjective selection to adaptive goals and strategic asymmetries prevents circularity (Scott-Phillips, Reference Scott-Phillips, Blancke and Heintz2018). We do not merely say that people keep what they find useful; we explain why they find it useful, and why others invest in producing it, in terms of evolved design and ecological payoffs. Finally, with this ecological layer, subjective selection becomes more than a descriptive label. It becomes a bridge between psychology, ecology, and cultural evolution, unifying findings across domains and perspectives (Baumard & André, Reference Baumard and André2025).