The Cultural Evolution of Human Goals

Humans pursue remarkably diverse goals that vary over time and across cultures. These goals are both drivers and products of cultural evolutionary dynamics, yet most theories of cultural evolution have focused on the influence of culture on how individuals reach their goals, rather than on which goals they pursue. Recent accounts have begun modeling the co-evolution of goals and solutions, but leave the cognitive mechanisms underlying human goal dynamics unspecified. We address this gap by introducing the framework of cultural autotelic agents: individuals whose goal generation, anticipation, and selection mechanisms are shaped by cultural environments, and whose goal-directed behaviors reshape those environments in turn. This cognitive grounding makes motivation central to cultural goal dynamics. In particular, it reveals intrinsic motivation as an underappreciated driving force for open-ended cultural evolution by sustaining non-instrumental pursuits, biasing exploration toward increasingly complex goals, and maintaining diversity across individuals.