The Selectionist Paradigm: More Implications for Sociology

This paper argues that despite 50 years of empirical research, the phenomenon ofsocial contagion is still poorly understood. Social contagion research hasproduced an eclectic, largely confused and jumbled body of evidence that lacksany comprehensive organising principle or conceptual framework. Whilst the greatmajority of this empirical research has identified and confirmed existence ofthe social contagion phenomenon, results have been undermined because thephenomenon itself has been variously and ambiguously defined andoperationalised. This has meant that the potential radical implications ofsocial contagion research findings for an orthodox understanding of the humanindividual as a rational Cartesian agent, have been largely ignored. It issuggested that the emerging evolutionary paradigm of memetics may providea novelconceptual framework for understanding and explaining the empirical phenomenonof social contagion, by understanding it as the observable action of selfishmemes replicating through a population. The article concludes by proposing amemetic theory of social contagion, and ends with a call for the synthesis ofthe two bodies to create a comprehensive body of theoretically informedresearch.