Article contents
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
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
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019
References
- 1
- Cited by
Target article
Psychological origins of the Industrial Revolution
Related commentaries (24)
A claim for cognitive history
A needed amendment that explains too much and resolves little
Affluence boosted intelligence? How the interaction between cognition and environment may have produced an eighteenth-century Flynn effect during the Industrial Revolution
Are both necessity and opportunity the mothers of innovations?
Cultural interconnectedness and in-group cooperation as sources of innovation
Energy, transport, and consumption in the Industrial Revolution
England first, America second: The ecological predictors of life history and innovation
Environmental unpredictability, economic inequality, and dynamic nature of life history before, during, and after the Industrial Revolution
Explaining historical change in terms of LHT: A pluralistic causal framework is needed
Interrelationships of factors of social development are more complex than Life History Theory predicts
Life History Theory and economic modernity
Life History Theory and the Industrial Revolution
Many causes, not one
Psychological origins of the Industrial Revolution: Why we need causal methods and historians
Psychology and the economics of invention
Slowing life history (K) can account for increasing micro-innovation rates and GDP growth, but not macro-innovation rates, which declined following the end of the Industrial Revolution
The affective origins of the Industrial Revolution
The other angle of Maslow's pyramid: How scarce environments trigger low-opportunity-cost innovations
The wealth→life history→innovation account of the Industrial Revolution is largely inconsistent with empirical time series data
There is little evidence that the Industrial Revolution was caused by a preference shift
Timing is everything: Evaluating behavioural causal theories of Britain's industrialisation
Using big data to map the relationship between time perspectives and economic outputs
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
What motivated the Industrial Revolution: England's libertarian culture or affluence per se?
Author response
Psychological origins of the Industrial Revolution: More work is needed!