 Sperber and other advocates of the approach to cultural evolution known as ‘cultural epidemiology’ share Richerson and Boyd’s focus on a populational approach to understanding culture (Sperber 1996). As they put it, “the overall general framework for the study and modelling of cultural evolution should be that of ‘population thinking’ … ” (Claidiere et al 2014). They argue that any successful execution of this populational approach requires that we explain the distributions of cultural items by paying close attention to what they call cultural ‘attractors’. Moreover, they argue that this approach frequently (although not always) gives rise to explanations that elude approaches grounded in forms of cultural selection.