A neologism introduced by the zoologist Richard Dawkins in his book The selfish gene (1976), where it is portrayed as a unit of cultural inheritance analogous to a gene. Memes are cultural replicators, and as such are likened to viruses in that they ‘infect’ our brains by means of imitation rather than by genetic transmission. Acting then like ‘viruses of the mind’, examples include beliefs (e.g., about child rearing), catchphrases, clothing fashions (e.g., hem-lines), hairstyles, ideas, and inventions. Meme pools (i.e., the sum total of all memes in a population at any given time) are the targets of a form of Lamarckian selection, and those that survive this winnowing process go on to reproduce and multiply, both within and between generations. At a more superordinate level, there is the memeplex: a constellation of mutually supporting memes, such as those making up a political ideology or a religion. The meme concept has given rise to the science of mimetics that has assumed a niche in some quarters of evolutionary psychology and elsewhere, and which even has its own dedicated journal (viz., Journal of Memetics founded in 1997). Similar ideas were expressed by the population geneticists Luigi Cavalli-Sforza and Marcus Feldman, but they lacked the publicity given to Dawkins’ meme concept.
See Cultural and biological evolution, Cultural evolution and biological evolution, Cultural selection, Lamarckism