Showing papers on "Sociocultural evolution published in 2021"
TL;DR: An expanded evolutionary approach is introduced that considers how genetic and cultural evolution, and their interaction, may have shaped both the reliably developing features of the authors' minds and the well-documented differences in cultural psychologies around the globe.
Abstract: Humans are an ultrasocial species. This sociality, however, cannot be fully explained by the canonical approaches found in evolutionary biology, psychology, or economics. Understanding our unique social psychology requires accounting not only for the breadth and intensity of human cooperation but also for the variation found across societies, over history, and among behavioral domains. Here, we introduce an expanded evolutionary approach that considers how genetic and cultural evolution, and their interaction, may have shaped both the reliably developing features of our minds and the well-documented differences in cultural psychologies around the globe. We review the major evolutionary mechanisms that have been proposed to explain human cooperation, including kinship, reciprocity, reputation, signaling, and punishment; we discuss key culture-gene coevolutionary hypotheses, such as those surrounding self-domestication and norm psychology; and we consider the role of religions and marriage systems. Empirically, we synthesize experimental and observational evidence from studies of children and adults from diverse societies with research among nonhuman primates.
146 citations
TL;DR: The music and social bonding (MSB) hypothesis provides the most comprehensive theory to date of the biological and cultural evolution of music.
Abstract: Why do humans make music? Theories of the evolution of musicality have focused mainly on the value of music for specific adaptive contexts such as mate selection, parental care, coalition signaling, and group cohesion. Synthesizing and extending previous proposals, we argue that social bonding is an overarching function that unifies all of these theories, and that musicality enabled social bonding at larger scales than grooming and other bonding mechanisms available in ancestral primate societies. We combine cross-disciplinary evidence from archeology, anthropology, biology, musicology, psychology, and neuroscience into a unified framework that accounts for the biological and cultural evolution of music. We argue that the evolution of musicality involves gene-culture coevolution, through which proto-musical behaviors that initially arose and spread as cultural inventions had feedback effects on biological evolution because of their impact on social bonding. We emphasize the deep links between production, perception, prediction, and social reward arising from repetition, synchronization, and harmonization of rhythms and pitches, and summarize empirical evidence for these links at the levels of brain networks, physiological mechanisms, and behaviors across cultures and across species. Finally, we address potential criticisms and make testable predictions for future research, including neurobiological bases of musicality and relationships between human music, language, animal song, and other domains. The music and social bonding hypothesis provides the most comprehensive theory to date of the biological and cultural evolution of music.
143 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that the roots of cross-cultural variation often lie in the past, and to understand not only how but also why psychology varies, the authors need to grapple with cross-temporal variation.
Abstract: Psychology has traditionally seen itself as the science of universal human cognition, but it has only recently begun seriously grappling with cross-cultural variation. Here we argue that the roots of cross-cultural variation often lie in the past. Therefore, to understand not only how but also why psychology varies, we need to grapple with cross-temporal variation. The traces of past human cognition accessible through historical texts and artifacts can serve as a valuable, and almost completely unutilized, source of psychological data. These data from dead minds open up an untapped and highly diverse subject pool. We review examples of research that may be classified as historical psychology, introduce sources of historical data and methods for analyzing them, explain the critical role of theory, and discuss how psychologists can add historical depth and nuance to their work. Psychology needs to become a historical science if it wants to be a genuinely universal science of human cognition and behavior.
62 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provided new evidence on the long run evolution of political cleavages in 21 Western democracies by exploiting a new database on the vote by socioeconomic characteristic covering over 300 elections held between 1948 and 2020.
Abstract: This paper provides new evidence on the long-run evolution of political cleavages in 21 Western democracies by exploiting a new database on the vote by socioeconomic characteristic covering over 300 elections held between 1948 and 2020. In the 1950s-1960s, the vote for democratic, labor, social democratic, socialist, and affiliated parties was associated with lower-educated and low-income voters. It has gradually become associated with higher-educated voters, giving rise to "multi-elite party systems" in the 2000s-2010s: high-education elites now vote for the "left", while high-income elites continue to vote for the "right". This transition has been accelerated by the rise of green and anti-immigration movements, whose key distinctive feature is to concentrate the votes of the higher-educated and lower-educated electorate, respectively. Combining our database with historical data on political parties' programs, we provide evidence that the reversal of the educational cleavage is strongly linked to the emergence of a new "sociocultural" axis of political conflict. We also discuss the evolution of other political cleavages related to age, geography, religion, gender, and the integration of new ethnoreligious minorities.
50 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors review the use of both carrots and sticks (requirements) developed to motivate researchers and the entire scientific research enterprise to consider sex and gender influences on health and in science.
Abstract: To improve the outcomes of research and medicine, government-based international research funding agencies have implemented various types of policies and mechanisms with respect to sex as a biological variable and gender as a sociocultural factor. After the 1990s, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR), and the European Commission (EC) began 1) requesting that applicants address sex and gender considerations in grant proposals and 2) offering resources to help the scientific community integrate sex and gender into biomedical research. Although, it is too early to analyze data on the success of all of the policies and mechanisms implemented, here we review the use of both carrots (incentives) and sticks (requirements) developed to motivate researchers and the entire scientific research enterprise to consider sex and gender influences on health and in science. The NIH focused on sex as a biological variable (SABV) aligned with an initiative to enhance reproducibility through rigor and transparency; CIHR instituted a sex- and gender-based analysis (SGBA) policy; and the EC required the integration of the "gender dimension", which incorporates sex, gender, and intersectional analysis into research and innovation. Other global efforts are briefly summarized. Although we are still learning what works, we share lessons learned to improve the integration of sex and gender considerations into research. In conjunction with refining and expanding the policies of funding agencies and mechanisms, private funders/philanthropic groups, editors of peer-reviewed journals, academic institutions, professional organizations, ethics boards, healthcare systems, and industry also need to make concerted efforts to integrate sex and gender into research, and we all must bridge across silos to promote system-wide solutions throughout the biomedical enterprise. For example, policies that encourage researchers to disaggregate data by sex and gender, the development of tools to better measure gender effects, or policies similar to SABV and/or SGBA adopted by private funders would accelerate progress. Uptake, accountability for, and a critical appraisal of sex and gender throughout the biomedical enterprise will be crucial to achieving the goal of relevant, reproducible, replicable, and responsible science that will lead to better evidence-based personalized care for all, but especially for women.
40 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a study aimed to develop and develop and evaluate favorable resident perceptions of the development of social capital resulting from hosting community-based tourism is an important issue for the Chinese authorities.
Abstract: Favorable resident perceptions of the development of social capital resulting from hosting community-based tourism is an important issue for the Chinese authorities. This study aimed to develop and...
25 citations
TL;DR: The 40th anniversary of the Journal of Language and Social Psychology occurs around the corner of another anniversary, the language motivation field reaching 60 years as mentioned in this paper. At this occasion, we pause to...
Abstract: The 40th anniversary of the Journal of Language and Social Psychology occurs around the corner of another anniversary, the language motivation field reaching 60 years. At this occasion, we pause to...
24 citations
20 Jun 2021
23 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the risk and predisposing factors for suicidal ideation among mental health patients in four developing countries (Bangladesh, Colombia, India and Pakistan), this aims to grasp the heterogeneity of these motivators and elaborate specific interventions regarding suicide in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Abstract: Objectives Sociocultural factors in the aftermath of any pandemic can play a role in increasing suicidal behavior like suicidal ideation, suicidal attempts, or suicide. The authors discuss the risk and predisposing factors for suicidal ideation among mental health patients in four developing countries (Bangladesh, Colombia, India and Pakistan), this aims to grasp the heterogeneity of these motivators and to elaborate specific interventions regarding suicide in the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods We searched PubMed, Medline, and Google Scholar through March, 2021 for articles using a combination of the keywords and generic terms for suicide, suicide ideation, COVID-19, developing countries, low-middle-income countries, Sociocultural factors, Suicidal behavior, predisposing factors and predictive factors, for articles in English language only, and without publication time restriction. Results This narrative review summarizes the sociocultural risk and predisposing factors for suicidal behavior in developing countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings reveal those factors such as fear of being infected, growing economic pressure, lack of resources due to lockdown are mostly responsible in the four countries for the current increase in suicides. There are a few cultural differences that are specified in the narrative. Conclusion The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health challenge, in which prevention and intervention of suicidal behavior have been suboptimal, especially in low-middle-income countries. Based on literature results, we provide practical suggestions (e.g., reducing infodemic, specialized helplines, improving mental health services availability) in order to tackle main challenges of suicide prevention, such as lack of adequate manpower, fragile health system and poverty.
23 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors combined biophysical and sociocultural approaches to assess how different landscapes (dominated by forest, agriculture or agroforestry) and landscape characteristics (i.e. remoteness and landscape diversity) drive spatial associations of ES.
Abstract: Rural Europe encompasses a variety of landscapes with differing levels of forest, agriculture, and agroforestry that can deliver multiple ecosystem services (ES). Whilst provisioning and regulating ES associated with individual land covers are comparatively well studied, less is known about the associated cultural ES. Only seldom are provisioning, regulating, and cultural ES investigated together to evaluate how they contribute to multifunctionality. In this study we combined biophysical and sociocultural approaches to assess how different landscapes (dominated by forest, agriculture or agroforestry) and landscape characteristics (i.e. remoteness and landscape diversity) drive spatial associations of ES (i.e. synergies, trade-offs and bundles). We analysed data of: i) seven provisioning and regulating ES (spatially modelled), and; ii) six cultural ES (derived from participatory mapping data) in 12 study sites across four different biogeographical regions of Europe. Our results showed highly differentiated ES profiles for landscapes associated to a specific land cover, with agroforestry generally providing higher cultural ES than forest and agriculture. We found a positive relationship between the proportion of forest in a landscape and provisioning and regulating ES, whilst agriculture showed negative relationships. We found four distinct bundles of ES. Three of them were directly related to a dominant land cover and the fourth to a mixture of forest and agroforestry that was associated with high social value. The latter bundle was related to zones close to urban areas and roads and medium to high landscape diversity. These findings suggest that agroforestry should be prioritised over other land covers in such areas as it delivers a suite of multiple ES, provided it is close to urban areas or roads. Our results also illustrate the importance and application of including people's perception in the assessment of ES associations and highlight the relevance of developing integrated analyses of ES to inform landscape management decisions.
20 citations
TL;DR: Social Representations of Chinese tourists from an Italian host perspective is investigated and shows that, while the dominant hegemonic representation is rooted in rationality, the emerging polemic representation is anchored in pre-Enlightenment sociocultural fears.
TL;DR: In this paper, the relative importance of social network architecture as an additional factor shaping cumulative cultural evolution remains unclear, and the authors highlight the complex interaction between population size, structure and transmission mechanisms, with important implications for future research.
Abstract: The ability to build upon previous knowledge-cumulative cultural evolution-is a hallmark of human societies. While cumulative cultural evolution depends on the interaction between social systems, cognition and the environment, there is increasing evidence that cumulative cultural evolution is facilitated by larger and more structured societies. However, such effects may be interlinked with patterns of social wiring, thus the relative importance of social network architecture as an additional factor shaping cumulative cultural evolution remains unclear. By simulating innovation and diffusion of cultural traits in populations with stereotyped social structures, we disentangle the relative contributions of network architecture from those of population size and connectivity. We demonstrate that while more structured networks, such as those found in multilevel societies, can promote the recombination of cultural traits into high-value products, they also hinder spread and make products more likely to go extinct. We find that transmission mechanisms are therefore critical in determining the outcomes of cumulative cultural evolution. Our results highlight the complex interaction between population size, structure and transmission mechanisms, with important implications for future research.
TL;DR: The role of culturally and linguistically diverse behavior analysts, the mechanisms underlying barriers to showing solidarity, and the mechanisms required for cultural evolution to promote a compassionate and nurturing approach to racial equity are discussed.
Abstract: Multicultural behavior analysts must stand together to address the issues of systemic racism collectively, show solidarity, and support Black lives. This article discusses the role of culturally and linguistically diverse behavior analysts, the mechanisms underlying barriers to showing solidarity, and the mechanisms required for cultural evolution to promote a compassionate and nurturing approach to racial equity. It is critical that non-Black people of color actively participate in antiracist advocacy to express solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
TL;DR: Evidence is presented showing that divination practices are often best viewed as an epistemic technology, and scenarios under which individuals may overestimate the efficacy of divination that contribute to its cultural omnipresence and historical persistence are modeled.
Abstract: Although a substantial literature in anthropology and comparative religion explores divination across diverse societies and back into history, little research has integrated the older ethnographic and historical work with recent insights on human learning, cultural transmission, and cognitive science. Here we present evidence showing that divination practices are often best viewed as an epistemic technology, and we formally model the scenarios under which individuals may overestimate the efficacy of divination that contribute to its cultural omnipresence and historical persistence. We found that strong prior belief, underreporting of negative evidence, and misinferring belief from behavior can all contribute to biased and inaccurate beliefs about the effectiveness of epistemic technologies. We finally suggest how scientific epistemology, as it emerged in Western societies over the past few centuries, has influenced the importance and cultural centrality of divination practices.
TL;DR: A comprehensive review of the literature on five experimental tasks documented 45 studies showing social information waste, and four studies showed social information being over-used as discussed by the authors, which means that human adults fail to give social information its optimal weight.
Abstract: Social information is immensely valuable. Yet we waste it. The information we get from observing other humans and from communicating with them is a cheap and reliable informational resource. It is considered the backbone of human cultural evolution. Theories and models focused on the evolution of social learning show the great adaptive benefits of evolving cognitive tools to process it. In spite of this, human adults in the experimental literature use social information quite inefficiently: they do not take it sufficiently into account. A comprehensive review of the literature on five experimental tasks documented 45 studies showing social information waste, and four studies showing social information being over-used. These studies cover 'egocentric discounting' phenomena as studied by social psychology, but also include experimental social learning studies. Social information waste means that human adults fail to give social information its optimal weight. Both proximal explanations and accounts derived from evolutionary theory leave crucial aspects of the phenomenon unaccounted for: egocentric discounting is a pervasive effect that no single unifying explanation fully captures. Cultural evolutionary theory's insistence on the power and benefits of social influence is to be balanced against this phenomenon. This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'.
TL;DR: Zhang et al. as discussed by the authors argue that ecological civilization operates as an imaginary that builds on both state-led environmental narratives and sociocultural traditions, and the unified diversity projected by the imaginary is a co-production of local knowledge with the normativity embedded in ecological civilization.
Abstract: The field of science, technology and society (STS) calls for greater geographical diversity that draws attention to ‘the rich mosaic of non-Western cultures.’ This perspective provides cultural insights into the construction of the imaginary of ecological civilization in China. From the lens of sociotechnical theory, this perspective presents the discourses and practices constitutive of ecological civilization. We argue that ecological civilization operates as an imaginary that builds on both state-led environmental narratives and sociocultural traditions. In particular, the Chinese perception of human-nature relationships, represented by the principle of “Unity of Man and Nature,” constitutes a key cultural feature in the collective vision of a desirable life of Chinese people. The perspective piece shows how sociocultural roots might mediate or antagonize relations between national and community aspirations. Moreover, ecological civilization extends beyond any single sector or technology, and the unified diversity projected by the imaginary is a co-production of local knowledge with the normativity embedded in ecological civilization.
TL;DR: It is argued that attachment relationships, and particularly secure ones, are important contexts for social learning and cultural transmission and has the potential to serve as a much-needed developmental anchor for models of cultural evolution and gene-culture co-evolution.
Abstract: I argue that attachment relationships, and particularly secure ones, are important contexts for social learning and cultural transmission. Bowlby originally treated the attachment-behavioral system as serving only one evolutionary function: protection, via physical proximity. Yet the time is ripe to consider learning, especially social learning, as an additional functional consequence of attachment. Updated accordingly, attachment theory has the potential to serve as a much-needed developmental anchor for models of cultural evolution and gene-culture co-evolution. To support my arguments, I review progress in evolutionary science since Bowlby's lifetime, highlighting the growing recognition of ecological flexibility and the cultural embeddedness of animal behavior. I also review research pointing to a facilitating role of secure attachment relationships for social learning from caregivers among humans. For illustrational purposes, I show how one important aspect of human culture - religion - is culturally transmitted within attachment relationships, and of how the generalization of attachment-related working models biases the cultural transmission of religion from parents to offspring. I end the paper with a call for empirical research to test the role of attachment in cultural transmission beyond religion.
10 Jun 2021
TL;DR: In this paper, the renewed interest in cultural evolution in archaeology may have a fundamentaleffect on the taxonomies employed and the role of archaeology as a discipline, and the authors argue that this renewed interest might have a fundamental effect on taxonomy and taxonomy.
Abstract: In this paper the authors argue that the renewed interestin cultural evolution in archaeology may have a fundamentaleffect on the taxonomies employed and the roleof archaeology as a discipline
TL;DR: The authors represent an attempt to establish a fruitful dialogue among the field of border studies, history education, sociocultural psychology, and the history of cartography, in order to understand the relationship between border studies and history education.
Abstract: This article represents an attempt to establish a fruitful dialogue among the field of border studies, history education, sociocultural psychology, and the history of cartography. Seminal studies o...
TL;DR: In this article, a dual inheritance framework is proposed to reconcile behavioral genetics and cultural evolution under a Dual Inheritance framework, offering a more nuanced understanding of the interaction between genes and culture, which can explain how factors such as rates of innovation and diffusion, density of cultural sub-groups, and tolerance for behavioral diversity impact heritability estimates.
Abstract: Behavioral genetics and cultural evolution have both revolutionized our understanding of human behavior-largely independent of each other. Here we reconcile these two fields under a dual inheritance framework, offering a more nuanced understanding of the interaction between genes and culture. Going beyond typical analyses of gene-environment interactions, we describe the cultural dynamics that shape these interactions by shaping the environment and population structure. A cultural evolutionary approach can explain, for example, how factors such as rates of innovation and diffusion, density of cultural sub-groups, and tolerance for behavioral diversity impact heritability estimates, thus yielding predictions for different social contexts. Moreover, when cumulative culture functionally overlaps with genes, genetic effects become masked, unmasked, or even reversed, and the causal effects of an identified gene become confounded with features of the cultural environment. The manner of confounding is specific to a particular society at a particular time, but a WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) sampling problem obscures this boundedness. Cultural evolutionary dynamics are typically missing from models of gene-to-phenotype causality, hindering generalizability of genetic effects across societies and across time. We lay out a reconciled framework and use it to predict the ways in which heritability should differ between societies, between socioeconomic levels and other groupings within some societies but not others, and over the life course. An integrated cultural evolutionary behavioral genetic approach cuts through the nature-nurture debate and helps resolve controversies in topics such as IQ.
TL;DR: The self-assembly hypothesis is consistent with archaeological evidence that the stone tools used by early hominins were not dependent on fast, cumulative cultural evolution, and suggests new priorities for research on ‘animal culture’.
Abstract: What makes fast, cumulative cultural evolution work? Where did it come from? Why is it the sole preserve of humans? We set out a self-assembly hypothesis: cultural evolution evolved culturally. We present an evolutionary account that shows this hypothesis to be coherent, plausible, and worthy of further investigation. It has the following steps: (0) in common with other animals, early hominins had significant capacity for social learning; (1) knowledge and skills learned by offspring from their parents began to spread because bearers had more offspring, a process we call CS1 (or Cultural Selection 1); (2) CS1 shaped attentional learning biases; (3) these attentional biases were augmented by explicit learning biases (judgements about what should be copied from whom). Explicit learning biases enabled (4) the high-fidelity, exclusive copying required for fast cultural accumulation of knowledge and skills by a process we call CS2 (or Cultural Selection 2) and (5) the emergence of cognitive processes such as imitation, mindreading and metacognition-'cognitive gadgets' specialized for cultural learning. This self-assembly hypothesis is consistent with archaeological evidence that the stone tools used by early hominins were not dependent on fast, cumulative cultural evolution, and suggests new priorities for research on 'animal culture'. This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on four levels of investigation: traits (what sorts of behaviours are easiest to invent), individuals (what factors make some individuals more likely to be inventors), ecological contexts (what aspects of the environment make invention or transmission more likely), and populations (what features of relationships and societies promote the rise and spread of new inventions).
Abstract: Innovation-the combination of invention and social learning-can empower species to invade new niches via cultural adaptation. Social learning has typically been regarded as the fundamental driver for the emergence of traditions and thus culture. Consequently, invention has been relatively understudied outside the human lineage-despite being the source of new traditions. This neglect leaves basic questions unanswered: what factors promote the creation of new ideas and practices? What affects their spread or loss? We critically review the existing literature, focusing on four levels of investigation: traits (what sorts of behaviours are easiest to invent?), individuals (what factors make some individuals more likely to be inventors?), ecological contexts (what aspects of the environment make invention or transmission more likely?), and populations (what features of relationships and societies promote the rise and spread of new inventions?). We aim to inspire new research by highlighting theoretical and empirical gaps in the study of innovation, focusing primarily on inventions in non-humans. Understanding the role of invention and innovation in the history of life requires a well-developed theoretical framework (which embraces cognitive processes) and a taxonomically broad, cross-species dataset that explicitly investigates inventions and their transmission. We outline such an agenda here. This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'.
01 Jan 2021
TL;DR: A sociocultural approach to giftedness focuses less on the individual student and more on the ways in which that student is supported by and interacts with their immediate social context as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Due in large part to technological advances, society has changed in unprecedented ways and at a breakneck pace. Yet conceptions of giftedness and models for gifted education have not kept pace with these changes. One conceptual change widely applied to other fields is the use of sociocultural theories, which are rarely applied to the study of and education for giftedness and talent development. Such perspectives emphasize the interrelated nature of the individual and their social and cultural contexts. A sociocultural approach to giftedness focuses less on the individual student and more on the ways in which that student is supported by and interacts with their immediate social context. The emphasis in a sociocultural approach to talent development is primarily on the need to provide enriched contexts for students as they interact with each other and cultural tools, resulting in the emergence of talent.
TL;DR: The Learning in Development Research Framework (LDRF) as mentioned in this paper is a transdisciplinary approach to action research that is founded in ecological dynamics that utilizes the Skilled Intentionality Framework (SIF) to capture the role of sociocultural forces in shaping athlete development.
Abstract: Research has shown how social and cultural factors continually shape an athlete’s development journey. For example, the types of practice designed, which individuals are identified as talented and the characteristics that distinguish a good coach, are continually shaped by sociocultural constraints. This potential for a myriad of possible complex and ill-defined challenges (a wicked problem), highlights a need for a framework to guide both research and practice within specific sports organizations. In this paper, we present the Learning in Development Research Framework (LDRF), a deeply contextualized, transdisciplinary approach to action research that is founded in ecological dynamics that utilizes the Skilled Intentionality Framework (SIF) to capture the role of sociocultural forces in shaping athlete development. Further, we present a practical example from a professional football club highlighting the main aim of the LDRF: that player development frameworks should evolve in, interaction with the specific sociocultural context in which practitioners and individuals are embedded. The implication is that there is no ‘copy and paste’ templates. Practitioners and applied scientists should seek to comprehend the distinct contextual complexities of cultures, communities and situations as they encounter them, co-creating practices that, respectively, amplify and dampen helpful and unhelpful aspects of sport forms of life.
TL;DR: It is argued that uniquely human forms of ‘Theory of Mind’ (or ‘ToM’) are a product of cultural evolution, and are not required for language development, such that an account of the cultural origins of ToM does not jeopardise the explanation of language development.
Abstract: I argue that uniquely human forms of ‘Theory of Mind’ (or ‘ToM’) are a product of cultural evolution. Specifically, propositional attitude psychology is a linguistically constructed folk model of the human mind, invented by our ancestors for a range of tasks and refined over successive generations of users. The construction of these folk models gave humans new tools for thinking and reasoning about mental states—and so imbued us with abilities not shared by non-linguistic species. I also argue that uniquely human forms of ToM are not required for language development, such that an account of the cultural origins of ToM does not jeopardise the explanation of language development. Finally, I sketch a historical model of the cultural evolution of mental state talk.
TL;DR: In this paper, a conceptual clarification of the grain problem in cultural evolution is provided, to assess its causes, to unpack its epistemological implications, and to examine its reach and consequences for a science of cultural evolution.
Abstract: High-fidelity cultural transmission, rather than brute intelligence, is the secret of our species’ success, or so many cultural evolutionists claim It has been selected because it ensures the spread, stability and longevity of beneficial cultural traditions, and it supports cumulative cultural change To play these roles, however, fidelity must be a causally-efficient property of cultural transmission This is where the grain problem comes in and challenges the explanatory potency of fidelity Assessing the degree of fidelity of any episode or mechanism of cultural transmission always depends upon an investigator’s choice of grain of description at which cultural traditions are being studied The fidelity of cultural transmission then appears to be relative to the granularity at which one approaches cultural variation, and since there is a multiplicity of grains of description by which the same tradition can be studied, there results a multiplicity of measures of fidelity for a same event or mechanism of cultural transmission If this is correct, because fidelity is always relative to the grain of description dictated by the local and specific research interests of the investigator, then there seems to be no fact of the matter as to whether cultural transmission is faithful or not, independently from a researcher’s framework of analysis The aims of this paper are to offer a conceptual clarification of the grain problem in cultural evolution, to assess its causes, to unpack its epistemological implications, and to examine its reach and consequences for a science of cultural evolution
TL;DR: A new computational model is presented which formalises the assumptions that underlie the hypothesis that language and mindreading interact through cultural evolution, and shows that an informative lexicon evolves not just under a pressure to be successful at communicating, but also under apressure for accurate perspective-inference.
Abstract: Several evolutionary accounts of human social cognition posit that language has co-evolved with the sophisticated mindreading abilities of modern humans. It has also been argued that these mindreading abilities are the product of cultural, rather than biological, evolution. Taken together, these claims suggest that the evolution of language has played an important role in the cultural evolution of human social cognition. Here we present a new computational model which formalises the assumptions that underlie this hypothesis, in order to explore how language and mindreading interact through cultural evolution. This model treats communicative behaviour as an interplay between the context in which communication occurs, an agent’s individual perspective on the world, and the agent’s lexicon. However, each agent’s perspective and lexicon are private mental representations, not directly observable to other agents. Learners are therefore confronted with the task of jointly inferring the lexicon and perspective of their cultural parent, based on their utterances in context. Simulation results show that given these assumptions, an informative lexicon evolves not just under a pressure to be successful at communicating, but also under a pressure for accurate perspective-inference. When such a lexicon evolves, agents become better at inferring others’ perspectives; not because their innate ability to learn about perspectives changes, but because sharing a language (of the right type) with others helps them to do so.
TL;DR: An analysis of national empirical findings of femicide-suicide across various ethnic and sociocultural groups in Israel in the years 2005-2015 suggests that the distribution of the phenomenon and its criminological characteristics vary across immigrant and ethnic minority groups.
Abstract: Among persons who commit murder a certain percentage also commits suicide soon after, a phenomenon known as homicide-suicide. Previous studies indicate that femicide-suicide (female intimate partner homicide-suicides) accounts for the vast majority of homicide-suicide occurrences. Although the femicide-suicide phenomenon cuts across regions and societies, there is a dearth of studies of femicide-suicide patterns, motives, and characteristics among non-Western populations. A review of the few available findings about femicide-suicide in non-Western societies highlights the need for further study and corroboration of the distribution and characteristics of femicide-suicide in non-Western societies. The unique manifestations of the phenomenon among immigrant, ethnic, and social minority groups are of great relevance to Western societies currently facing the challenge of assimilating a growing number of ethnic minorities and immigrant social groups. The study aims to further our understanding of possible sociocultural variations of femicide-suicide by exploring sociodemographic and criminological patterns among non-Western social groups. It presents an analysis of national empirical findings of femicide-suicide across various ethnic and sociocultural groups in Israel in the years 2005-2015, excluding analysis of cases that occurred in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. The characteristics and patterns that are the focus of this study include a sociocultural ethnic profile of the perpetrator, and various criminological characteristics such as homicide and suicide location, homicide and suicide method, and homicide motive. Femicide-suicide events, victims, and perpetrators were compared by calculating frequency distributions and population-based incidence rates. The findings suggest that the distribution of the phenomenon and its criminological characteristics vary across immigrant and ethnic minority groups. Further research is needed to validate the study's empirical observations and to explore the various manifestations of the phenomenon across non-Western ethnic, social, religious, and cultural groups.
TL;DR: The authors discusses two broad versions of human cultural evolution which currently exist in the literature and which emphasize different underlying dynamics, including cultural selection and biased transformation, and concludes that cultural evolution is characterized by one or the other of these dynamics.
Abstract: Here, I discuss two broad versions of human cultural evolution which currently exist in the literature and which emphasize different underlying dynamics. One, which originates in population-genetic-style modelling, emphasizes how cultural selection causes some cultural variants to be favoured and gradually increase in frequency over others. The other, which draws more from cognitive science, holds that cultural change is driven by the biased transformation of cultural variants by individuals in non-random and consistent directions. Despite claims that cultural evolution is characterized by one or the other of these dynamics, these are neither mutually exclusive nor a dichotomy. Different domains of human culture are likely to be more or less strongly weighted towards cultural selection or biased transformation. Identifying cultural dynamics in real-world cultural data is challenging given that they can generate the same population-level patterns, such as directional change or cross-cultural stability, and the same cognitive and emotional mechanisms may underlie both cultural selection and biased transformation. Nevertheless, fine-grained historical analysis and laboratory experiments, combined with formal models to generate quantitative predictions, offer the best way of distinguishing them. This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'.