Cultural group selection is an explanatory model within cultural evolution of how cultural traits evolve according to the competitive advantage they bestow upon a group. This multidisciplinary approach to the question of human culture engages research from the fields of anthropology, behavioural economics, evolutionary biology, evolutionary game theory, sociology, and psychology.
While cultural norms are often beneficial to the individuals who hold them, they need not be. [1] Norms can spread by cultural group selection when they are practiced within successful groups, and norms are more likely to spread from groups that are successful. But, for cultural group selection to occur, there must exist, between groups, cultural differences that when transmitted across time affect the persistence or proliferation of the groups. [2] Cultural norms that provide these advantages will, in turn, lead to the displacement, absorption or even extinction of other, less successful cultural groups. [3] However, game theoretic models suggest that if individuals are able to migrate between groups (which is common in small-scale societies), differences between groups should be difficult to maintain. [4] Research in psychology reveals that humans have a particular set of traits, which include imitation, conformity, and in-group bias, that are capable of supporting the maintenance of these group differences over extended periods of time.
Cultural group selection gives a compelling explanation for how large-scale complex societies have formed. [5] While altruistic behaviour such as kin selection and reciprocity can explain the behaviour of small social groups common in many species, it is unable to explain the large complex societies of unrelated, anonymous individuals that we see in the human species. [4] However, one of the major distinctions between humans and other species is our reliance on social learning in acquiring behaviours. [6] These instincts allow for the acquisition and persistence of culture. [7] Through cultural group selection, culturally specific cooperative behaviour can evolve to support large societies. [4] For example, in a study that spanned a variety of cultures, testing behaviour in Ultimatum, Dictator, and Third-party punishment games, it was found that standards of fairness and inclination to punish were correlated with both participation in world religions and market integration. [8] This indicates how many of the behaviours necessary for complex societies are the result of cultural exposure rather than any evolution of our psychology.
For cultural knowledge and behaviour to persist across multiple generations, humans need to have the capacity to acquire, retain, and transmit cultural information. While many species engage in social learning, humans consistently rely upon it for behavioural cues and information about the environment. In a study comparing human children and young chimpanzees, it was shown that, when given a demonstration on how to retrieve a reward from a box, chimps copy relevant behaviour, while ignoring irrelevant behaviour, to solve the task. Meanwhile, human children will faithfully imitate both relevant and irrelevant behaviour to solve the same task. [6] While this may seem like a negative quality, it is what allows for reliable, high-fidelity transmission of cultural information, and produces stable behavioural equilibria within cultural groups. [4]
Michael Tomasello suggests the following three adaptations are necessary for human culture: [7]
At around 9–12 months infants begin engaging in joint attention. This involves following the gaze of an adult or using them as social reference points. Put simply, they become aware of the adult's attention and behaviour towards objects in the environment. In this sense, the child is beginning to understand people as goal-oriented intentional agents. This is vitally important for learning through imitation and, eventually, language acquisition.
By about 1 year of age, children begin to learn by imitation. At this point, children are capable of discriminating intentional actions from unintentional ones, and will attempt to accurately copy those intentional actions to accomplish tasks they've seen adults do. Because of imitative learning, children will copy those intentional acts which have no perceivable effect on the outcome, [6] as well as strange or unnatural actions when easier methods are available. For example, an Andrew Meltzoff study found that 14-month-old children will, after seeing an adult do it, bend at the waist and press a panel with their head to turn on a light, instead of using their hands. [9] According to Tomasello, imitative learning is necessary for learning the symbolic conventions of language.
Through imitatively learning, the child comprehends that linguistic symbols are intended to focus attention to some specific aspect of the shared experience. In doing this, the child must be able to take the perspective of the speaker. Due to the intersubjectivity of linguistic symbols, language allows one to communicate various perspectives and shift attention to one aspect of the world over another. In learning a language, a child is inheriting a vast set of linguistic symbols that have been passed down many generations. What is inherited then is the methods of shifting attention and perspective that were historically of importance to the people of that culture.
Without between-group variation, cultural group selection could not occur, as there would be no group differentiation to select for. While processes such as cultural drift, epidemics, and natural disasters increase between-group variation, migration and genetic mixing decrease between-group variation and increase within-group variation. Variation is only maintained when cultural groups have mechanisms that prevent the norms of outside groups from invading the cultural group. These ‘mechanisms’ are those uniquely human psychological traits and behaviours that encourage imitation, conformity, and in-group biases.
According to Joseph Henrich, between-group variation is maintained by the following four mechanisms: [4]
Conformist transmission refers to the psychological bias to preferentially imitate high frequency behaviors in the cultural group. This homogenizes the social group and reinforces widely held cultural norms. This explains why individuals within a social group hold the same beliefs and why these beliefs persist over time. While individuals will rely on copying high frequency behaviors under various conditions, this reliance increases when an individual is exposed to ambiguous environmental or social information. [10] [11] [12] Conformist transmission can maintain between-group variation by reducing within-group variation, but it also facilitates the rapid spread of novel ideas, which increases between-group variation. [10] Taken together, reduced within-group variation and increased between-group variation lead to the cultural divergence between groups that is the driving force of cultural group selection.
Prestige-biased transmission is the tendency the copy those members of the group that are more successful. Preferentially copying successful members of the group allows individuals to avoid costly trial-and-error learning by imitating the better-than-average skills of the more prestigious cultural models. Individual can determine the rank of potential models by how much deference they are shown by the rest of the group. Deference is shown to high-prestige individuals to gain the opportunity to copy their successful models. We can see evidence for this bias in how new technologies, or economic practices spread to different groups according to how quick "opinion leaders" adopt them. [13]
Meanwhile, self-similarity transmission is the tendency to copy those individuals who are similar in language, appearance, social standing and other behavioral and cultural traits. In the context of prestige-biased transmission, self-similarity means that individuals will preferentially imitate those high-prestige individuals who are similar to them. From the perspective of an imitator, this trait is adaptive. By only imitating those high-prestige individuals who are similar, the imitator avoids adopting traits or behaviors that are not compatible with his or her knowledge or social environment. [14]
These two social biases act together in reducing within-group variation. Additionally, prestige-biased transmission increases between-group variation by contributing to the spread of novel ideas. [10]
Non-conformists threaten to increase within-group variation by introducing deviant behaviours to the group and must receive costly punishment to maintain a homogenous social group. As a consequence of being punished, non-conformists will be less successful than other members of the group. Prestige-biased transmission would suggest that non-conformist behaviors would, therefore, not spread through the population. Papers on the topic suggest that this kind of punishment is prevalent across many different societies. [15] [16] [17] [18]
Normative conformity is the act of changing one's visible behaviour, simply to appear to match the majority, and without actually internalizing the groups opinions. This differs from conformist transmission since normative conformity does not consider frequency of a behaviour as an indicator of worth. The Asch conformity experiments are a perfect example of how robust this effect is [19] and its replication across many cultures shows that this behaviour is very common. [20] [21] Henrich suggests that normative conformity may have evolved to respond to the spread of punishing behaviour toward non-conformists. [4] By appearing similar to the group, one can gain the advantages of in-group membership, while also avoiding punishment. A curious byproduct of normative conformity is that it can contribute to the conformity transmission of norms that the transmitter does not hold, because they were mistakenly attributed by the imitator.
As Donald T. Campbell says, for cultural group selection to occur, there must be cultural differences between groups which affect their persistence or proliferation. [2] This means groups are selected for or against according to their respective gains or losses relative to other groups.
Joseph Henrich describes the three mechanisms through which this process occurs: [4]
Demographic swamping occurs when one or more cultural groups reproduces individuals faster than other groups in the region because of stable, culturally transmitted ideas or practices. This is the slowest kind of cultural groups selection as it depends on natural selection of between-group cultural variation operating on a scale of millennia. It has been suggested that this is how early agriculturalist displaced hunter-gatherer societies. [22] [23] [24]
Direct intergroup competition is the process by which cultural groups compete with each other over resources by engaging in warfare and raiding. The cultural practices and behaviour that gives an advantage to one group over another will proliferate at the expense of those who cannot compete. [25] There are many possible traits that could contribute to a group's success, such as technological development, social and political organization, economic development, nationalism, etc. According to Joseph Soltis, it would take 500–1000 years for group selection to happen this way. [3]
In prestige-biased group selection, when individuals have opportunities to copy people from nearby groups, they will preferentially imitate the members of groups that are more cooperative than their own. Since cooperative groups have a higher average payoff than non-cooperative groups, members of cooperative groups will be considered more prestigious and worthy of imitation.
Cultural group selection theory can provide insight into human cooperation and is therefore a useful framework for generating hypothesis related to cultural evolution. [26] These theories, however, must be tested using empirical data: a task addressed by several large-scale projects in the field of quantitative history. For instance, the Seshat: Global History Databank uses real-world historical, archaeological and anthropological data to test hypotheses from cultural group selection theory and other competing explanations. [27] [28] The Collaborative for Information and Analysis; the International Institute of Social History; and the Database of Religious History also provide datasets and analytical tools for assessing the validity of competing hypotheses about human cultural evolution. [29] [30] [31]
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures. In popular language, a meme may refer to an Internet meme, typically an image, that is remixed, copied, and circulated in a shared cultural experience online.
Etiquette is the set of norms of personal behaviour in polite society, usually occurring in the form of an ethical code of the expected and accepted social behaviours that accord with the conventions and norms observed and practised by a society, a social class, or a social group. In modern English usage, the French word étiquette dates from the year 1750.
Group selection is a proposed mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group, instead of at the level of the individual or gene.
Imitation is a behavior whereby an individual observes and replicates another's behavior. Imitation is also a form of that leads to the "development of traditions, and ultimately our culture. It allows for the transfer of information between individuals and down generations without the need for genetic inheritance." The word imitation can be applied in many contexts, ranging from animal training to politics. The term generally refers to conscious behavior; subconscious imitation is termed mirroring.
Herd mentality is the tendency for people’s behavior or beliefs to conform to those of the group they belong to. The concept of herd mentality has been studied and analyzed from different perspectives, including biology, psychology and sociology. This psychological phenomenon can have profound impacts on human behavior.
Cultural learning is the way a group of people or animals within a society or culture tend to learn and pass on information. Learning styles can be greatly influenced by how a culture socializes with its children and young people. Cross-cultural research in the past fifty years has primarily focused on differences between Eastern and Western cultures. Some scholars believe that cultural learning differences may be responses to the physical environment in the areas in which a culture was initially founded. These environmental differences include climate, migration patterns, war, agricultural suitability, and endemic pathogens. Cultural evolution, upon which cultural learning is built, is believed to be a product of only the past 10,000 years and to hold little connection to genetics.
Human behavioral ecology (HBE) or human evolutionary ecology applies the principles of evolutionary theory and optimization to the study of human behavioral and cultural diversity. HBE examines the adaptive design of traits, behaviors, and life histories of humans in an ecological context. One aim of modern human behavioral ecology is to determine how ecological and social factors influence and shape behavioral flexibility within and between human populations. Among other things, HBE attempts to explain variation in human behavior as adaptive solutions to the competing life-history demands of growth, development, reproduction, parental care, and mate acquisition. HBE overlaps with evolutionary psychology, human or cultural ecology, and decision theory. It is most prominent in disciplines such as anthropology and psychology where human evolution is considered relevant for a holistic understanding of human behavior.
Dual inheritance theory (DIT), also known as gene–culture coevolution or biocultural evolution, was developed in the 1960s through early 1980s to explain how human behavior is a product of two different and interacting evolutionary processes: genetic evolution and cultural evolution. Genes and culture continually interact in a feedback loop: changes in genes can lead to changes in culture which can then influence genetic selection, and vice versa. One of the theory's central claims is that culture evolves partly through a Darwinian selection process, which dual inheritance theorists often describe by analogy to genetic evolution.
Cultural selection theory is the study of cultural change modelled on theories of evolutionary biology. Cultural selection theory has so far never been a separate discipline. However it has been proposed that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and "the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution". In addition to Darwin's work the term historically covers a diverse range of theories from both the sciences and the humanities including those of Lamark, politics and economics e.g. Bagehot, anthropology e.g. Edward B. Tylor, literature e.g. Ferdinand Brunetière, evolutionary ethics e.g. Leslie Stephen, sociology e.g. Albert Keller, anthropology e.g. Bronislaw Malinowski, Biosciences e.g. Alex Mesoudi, geography e.g. Richard Ormrod, sociobiology and biodiversity e.g. E.O. Wilson, computer programming e.g. Richard Brodie, and other fields e.g. Neoevolutionism, and Evolutionary archaeology.
Evolutionary educational psychology is the study of the relation between inherent folk knowledge and abilities and accompanying inferential and attributional biases as these influence academic learning in evolutionarily novel cultural contexts, such as schools and the industrial workplace. The fundamental premises and principles of this discipline are presented below.
Animal culture can be defined as the ability of non-human animals to learn and transmit behaviors through processes of social or cultural learning. Culture is increasingly seen as a process, involving the social transmittance of behavior among peers and between generations. It can involve the transmission of novel behaviors or regional variations that are independent of genetic or ecological factors.
Behavioral contagion is a form of social contagion involving the spread of behavior through a group. It refers to the propensity for a person to copy a certain behavior of others who are either in the vicinity, or whom they have been exposed to. The term was originally used by Gustave Le Bon in his 1895 work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind to explain undesirable aspects of behavior of people in crowds. In the digital age, behavioral contagion is also concerned with the spread of online behavior and information. A variety of behavioral contagion mechanisms were incorporated in models of collective human behavior.
Culture and social cognition is the relationship between human culture and human cognitive capabilities. Cultural cognitive evolution proposes that humans’ unique cognitive capacities are not solely due to biological inheritance, but are in fact due in large part to cultural transmission and evolution. Modern humans and great apes are separated evolutionarily by about six million years. Proponents of cultural evolution argue that this would not have been enough time for humans to develop the advanced cognitive capabilities required to create tools, language, and build societies through biological evolution. Biological evolution could not have individually produced each of these cognitive capabilities within that period of time. Instead, humans must have evolved the capacity to learn through cultural transmission. This provides a more plausible explanation that would fit within the given time frame. Instead of having to biologically account for each cognitive mechanism that distinguishes modern humans from previous relatives, one would only have to account for one significant biological adaptation for cultural learning. According to this view, the ability to learn through cultural transmission is what distinguishes humans from other primates. Cultural learning allows humans to build on existing knowledge and make collective advancements, also known as the “ratchet effect”. The ratchet effect simply refers to the way in which humans continuously add on to existing knowledge through modifications and improvements. This unique ability distinguishes humans from related primates, who do not seem to build collaborative knowledge over time. Instead, primates seem to build individual knowledge, in which the expertise of one animal is not built on by others, and does not progress across time.
Imitative learning is a type of social learning whereby new behaviors are acquired via imitation. Imitation aids in communication, social interaction, and the ability to modulate one's emotions to account for the emotions of others, and is "essential for healthy sensorimotor development and social functioning". The ability to match one's actions to those observed in others occurs in humans and animals; imitative learning plays an important role in humans in cultural development. Imitative learning is different from observational learning in that it requires a duplication of the behaviour exhibited by the model, whereas observational learning can occur when the learner observes an unwanted behaviour and its subsequent consequences and as a result learns to avoid that behaviour.
Evolutionary psychology has traditionally focused on individual-level behaviors, determined by species-typical psychological adaptations. Considerable work, though, has been done on how these adaptations shape and, ultimately govern, culture. Tooby and Cosmides (1989) argued that the mind consists of many domain-specific psychological adaptations, some of which may constrain what cultural material is learned or taught. As opposed to a domain-general cultural acquisition program, where an individual passively receives culturally-transmitted material from the group, Tooby and Cosmides (1989), among others, argue that: "the psyche evolved to generate adaptive rather than repetitive behavior, and hence critically analyzes the behavior of those surrounding it in highly structured and patterned ways, to be used as a rich source of information out of which to construct a 'private culture' or individually tailored adaptive system; in consequence, this system may or may not mirror the behavior of others in any given respect.".
Cultural evolution is an evolutionary theory of social change. It follows from the definition of culture as "information capable of affecting individuals' behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation and other forms of social transmission". Cultural evolution is the change of this information over time.
Inclusive fitness in humans is the application of inclusive fitness theory to human social behaviour, relationships and cooperation.
There are two main approaches currently used to analyze archaeological remains from an evolutionary perspective: evolutionary archaeology and behavioral ecology. The former assumes that cultural change observed in the archaeological record can be best explained by the direct action of natural selection and other Darwinian processes on heritable variation in artifacts and behavior. The latter assumes that cultural and behavioral change results from phenotypic adaptations to varying social and ecological environments.
Michael Muthukrishna is an associate professor of economic psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), in England. He is an affiliate of the Developmental Economics Group at the LSE's STICERD, technical director of UBC's Database of Religious History, and CIFAR's Azrieli Global Scholar in the Boundaries, Membership and Belonging programme. His main area of interest is the application of research in cultural evolution to public policy.
Parochial altruism is a concept in social psychology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology that describes altruism towards an in-group, often accompanied by hostility towards an out-group. It is a combination of altruism, defined as behavior done for the benefit of others without direct effect on the self, and parochialism, which refers to having a limited viewpoint. Together, these concepts create parochial altruism, or altruism which is limited in scope to one's in-group. Parochial altruism is closely related to the concepts of in-group favoritism and out-group discrimination. Research has suggested that parochial altruism may have evolved in humans to promote high levels of in-group cooperation, which is advantageous for group survival. Parochial altruism is often evoked to explain social behaviors within and between groups, such as why people are cooperative within their social groups and why they may be aggressive towards other social groups.