Cultural group selection, coevolutionary processes and large-scale cooperation

“The operational details of these learning mechanisms appear to have been 'designed' by natural selection to extract useful information from the social world—that is, from the minds of other individuals (Boyd and Richerson, 1985; Henrich and Gil-White, 2001; Henrich and Boyd, 1998).”

“Second, competition between culturally organized groups facilitates the evolution of cooperation within groups [49,50] leading to the expansion of human cooperation and prosocial tendencies, often with a genetic basis [51].”

“Wi = 1 + s [ pi + pi(1− pi)(2pi − 1)H i n(pi) ] , [40]”

“…researchers in this field also study how cultures evolve (through a process analogous to, but not necessarily driven by, genetic evolution (Mesoudi et al. 2004)), and some espouse the idea of selection at the level of the cultural group, not just the gene (Boyd and Richerson 2002; Henrich 2004).”

“There may be no good reason for people in a cluster to co-operate generously or to compete fiercely, but there may be strong reason for people to behave like most of the others (Henrich 2004).”

“Researchers who rely on the Conformist Hypothesis for subsequent theoretical work usually treat it as an uncontroversial assumption (cf. Henrich & Boyd, 2001; Henrich, 2004; Richerson & Boyd, 2005) while review articles on evolution and human behaviour often present conformist-bias as if it were an…”

“…selection can occur among human cultural groups (e.g., warfare, group extinction, imitation across groups, selective migration to higher-functioning groups), and formal models have demonstrated the plausibility of these mechanisms (Boyd & Richerson, 2002; Henrich, 2004; Richerson et al., 2016).”

“This can only occur, however, if the between group selection pressures are greater than the individual benefits of not punishing, which may be unlikely PUNISH VERSUS COMPENSATE 53 (Boyd, Gintis, Bowles, & Richerson, 2003; Henrich, 2004; Henrich & Boyd, 2001; Sober & Wilson, 1999).”

“In addition, moving from genes through individuals to groups, it is now widely accepted that under certain conditions group selection is a possibility (Sloan and Wilson 1998; Landa 1999, Buchanan 2000, Gifford 2000, Rubin 2000, Wilson 2000, Bergstrom 2002, Hammerstein 2003, Henrich 2004 ).”

“Alternatively, “normative conformity” (Henrich, 2004) may have an ancient phylogenetic history; many gregarious animal species demonstrate a simple version of conforming behavior, “following the herd” to avoid exposure to predators (Hamilton, 1971).”

“From an evolutionary perspective, this constellation of behaviors has great value for the group: cooperative groups can outcompete groups with few prosocial members (Henrich, 2004; Kasser, 2004; Sober & Wilson, 1998; Wilson et al., 2013).”

“…(Henrich et al., 2001, 2005, 2006, 2010; Gächter and Herrmann, 2009; Gächter et al., 2010; House et al., 2013) has been touted as key evidence for the existence of between-group variation in cooperative norms that could be the basis for such selection (Henrich, 2004; Henrich et al., 2005).”

“Henrich (2004) describes how cultural evolution, cultural”

“They can produce patterns that, at the population level, fit the description of what cultural evolution theorists call conformist bias, prestige bias and payoff bias [16,59,60].”

“However, if there are C-always types in the population, then the 1 See, for example, Henrich (2004). dynamics produce an endless cycle: as the Sophisticates begin to dominant, having driven the Dalways types to near extinction, the C-always types gain the advantage over the Sophisticates.”

“…will sometimes choose social norms that they anticipate will lead to better equilibria (Levine et al. 2020; Redish 2022), and both cultural and biological evolutionary processes also tend to favor those equilibria that produce better (i.e., fitter) outcomes (Henrich 2004; Boyd & Richerson 1992).”

“More generally, our conclusion is consistent with the idea that natural selection will favour social learning mechanisms that are adaptive [5,10,20,71,72].”

“On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that reliance on imitation increases with environmental uncertainty (Henrich, 2004).”

“…selection a potentially efficient force promoting the evolution of cooperation (Bowles, Choi, & Hopfensitz, 2003; Boyd, Gintis, Bowles, & Richerson, 2003; Boyd, Richerson, & Henrich, 2011; Boyd & Richerson, 1985, 2002; Guzmán, Rodríguez-Sickert, & Rowthorn, 2007; Henrich, 2004; Scheuring, 2009).”

“3 See Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (1981), Henrich and Boyd (2001), Henrich and Gil-White (2000), Boyd and Richerson (2005) or Henrich (2004) .”

“When such culturally-defined groups meet the conditions for natural selection and compete with each other, cultural group selection can shape group-level norms and characteristics (Henrich, 2004; Soltis et al., 1995; Smaldino, 2014; Richerson et al., 2016).”

“Explanations for behavior that require group selection to overcome individual fitness deficits, however, are more onerous than those invoking individual fitness advantages (Tooby & Cosmides, 1996; Williams, 1966), and cultural evolutionary and gene–culture coevolutionary theories have been proposed as alternative expl…”

“occurs locally within each island [14, 39, 40].”

“Humans alone express considerable within-species variance in tolerance and cooperation (Henrich, 2004; Henrich et al., 2004).”

“From an evolutionary perspective, compassion is not a selfless emotion, but rather one that is governed by cost-benefit evaluations (Henrich, 2004).”

“A conditionally cooperative individual needs to identify those who will cooperate and those who will not in order to reduce the risk of exploitation (Henrich, 2004).”

“Chagnon’s argument describing the military advantages of large lineages to explain the cultural evolution of patrilineality versus matrilineality reads as a model for group selection (see Henrich 2004; Sahlins 1961).”

“The reasons that culture is unusually susceptible to group selection on a much larger scale than genetic kin groups are outlined in Richerson & Boyd (2005: 203–213) and more formally by Henrich (2004).”

“Such an outcome has been a key feature of accounts of cultural group selection aimed at explaining the evolution and current existence of the extraordinary forms of cooperation and pro-sociality observed in the human species 53 .”

“Epigenetic transformations come the closest to this, but the analogy is imperfect (Jablonka and Lamb [2005]).”

“6C) (Fehr et al. 2002, Henrich 2004).”

“The apparent alternative is group selection, especially selection between groups with different culturally transmitted social norms (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2004; Henrich, 2004; Richerson and Boyd, 2005; Bowles and Gintis, 2011).”

“Further processes of cultural selection are then required to explain why the cooperative equilibria predominate [10,35].”

“, when group benefits depend, in a non-additive manner, on the frequency of the norm among its constituents), the selective imitation of successful groups can be operationalized as cultural group selection (Henrich 2004; Richerson et al. 2016).”

“Similarly, claims that teaching is critically important in the spread of cultural knowledge has been questioned even in humans (Henrich 2004; cf. Morgan et al. 2015).”

“…that aggressive between-group competition is a critical component of human social organization that has been instrumental in shaping cooperative tendencies (Alexander, 1979, 1990, 2006; Boyd & Richerson, 2009; Darwin, 1871; Flinn, Geary, & Ward, 2005; Gat, 2006; Hamilton, 1975; Henrich, 2004).”

“It is only one further step to consider social groups, structures or institutions as plausible interactors (Nelson and Winter 1982; Henrich 2004; Hodgson and Knudsen 2004b).”

“Another promising concept is conformity (for an overview see Heinrich 2004).”

“Given the central role of this cooperative success in the evolution of human societies (Hardin, 1968, Henrich, 2004; Richerson et al., 2016), researching explanations of co-operation in social dilemmas remains a topic of great scientific interest.”

“Cultural transmission, in particular, has received considerable attention as a mechanism that can intensify the importance of selection at the group level (Henrich, 2004; Richerson & Boyd, 2005; Bell et al., 2009; Bowles & Gintis, 2011; Boyd et al., 2011; Richerson et al., 2015).”

“Social constructivists emphasize that knowledge evolves in complex ecologies of social interaction, in which the relation of the knowing individual and the sociocultural context is mutual, complementary, and co-evolving: the development of either part not only depends on the other but is made possible through the prod…”

“Additionally, insofar as conformist transmission promotes within group-homogeneity and between group heterogeneity, it also ensures that the necessary conditions for cultural group selection are met (Henrich 2004).”

“For each traveller, there is a probability of using conformist transmission and (1 À a) probability of using payoff-biased transmission (Henrich and Boyd, 2001; Henrich, 2004).”

“Surveys of the group selection literature are given in Bergstrom(2002) and Wilson and Sober (1994), and recent contributions, with extensive discussions, are given in Kerr and Godfrey-Smith (2002) and Henrich (2003) .”

“The decoupled life cycle is unfavourable for cooperation because migration occurs after game play but before intergroup competition, which separates a group’s productivity from the group’s ability to win intergroup competitions.”

“The movement of ideas, beliefs, and behaviors can occur when people move, sometimes resulting in trait transmission in the emigrant’s new home, and changes in trait frequencies as well as trait outcomes in the group (Boyd and Richerson 2009; Henrich 2004).”

“Theorists argue that cooperation within groups may evolve in response to competition between groups in both genetic (Choi & Bowles, 2007) and cultural terms (Henrich, 2004).”

“2011) critique of an account of the evolution of cooperation through social norms (e.g. Boyd and Richerson 1985; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003; Gintis 2003; Henrich 2004).”

“Similarly, there is considerable theorizing about how selection among candidate human norms might occur by “blind” biological or (more often) cultural evolutionary processes (Boyd and Richerson 1990; Binmore 2014; Henrich 2004).”

“…literature regarding the mechanisms by which a group can mitigate the free-riding and parasitism that serve to undermine cooperation (Axelrod 1984; Henrich 2004; Nowak 2006; Dugatkin 1997; Santos & Pacheco 2011; Smaldino et al. 2013; Smaldino & Lubell 2014; Killingback et al. 2006; Aktipis 2004;…”

“However, on a now more common and presumably more adequate view, they should be considered complementing and enriching; that is, they are not reductionist in the sense of a reduction of social behavior to biological endowment (genes), they rather support the idea of interactions between genes, environment, and learnin…”

“…the question of whether groups from different populations may vary in their potential to bolster within-group cooperation through conformist social learning, which is thought to be a crucial prerequisite for the cultural evolution of large-scale cooperation (Henrich, 2004; Henrich & Boyd, 1998).”

“However, in cultural group selection models of cooperation [4,10,12,13,32] the use of conformity is not assumed to be flexible.”

“…if there is between-group competition, cooperative norms that provide a fitness advantage to groups that adopt the norm over those that do not may evolve through cultural group selection (Henrich and Boyd 2001; Boyd and Richerson 2002; Boyd et al. 2003; Bowles and Gintis 2004; Henrich 2004).”

“These forces of culturalgroup selection [20,139,140] include:”

“When such cooperation occurs between biologically related others, evolutionary explanations are readily available (see Hamilton, 1964; Henrich, 2004; Nowak, 2006; Simpson & Beckes, 2010), but such cooperation also occurs between unrelated others and is even directed at extended groups in which the cooperating individu…”

“Several authors have presented verbal arguments for why greenbeardism does not work by pointing out that it would produce strong selection for nonaltruists who grow green beards (Dawkins 1982; Grafen 1990; McElreath et al. 2003; Henrich 2004), and there are some agent-based and analytical models showing the collapse o…”

“…2005; Boyd et al., 2011; see also Allison, 1992a,b for similar ideas, Henrich & Boyd, 2001; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Gintis, 2003; Gintis et al., 2003; Henrich, 2004; Henrich & Henrich, 2007, for further applications of CGS; and Lehmann et al., 2007, 2008a for a population genetics formalization).”

“Henrich (Henrich, 2004) calls this cultural learning.”

“In contrast, evolutionary game theory investigates how cooperation can emerge and stabilize as an evolutionary equilibrium through mechanisms such as kin selection 8 , direct reciprocity 9 , indirect reciprocity based on reputation 10,11 , network reciprocity 12 – 14 , and group selection 15 .”

“At the same time, selection can occur at multiple levels (Henrich, 2004; Turchin, 2015; Wilson & Wilson, 2007).”