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).”

“1 The importance of cultural factors for the evolution of cooperation has been studied, among others, by Henrich and Boyd (2001) , Boyd et al. (2003) , Henrich (2004) , Boyd and Richerson (2009) , and Boyd et al. (2011) .”

“That is, neither kin selection nor reciprocal altruism can explain large scale human cooperation (Henrich, 2004; Henrich, et al., 2005).”

“Third, although it is empirically possible, group selection may be subject to parametric constraints (Henrich, 2004).”

“It does so by drawing on theories about social evolution, like kin selection or reciprocity (see cites in Section 1.1 as well as Gervais, 2017; Henrich, 2004).”

“See Henrich (2004) for a discussion for both the potential and limits of genetic group selection.”

“Specifically, it has been argued that humans have a predisposition for conformism—the copying of the majority strategy—which naturally leads to groups where individuals all perform the same strategy [ 46 ,54,56,57].”

“Secondly, the possibility of prosocial behavior can be mathematically demonstrated (Sober and Wilson, 1998, chapter two;Henrich, 2004).”

“Indeed, the extent of cooperation between non-kin is extreme in humans, leading to much debate about the evolutionary mechanisms at play (Fehr and Fischbacher 2003; Henrich 2004; Lamba and Mace 2011).”

“Henrich (2004) and subsequent articles in the special issue of JEBO dissect the biological and cultural basis of human cooperation.”

“A theory of group selection explains evolutionary processes based selection acting on multiple levels, namely of individuals and groups (Wilson and Sober 1994; Wilson 2002; Henrich 2004; Wilson 2006; van den Bergh and Gowdy 2009).”

“If enforcement (punishment of free riders) is also costly to group members, a second-order collective action problem (“Who watches the watchmen?”) must be solved (Panchanathan and Boyd 2004; Smith 2003).”

“Such perspectives imply a phylogenetic signal in punishment across societies (e.g. Boyd & Richerson, 2009; Henrich, 2004), as in other aspects of behaviour and social organisation such as religion, marriage systems and food sharing (e.”

“…number of candidate mechanisms have been proposed in the last several decades; for example, genetic or cultural group selection (Boyd et al., 2003; Henrich, 2004; Wilson and Sober, 1994), punishment (Boyd and Richerson, 1992), reward (Rand et al., 2009), indirect reciprocity (Panchanathan and…”

“The relevance of multilevel selection theory to our concerns derives primarily from the fact that the theory has been applied beyond genetic evolution to culturaltransmission processes (Wilson, 2002; see also Henrich, 2004; Richerson and Boyd, 2005).”

“Discussion of Henrich 2004a, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 53: 85-88.”

“The coevolution theory predicts in-group bias because the altruistic cooperation and altruistic punishment of defectors can enhance groups’ survival chances when groups experience any shocks (Henrich 2004; Chudek and Henrich 2011).”

“Furthermore, the idea of cultural selection, developed by anthropologists addressing the same question about the prevalence of altruism, provides a mechanism for acquired group norms of altruistic behavior to be transmitted to future generations without relying on gene-level evolutionary processes [2, 8, 9, 28, 29].”

“…a relationship history, even when there is no knowledge of these others ’ reputation or when it is uncertain whether they will interact in the future (hereinafter, we refer to this cooperation among strangers as impersonal cooperation; Buchan et al., 2009; Chudek & Henrich, 2011; Henrich, 2004).”

“This approach was first developed by Hamilton [78], and has been more recently studied in [84].”

“This is because when a norm psychology induces humans to adopt their group's traits, this further reinforces any existing equilibrium and drives down within-group variance relative to between-group variance (Henrich, 2004; Bell, 2010).”

“In a natural selection environment, the only criterion is differential reproductive success of human groups or societies (whether determined by genetic factors alone or by inherited and acquired, cultural features simultaneously, cf. Boyd and Richerson, 1985; Henrich, 2004).”

“At one pole (Wi = 1) organizations completely rely on the experience of others (imitation), and on the other pole (Wi = 0) organizations solely rely on their own experience.”

“Again, anthropological and psychological evidence indicates the existence of such a heuristic in social learning (e.g., Aronson et al., 2002; Kameda and Diasuke, 2002; Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004; Henrich, 2004).”

“The perception of fairness and the reaction to unfair behavior seems to be deeply rooted in our cultural and genetic heritage [28,39], as experiments and field studies across different locations and cultural groups suggest [15,31].”

“In the absence of readily observed cues of shared group membership (Boyd & Richerson, 2009; Henrich, 2004; Kurzban, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2001), it might generally have enhanced fitness to evaluate strangers with caution, as our participants did.”

“Groups with a high proportion of prosocial individuals benefit in many ways (Henrich, 2004; Kasser, 2004; Sober and Wilson, 1998; Wilson et al., 2012).”

“This finding is in line with findings in other studies (Smith and Bell 1994, Henrich and Boyd 1998, Sunitiyoso and Matsumoto 2009). In contradiction to this, a strong reliance may also produce negative changes (decreasing level of contribution) when individuals adopt another social learning mechanism, the Cfn model. T…”

“In such a process even genetic selection may add to the result of pro-sociality by additionally selecting particular prosocial genes, something that could not have been expected by conventional genetic evolution (e.g., Henrich, 2004; Richerson & Boyd, 2004; Wilson, 2012).”

“Here it is (I rely on Henrich (2004), a source also cited in Hodgson's comment): This equation relates the expected change in the frequency of a gene (f'U) per generation, the absolute fitness of an individual i (w,), the average fitness of the population (iii), and the current frequency of the…”

“Third, they strengthen the theoretical foundation for cultural group selection, which can operate when transmission-isolating mechanisms maintain between-group differences in behaviours, norms, and institutions (Durham, 1991; Henrich, 2004; Richerson et al., 2016).”

“Henrich (2004) describes and reviews evidence for four mechanisms that promote what we here call informational uniqueness; see also Boyd and Richerson (2010) and Chudek and Henrich (2011).”

“Many contributors assign a large role to social norms enforced by peer punishment (Fehr and Gächter, 2002, Henrich, 2004).”

“First, multilevel selection has become the theoretical framework of choice for many authors studying human cultural evolution (e.g., Boehm, 2011; Henrich, 2003; Johnson, Price, & Van Vugt, 2013; Richerson & Boyd, 2005; Turchin, 2010; D.S. Wilson, 2002, 2015; E.O. Wilson, 2012; Yaworsky, Horowitz, &…”

“The stronger group-level selection is, the more likely it is that the former prevails over the latter (Henrich, 2004a).”

“Hence, inter-group conflict is well described as a social dilemma (e.g., Bornstein 2003; Boyd and Richerson 2009; Henrich 2004; Darwin [1871] 2009).”

“As Boyd and Richerson (1990); Henrich (2004) point out, this can lead to the selection of efficient ESSes in games like the stag hunt.”

“The definition of risks used in the experiment borrows ideas from evolutionary game theory (Smith and Price, 1973) and multi-level selection theory (Bergstrom, 2002; Henrich, 2004).”

“Previous studies by John Gowdy (1994); Henk Volberda and Arie Lewin (2003); Joe Henrich and Robert Boyd (1998); Joe Henrich (2004); Dermot Breslin (2011); and John P. Murmann (2003, 2013) have helped us to define coevolution, and to elaborate the concept of coevolution through promotion.”

“Anthropological and psychological evidence indicates the existence of such a heuristic in social learning (Aronson et al. 2002; Kameda and Diasuke 2002; Cialdini and Goldstein 2004; Henrich 2004).”

“Alternatively, the concept of conformity (cf. Henrich, 2004 ) has been used to”

“Social capital, trust and intrinsic motivation to cooperate tend to be higher in small groups of people who regularly interact with each other in non-anonymous ways (Henrich 2004).”

“…by evolutionary theorist George Price (1970, 1972), has been widely used in evolutionary biology (Frank 1995; Grafen 1985) and has more recently been adopted for modeling cultural evolution (Henrich 2004; El Mouden et al. 2014), including small-scale sustainability problems (Waring et al. 2017).”

“…up to some n th order of punishment, the need to punish at that stage might be invoked so rarely that the payoff disadvantage of an n th order punisher would be swamped by the advantages shared by all members of groups in which punishing types predominate (Henrich and Boyd, 2001; Henrich, 2004).”

“…selection (Bowles et al., 2003); self-interested design (Gavrilets & Duwal Shrestha, 2021; Singh et al., 2017); evoked culture (Krasnow & Delton, 2016; Tooby & Cosmides, 1989); cognitive niche (Pinker, 2010; Tooby & deVore, 1987; Whiten & Erdal, 2012); and demographic swamping (Henrich, 2004).”

“For example, as group-level traits, the co-operative principles may have evolved as an adaptation among groups via group-level cultural selection (Henrich 2004; Richerson et al. 2016).”

“, cooperating with a stranger from a larger population in a one-shot interaction, is not representable therein (e.g., Fehr & Fischbacher, 2005; Henrich, 2004).”

“Three types of group selection that have been identified in the literature differ in the way in which cultural groups replace other groups (Henrich 2004; Van Veelen and Hopfensitz 2007).”

“In theoretical developments such as the one conducted here, where the main concern is the evolution of a trait over subsequent generations based on natural selection forces, the term E(w i Δx i ) in the Price Equation is usually set to zero (see, e.g., Frank, 1995; Henrich, 2004).”

“…theorizing addressing a range of phenomena, from the evolution of morphological traits in various animals to the evolution of behavioral traits in humans (FLETCHER and ZWICK 2007; FRANK 1995, 1997; GRAFEN 2002, 2006; HENRICH 2004; MCELREATH and BOYD 2007; PAGE and NOWAK 2002; VAN VEELEN 2005).”

“A good discussion is provided by the special issue of the journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, organized around the synthesis paper of Henrich (2004).”

“Prosocial behavior, in turn, is bolstered by rituals that encourage solidarity and loyalty, and discourage cheating, defection, or free-riding (Henrich 2004).”