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).”

“Henrich et al. (2005) studies the prosociality in 15 small-scale societies and compare the results with typical results among western students.”

“…an important driver of variation in levels of cooperation across human populations (Boyd, Gintis, Bowles and Richerson 2003; Boyd and Richerson 1985; Choi and Bowles 2007; Gintis 2003; Guzmán, Rodríguez-Sickert and Rowthorn 2007; Henrich et al. 2012; Henrich 2004; Henrich et al. 2005, 2006, 2010).”

“The considered mechanisms are green beards, kin-based selection, reciprocity, indirect reciprocity and punishment, see Henrich (2004) for a summary.”

“…theory suggests that cooperative behavior—defined narrowly as “altruism”—can evolve in six ways: (1) kin selection, (2) direct reciprocity, (3) indirect reciprocity, (4) signaling, (5) genetic group selection, and (6) cultural group selection (Nowak 2006; Lehman & Keller 2006; Henrich 2004).”

“Similar models have been used to investigate the evolution of cooperation and the evolution of group and network structures under conditions of individual and group selection [56, 70, 85].”

“Further, although evidence for genetic group selection is scant at best, cultural group selection can be seen to account for patterns of social change and intergroup dynamics (Henrich 2004; K García and van den Bergh 2011; Norenzayan et al. 2016b).”

“Whether through contacts with individuals of their own group or from another group, members of a group of level ℓ are infected at a rate β ℓ .”

“4) strongly enhance between-group variety and within-group similarity (Boehm 1997; Boyd and Richerson 2005; Chudek and Henrich 2011; Henrich 2004; Laland et al. 2000).”

“While this result might contrast with some social capital studies (Putnam, 1993), it seems consistent with research revealing that economic interdependence can increase prosociality (Henrich & Boyd, 2001), and that that the more the members of a community depend on one another in order to gain access to food and other…”

“products of purely cultural evolution (driven by cultural group selection), or coevolved products of genes responding to the novel social environments created by cultural group selection’ [18].”

“This question is important for a number of reasons, including the possibility that societal differences in cooperation may have played an important role in human cultural evolution (Henrich, 2004; Richerson et al., 2016).”

“…by a large body of work arguing that culturally inherited institutions—taken to include norms, laws, and policies—will be favored by selection when they effectively suppress free riding and defection in cooperative interactions (Boyd and Richerson 2009; Chudek and Henrich 2011; Henrich 2004).”

“…the effects of different forms of transmission (e.g. including non-vertical transmission, biased or unbiased; starting from Lehmann et al. 2008; Lehmann and Feldman 2008; Boyd et al. 2011; Birch 2017) and explore interaction with CS2 processes (starting from Henrich 2004b; El Mouden et al. 2014).”

“Such a mechanism is usually called cultural group selection [11].”

“Iwanttoconcludethisdiscussionbyofferingafewinsightson howthePriceequationcanaddressadebateinourfield,theroleof cultural group selection in explaining the evolution of cooperation (for a lengthier discussion, see Henrich, 2004; McElreathandBoyd,2007,chapter6).”

“In the last decade or so evolutionary biologists and evolutionary social scientists have renewed their interest in groups and group-level phenomena in the form of multi-level selection (OKASHA 2006) and cultural (rather than genetic) group selection (HENRICH 2004).”

“53(1), 2004] has arranged a special issue on the Price Equation in the context of Henrich’s contributions ( Henrich 2004 ).”

“…selection processes are not confined to the genetic level but also operate at higher K levels of social organization, where social units compete for more adaptive cultural and sociostructural environments that favor societal reproduction (Henrich 2004; Richerson et al. 2016; Wilson et al. 2008).”

“Finally, community-level cooperation frequently extends to common defense, modification of living space, organization of symbolic displays and ritual activities, and the production of public goods such as utilities and transportation systems in larger-scale societies [19, 20].”

“Most studies of cumulative culture rely on either accumulation of a single dimension of cultural complexity (e.g. Henrich, 2004a), with only a few studies (Kempe et al., 2014; Kolodny et al., 2015; Mesoudi, 2011) that consider the accumulation and improvement of different cultural traits.”

“…those which militate for ingroup cohesion and enhance between-group competitiveness are theorized to be preferred by cultural group selection, while the representation in the pool of cultural variants of those which have deleterious effects will in the long run be attenuated (Henrich 2004: 26–27).”

“Different mechanisms have been used to explain the rise of cooperation, norms, and ethics in societies: kinship altruism, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, network reciprocity, group selection, and many others (Capraro & Perc, 2018; Henrich, 2004; M. A. Nowak, 2006).”

“…group selection [Bowles et al., 2003], all ensure that altruists receive a second-order bene t that compensates for the initial cost: either they are more likely (compared to non-altruists) to bene t from altruism or less likely to su er from altruistic punishment [Henrich, 2004, Queller, 1992b]).”

“Theoretical models developed to understand the evolution of human cooperation suggest that intergroup conflict can influence the evolution of within- group social traits (Bowles, 2006; Henrich, 2004).”

“Due to this bias, little is known about how cultural selection pressures [8, 9] on the cooperativeness or competitiveness of games might emerge as a function of variation in the cultural and natural environment.”

“However, none of these species exhibit any general tendency to cooperate with every individual they encounter (Henrich 2004).”

“Henrich (2004), insanlarda kültürel aktarımı gerçekleştiren iki çeşit sosyal öğrenme biçimi olduğunu öne sürmüştür.”

“…by a police force) or socially sanctioned retaliation (e.g., the beating up of deserters during warfare) can stabilize cooperative norms within societies, as both data and theory attest (Boyd & Richerson, 1992; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Fehr & Gachter, 2002; Henrich, 2004b; Richerson et al., 2014).”

“Under the theoretical framework of inclusive fitness and reciprocal altruism (Hamilton, 1964a, 1964b; Henrich, 2004; Trivers, 1971), evolutionary theorists have investigated costly prosocial behavior.”

“, 2008), its similarities with other species (Bräuer and Hanus, 2012; Warneken and Tomasello, 2009; Brosnan and de Waal, 2014), and, to a lesser extent, its universality (Marshall et al., 1999; Henrich, 2004).”

“Fortunately, all of this has been done elsewhere, and a growing number of social scientists from across the disciplines of psychology, anthropology, biology, economics and philosophy continues to marshal evidence in favor of this approach (for cultural group selection in general: Boyd and Richerson, 2002; Henrich, 200…”

“In the case of genetic evolution, however, these conditions are also generally thought to be quite rare, whereas in cultural evolution the prospects of group selection turn out to be better, mainly because of transmission mechanisms such as conformism that decrease variation within the group (see Boyd and Richerson, 1…”

““Normative conformity” can already be found in simpler organized systems, for instance, “following the herd” behavior in gregarious animals (Henrich 2004).”

“…al., 1992; Boyd and Richerson, 1992; Bowles, 2004; Salganik et al., 2006), extreme behaviors (Boyd and Richerson, 1985), cultural group selection (Henrich, 2004), ethnically marked social groups (Boyd and Richerson, 1987; McElreath et al., 2003), and occasionally even maladaptive behaviors (Boyd…”

“…ergeben, den Akteuren und Gruppen zuzuordnen und aus der Interaktionsstruktur heraus verständlich zu machen (für interessierte Sozialwissenschaftler ist hier insbesondere die Darstellung der Price-Gleichung bei Henrich 2004 und die sich daran anschließende Diskussion ein guter Einstieg).”

“This work often relies on formal models that embrace multilevel selection (Boyd and Richerson 1985; Boyd et al. 2003; Henrich 2004; Nowak et al. 2010; Nowak and Highfield 2011), and on explanations that stress ontogenetic processes such as imitation, teaching, or strong reciprocity as causally…”

“…persistence and form are partially shaped by their functional efficacy within a given socio-ecological context, often emerging through undirected cultural evolution, potentially amplified by mechanisms like group selection (Henrich, 2004; Wilson et al., 2013) or deliberate design (Sunstein, 2019).”

“…transmission (Henrich and Boyd, 1998) if individuals disproportionately adopt prevalent traits within their group; through imitation and group pressure (Richerson and Boyd, 2008); and through cultural group selection based on cooperation and coordination (Boyd and Henrich, 2004; Richerson, 2005).”

“This is consistent with how conformity has previously been modelled over one order of social information (Boyd and Richerson, 1985: chapter 7; Henrich, 2004; Henrich & Boyd, 2001).”

“…shared value and practices, rule following behaviour (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001; Hoff & Stiglitz, 2016); ‘reciprocation norm’ (Chudek & Henrich, 2011; Henrich, 2004; Richerson & Boyd, 2005); included four items: normed behaviour in social exchanges (Eisenberger et al., 2001), sharing…”

“…not only were these replicators highly dependent upon each other, but their interactions enabled niche construction to occur with unprecedented rapidity via gene-culture coevolution and cultural groupselection (A. Bell, 2010; Henrich, 2004; Lansing & Fox, 2011; Rendell, Fogarty, & Laland, 2011).”

“Hence, the situation is well described as a multi-level social dilemma, in which the intra-group conflict is embedded in the inter-group conflict (e.g. Bornstein, 2003; Boyd and Richerson, 2009; Henrich, 2004; Darwin, 1871/2009).”

“It has been proposed that beliefs and practices that foster intragroup cooperation, such as fear of supernatural punishment and commitment signaling, have spread and multiplied via these mechanisms (Henrich, 2004; Richerson & Boyd, 2005).”

“They have heritable characteristics and are subject to selection, such that those social and/or cultural features providing greater competitive fitness to their groups tend to prevail [3,4].”

“is well known [77–87] demonstrate that not only humans, but also other species have a propensity to”

“Recent scholarship in evolutionary biology is quite interesting indeed—it suggests not only do we humans, and other species as well, have a proclivity for group belonging, which encourages many forms of cooperation and altruism, but furthermore, this very ―groupishness‖ may actually have been elemental to our successf…”

“…(i.e. the interactions of firms have properties distinct from the firms themselves) and these properties can and do result in greater fitness for the firms within the network as well as for the network itself and is selected for in the process of evolution (Ladley et al., 2011, Henrich, 2004).”

“That is, humans are the only animals who readily work with individuals with whom they have no genetic material in common, have never met before, and have an extremely low probability of ever encountering face to face again (Dunbar, 2004; Flinn, Geary, & Ward, 2005; Henrich, 2004).”

“To make punishment coherent, scholars assume that some actors value cooperation enough to punish noncooperators (see, e.g., Boyd et al. 2003; Boyd and Richerson 1992; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003 ;F ehr et al.2002; Fehr and Gachter 2000, 2002; Fehr and Henrich 2003; Fehr and Schmidt 1999 ;F owler2005; Henrich 2004; Ostro…”

“, Eerkens & Lipo, 2007; Laing, 2008; Richerson & Boyd, 2005) with mechanisms that favor pro-social behaviors on the scale of groups (Bowles, Choi, & Hopfensitz, 2003; Henrich, 2004).”

“Anonymous one-shot altruism has been documented experimentally many times (Camerer, 2003), but providing an evolutionary explanation has proven to be a caustic and controversy-fi lled area of research (Henrich, 2004; Raihani & Bshary, 2015).”

“…social interaction, as it helps us understand human actions (e.g., Baron-Cohen, 1995; Frith and Frith, 2005), underpins cultural learning (e.g., Henrich, 2004; Herrmann et al., 2007), and is vital for effective communication and social decision-making (e.g., Baron-Cohen, 1995; Birch et al.,…”

“The logic of cultural group selection (Boyd and Richerson 1988; Henrich 2004, 2020) goes further.”

“Our result is thus in line with previous results on conformist transmission enhancing inter-group differences (Henrich 2004).”

“The efficiency view is natural from an evolutionary perspective: the argument is that selection pressures at the level of the group (e.g. via direct inter-group conflict or differential population growth) will favour groups that use resources more efficiently (Henrich, 2004; Pinker, 2015).”

“This would be cultural group selection (cf. Henrich, 2004; Boyd and Richerson, 2009).”

“Outside the scientific literature, this phenomenon relates to the imitation of behaviors and strategies of “prestigious individuals”, where prestige can be signaled in different ways, from intellectual to physical traits (Henrich 2004; Henrich and Broesch 2011).”

“However, GCCE theorists emphasize the role of culture in the process of group selection (Henrich 2004a; Richerson and Boyd 2005), which provides them with a strong argument against Williams.”