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).”

“According to some authors, group selection can explain the evolution of many individual behaviors that improve the fitness of the society, even if those behaviors are costly at the personal level (see, e.g., Bowles, Choi, & Hopfensitz, 2003; Henrich, 2004; van den Bergh & Gowdy, 2009).”

“Whilst the origins of human cooperation and morality are possibly now the hottest topic in evolutionary biology (Bowles & Gintis, 2011; Henrich, 2004; Joyce, 2006; Nowack & Highfield, 2011), I have argued that manners provide the basic everyday framework of rules for sociality, and so are a sort of mini-morality, a pr…”

“This type of knowledge communication likely required reciprocal altruism to have evolved before, which mathematical formalizations and empirical evidence strongly suggest was the case in the human species (Fletcher and Zwick 2007; Henrich 2004; McElreath and Boyd 2007; Trivers 2002).”

“At the core of the hypothesis is the idea that group selection is a more potent force on cultural variation than on genetic variation (Henrich, 2004).”

“, Chudek & Henrich, 2011; Fehr & Gaechter, 2002; Fehr & Schurtenberger, 2018), and cultural group selection (e.g., Chudek & Henrich, 2011; Henrich, 2004; Richerson et al., 2016).”

“…et al. 2016), but it acknowledges scholarship on the role of cultural innovation in support of the spread of religion and atheism (Boyd et al. 2011; Henrich 2004, 2016; Henrich and Boyd 1998; Lawson and McCauley 1990; Norenzayan 2013; Norenzayan et al. 2016; Whitehouse 2004; Wilson 2002) in a way…”

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

“…occurring at the time of Jesus and seen clearly in the Sermon on the Mount, to illustrate how “moral rules can bring older strategies or patterns of behavior up to date, thereby facilitating adaptive behavior in a social milieu that changes over time” (2004:32; see also Holmes 2004; Williams 2005).”

“, other economic markets (Gautier et al., 2009; List, 2004; Riach and Rich, 2002), social dilemmas (Balliet et al., 2014; Nier et al., 2001), political choices (Rand et al., 2009; Beaton et al., 2008), and in evolutionary outcomes (Enke, 2017; Henrich, 2004).”

“Still, given the complexity and the multidisciplinary nature of these studies, the borrowed concept is often interpreted in different ways, without having a common view on the role of multilevel selection and the way the evolutionary dynamics should be analyzed in the presence of multilevel selection forces (Henrich,…”

“From ancient creation myths uniting scattered tribes to modern national narratives binding millions of strangers, shared stories are humanity’s most powerful technology for large-scale cooperation [13,14,5].”

“This is consistent with the evolutionary view of sympathy as a source of cooperation and caring (Batson, 1991; Henrich, 2004).”

“Cultural history will always be important for understanding the mechanisms that govern the dynamics of particular societies (Henrich 2003; Henrich et al. 2004; Boyd et al. 2011).”

“Whether cultural transmission, which allows rapid behavioral adaptation (Boyd & Richerson, 1985; Mesoudi, 2011; Henrich, 2004), produces the same cooperation mechanisms as genetic evolution remains an open question.”

“Further, the loss of inter-connectedness within a community or population can hinder social transmission (van Schaik, 2002; Henrich, 2004; Laiolo & Tella, 2007), leading to the irreversible loss of these unique behaviours and the knowledge upon which they are founded (e.g. Malherbe et al ., 2025).”

“Ethnic identity formation relies on biological cues—such as phenotypic similarity—and on cultural institutions that support altruism, including endogamy, legal boundaries, symbolic signalling and norm enforcement (Henrich 2004).”

“Bowles and Gintis ( ) provided an excellent overview of the behavioral evidence. payoff solution (Henrich et al., 2001; Henrich, 2004).”

“Of theoretical importance, norm psychology could, in concert with transmission biases [14], facilitate the maintenance of cultural differences in prosocial behavior despite migration, which would enable the cultural group selection of prosociality [92–94].”

“…1989; Gintis et al., 2003; Jaeggi & Gurven, 2013; Nowak & Sig-mund, 1998), originally called reciprocal altruism (Trivers, 1971), and cultural group, or multilevel, selection (García and van den Bergh, 2011; Henrich, 2004; Richerson et al., 2016; Smuts, 1999; Traulsen & Nowak, 2006; Wilson, 1997).”

“Furthermore, studies of rippling behavior, which is also a form of coordinated movement, indicate that these movements can be produced by side-to-side signaling between cells, causing cells to locally align (Igoshin et al. 2001 , 2004 ; Sliusarenko et al. 2006; Zhang et al. 2012 ).”

“These observations are consistent with the evolutionary dynamics of cooperation based on cultural group selection theories (Henrich, 2004) and empirical findings (Bell et al., 2009).”

“It has been supposed that certain genes correlate with ingroup cooperation (Henrich, 2004; Sabeti et al., 2007), altruism beyond helping one ’ s next of kin (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Richerson et al., 2016), the development of norms in groups by social learning (Gintis, 2004; McElreath et al.,…”

“See Henrich (2004, sect.”

“Related works by Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Joseph Henrich and co-authors complement the overall approach (Bowles 1998, Fehr and Henrich 2003, Henrich 2004, Henrich and Henrich 2007, Bowles and Gintis 2011, Bowles and Polanía-Reyes 2012, Chudek et al. 2013, Henrich 2016, Gintis 2017).”

“Another theory is the ‘cultural group selection’ theory (Henrich, 2004), which proposes that altruistic behaviours can spread within a population through cultural transmission, such as through learning or imitation.”

“In particular, Houser, McCabe, and Smith (2004, 88) questioned the very existence of non-selfish behavior and suggested that pro-social behavior could be interpreted through the notion of reciprocity and that it is in the self-interest of individuals to reciprocate.”

“A fundamental logic of group selection is that fitness variations owing from group-level properties cause differential reproductive success [13, 14].”

“…favouritism relies on the paradigm of cultural group selection : powered by the propagation of group-specific norms, a group of altruists is more likely to be competitive and victorious when confronted with between-group conflict (Boyd & Richerson, 1990; Henrich, 2004; Richerson et al., 2016).”

“On the one hand, there is growing agreement that inclusive fitness and multilevel selection are mathematically equivalent (Grafen 1984; Henrich 2004; West and Gardner 2007; Bijma and Wade 2008), though some disagree (Simon, Fletcher, and Doebeli 2012; Van Veelen et al. 2012).”

“19 Finally, in recent theoretical development on gene-culture co-evolutions (Gintis, 2007; Henrich, 2004) based on dynamics in which fitness is shaped by a culturally embedded landscape and mutation contributes to alter the environment, including the cultural aspects, it is possible to show that social learning (in th…”

“…selection acting on genetic evolution alone is possible (Sober & Wilson, 1998), the explanatory value of the multi-level selection framework is much increased if, in addition to genetic mechanisms, we allow cultural mechanisms to play a role as well (e.g. Bell et al., 2009; Henrich, 2004).”

“From an evolutionary perspective, imitation seems to have been ‘designed’ by natural selection to extract useful information from the social world [10] and supply the basis for emergent cooperative behaviour.”

“In particular, it is closely linked to the theoretical work in evolutionary game theory investigating the role of altruistic punishment in cooperation (Henrich, 2004; Boyd et al., 2003; Fehr and Gächter, 2002).”

“Advances in Complex Systems, Vol. 13, No. 5 (2010) 635–641 c© World Scientific Publishing Company DOI: 10.1142/S0219525910002785 THE JERUSALEM GAME: CULTURAL EVOLUTION”

“Recently, people also use group selection theory to explain the cooperative behavior in other applications filed, such as [ 11 ], [12].”

“Solutions may include social, psychological, or ecological mechanisms; and these may arise through conscious design or imitation, or through processes which may be described using evolutionary equations, whether genetic or cultural (Mesoudi, et al., 2006; Henrich, 2004; Boyd & Richerson, 1985).”

“Individuals can use several mechanisms in order to learn from others as suggested by Henrich (2004), including conformist transmission (imitate high-frequency behaviours), payoff-biased transmission (imitate people who are more successful), self-similarity transmission (imitate individuals with similarity at some trai…”

“, [44–46]), which it does not in other species [38].”

“The second part of the theory deals with the within-group cultural homogeneity that conformist social learning would tend to lead to over time, and its possible implications for cooperation and group selection (e.g., Henrich, 2004).”

“First, if groups that hold different social norms compete with each other, this can explain why the community with the most group-beneficial social norm survives (Henrich, 2004; Traulsen and Nowak, 2006; Wilson, 1975).”

“A standard finding of formal models of the evolution of cooperation is that free riders, if unchecked, will eventually exploit cooperators to extinction (e.g., Boyd & Richerson, 1988; Henrich, 2004).”

“…and that the empirical evidence has convincingly shown that group-level analyses where equally important in explaining the existence of socially-acquired characteristics of human beings (Henrich 2004), we thus need to turn to a framework allowing for both sources of explanation to be accounted for.”