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).”

“To take the example of cultural group selection, prestige bias largely functions as a mechanism for minimising within-group variation andmaintaining between-group variation (Henrich 2004).”

“The selective pressure arising from group competition is what Boyd, Richerson, Henrich and others refer to as ‘cultural group selection’ (Boyd and Richerson 1985, 2002; Richerson and Boyd 1999; Henrich 2004; Richerson et al. 2016).”

“This is because that there are totally 64 (or 16) types for social norms with (or without) punishment option, and only a few of them can foster cooperation (Henrich, 2004).”

“These traits are presumed to be more advantageous [26,27].”

“This cooperation is not only a prerequisite for the provision of public (or public-safety) goods, but also a source of social capital that expands interpersonal networks, fosters generalized reciprocity, and advances collaborative governance (3).”

“This makes our setup a conservative test of the group-selection mechanism, which depends on between-group variance to operate [Henrich, 2004, Boyd and Richerson, 2009].”

“They underline that cooperative behavior may propagate through social learning and imitation of successful individuals, while being sustained by sanctions and reward structures (Boyd and Richerson 1985, 2005; Richerson and Boyd, 2005; Henrich 2016; Henrich, Richerson, and Boyd, 2016).”

“This formulation intends to reflect prosocial punishment (Henrich, 2004 ; Bauer et al., 2014 ), because the stronger the defenses around the compound, the more those outside will precisely feel rejected.”

“Cultural group selection theory explains how individually costly cultural traits can evolve due to the competitive advantage they bestow at the group level (Henrich, 2004; Boyd & Richerson, 2010).”

“Individual-level costs and benefits can result in the stabilization of many social practices, including many that are not collectively beneficial (Henrich, 2004).”

“A multilevel selection engages social mechanisms, such as kin-based selection, reciprocity, and punishment, to explain many altruistic and cooperative behaviours that are difficult to explain under merely individual selection (Henrich 2004).”

“We hypothesized that norm internalization would increase between-group variation, thereby amplifying group selective forces [Henrich, 2004, Boyd and Richerson, 2005].”

“Esto fue analizado antropológicamente por Richerson y Boyd (2005), Henrich (2004) y Reyes-García et al. (2016).”

“This is occasionally possible because both fields share a common toolkit in evolutionary game theory and dynamical systems, as well as a common interest in the evolution of cooperation and pro-social behavior [63-71].”

“Group-level selection can operate both biologically as well as culturally (Henrich, 2004; Richerson et al., 2016).”

“The idea that selection can act on cultural groups has been well explored in the domain of religion (Atran and Henrich 2010; Henrich 2004; Norenzayan et al. 2016; Wilson 2002).”

“Concurrently, individual versus group-level selection is an issue that has been controversial (Henrich, 2004; Williams, 1966).”

“See Sober and Wilson (1998), Field (2001), Henrich (2004), Wilson and Wilson (2007).”

“1The 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).”

“Na condução deste debate, a HD acaba provendo insights contrários ao paradigma do egoísmo, discutindo o altruísmo dentro de uma perspectiva de seleção de grupo (Henrich, 2004) tal qual o próprio Darwin teria sugerido (Richerson, Boyd, 2005, p.12).”

“…or group selection remain popular but controversial; such models suggest that cooperative groups can develop resources to support increasing population faster than non-cooperative groups, and group-level selective pressure supports cooperation in the long-run (Henrich, 2004; Nowak, 2006).”

“Combining these assumptions, researchers argue that conformist social learning maintained sufficient between-group variation to allow group selection (which favors altruism) to overpower individual selection (which favors selfishness), whereupon large-scale altruism could emerge (Henrich 2004).”

“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).”

“Helping behavior is linked to altruism (Piliavin & Charng, 1990) as well as to reciprocity (Fehr, Fischbacher, & Gächter, 2002; Henrich, 2004; Oberholzer-Gee, Bohnet, & Frey, 1997).”

“The other is social evolution in human populations, where recent work has placed considerable emphasis on models of ‘‘cultural group selection’’ (see, e.g., Heinrich and Boyd 2001; Heinrich 2004; Boyd and Richerson 2010).”

“33 See agent A’s reaction function in equation (15).”

“As group-level traits, institutions 153 evolve among groups via a process called group-level cultural selection (Henrich, 2004; 154 Richerson et al., 2016), but not all group-traits that benefit groups are adaptations.”

“The peculiarity of human cooperation lies in our tendency and ability to engage in large-scale cooperative acts that do not (only) rely on interpersonal interactions but on institutionalized cultural norms (Henrich, 2004).”

“, 2007), is key to human life, driving our evolutionary success across all spheres of social interaction, ranging from dyadic interaction to large-scale global coordination (Henrich, 2004).”

“Importantly cooperative interactions also occur at the group level and play an important role in the formation of social and cultural norms (Henrich, 2004; Henrich et al., 2001).”

“While specific cultural processes may provide conditions for group-level adaptations (Henrich 2004), the focus on individual trade-offs in HBE forces attention to conflicts of interest among individuals and between individuals and groups, and to the implications of such conflicts for collective action, emergent social…”

“…to demonstrate that social learning (of the firm) and cultural transmission mechanisms (in the network) can support the evolution of cooperation, where strategies, beliefs, social norms, etc. are learned by observation and interaction in social groups (see Henrich, 2004; Henrich & Henrich, 2006).”

“Mechanisms that facilitate cooperation, include kin selection [5‒9], direct and indirect reciprocity [1, 10‒13], network reciprocity [14‒17], trust [18, 19], group selection [20, 21], cooperation in game theory [22, 23], and evolution of cooperation [24, 25].”

“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…”

“However, mechanisms like kin selection and reciprocal altruism have difficulty explaining large scale, largely anonymous human cooperation under conditions in which cooperation is actually and routinely observed among humans (e.g., Henrich, 2004; Henrich, et al., 2005).”