TY - JOUR AU - Nichols, Ryan AU - Charbonneau, Mathieu AU - Chellappoo, Azita AU - Davis, Taylor AU - Haidle, Miriam AU - Kimbrough, Erik O. AU - Moll, Henrike AU - Moore, Richard AU - Scott-Phillips, Thom AU - Purzycki, Benjamin Grant AU - Segovia-Martin, Jose TI - Cultural evolution: A review of theoretical challenges JF - Evolutionary Human Sciences J2 - Evolut. Hum. Sci. VL - 6 PY - 2024 PG - 25 SN - 2513-843X DO - 10.1017/ehs.2024.2 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/34796139 ID - 34796139 N1 - Funding Agency and Grant Number: John Templeton Foundation [62377]; John Templeton Foundation Funding text: The authors thank the John Templeton Foundation for funding the 'Philosophy of Science for Cultural Evolution' virtual research network (62377; Nichols, PI), which supported the writing of this article. We thank Andrew Buskell, Tim Lewens, Grant Ramsey, Kim Sterelny, two anonymous referees and the editor of this journal for valuable commentary on previous versions. The first author thanks Justin Barrett, Alex Arnold, Bryon Cunningham, and William Melanson for insightful conversations that improved thinking represented in this paper. AB - The rapid growth of cultural evolutionary science, its expansion into numerous fields, its use of diverse methods, and several conceptual problems have outpaced corollary developments in theory and philosophy of science. This has led to concern, exemplified in results from a recent survey conducted with members of the Cultural Evolution Society, that the field lacks 'knowledge synthesis', is poorly supported by 'theory', has an ambiguous relation to biological evolution and uses key terms (e.g. 'culture', 'social learning', 'cumulative culture') in ways that hamper operationalization in models, experiments and field studies. Although numerous review papers in the field represent and categorize its empirical findings, the field's theoretical challenges receive less critical attention even though challenges of a theoretical or conceptual nature underlie most of the problems identified by Cultural Evolution Society members. Guided by the heterogeneous 'grand challenges' emergent in this survey, this paper restates those challenges and adopts an organizational style requisite to discussion of them. The paper's goal is to contribute to increasing conceptual clarity and theoretical discernment around the most pressing challenges facing the field of cultural evolutionary science. It will be of most interest to cultural evolutionary scientists, theoreticians, philosophers of science and interdisciplinary researchers. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Hagen, R.V. AU - Scelza, B.A. TI - Sex ratios and gender norms: why both are needed to understand sexual conflict in humans JF - Evolutionary Human Sciences J2 - Evolut. Hum. Sci. VL - 6 PY - 2024 SN - 2513-843X DO - 10.1017/ehs.2024.3 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/34775448 ID - 34775448 N1 - Export Date: 8 April 2024 Correspondence Address: Hagen, R.V.; Department of Anthropology, United States; email: reneehagen@gmail.com Funding text 1: This work was supported by the Hiroshi Wagatsuma Memorial Fellowship. AB - Sexual conflict theory has been successfully applied to predict how in non-human animal populations, sex ratios can lead to conflicting reproductive interests of females and males and affect their bargaining positions in resolving such conflicts of interests. Recently this theory has been extended to understand the resolution of sexual conflict in humans, but with mixed success. We argue that an underappreciation of the complex relationship between gender norms and sex ratios has hampered a successful understanding of sexual conflict in humans. In this paper, we review and expand upon existing theory to increase its applicability to humans, where gender norms regulate sex ratio effects on sexual conflict. Gender norms constrain who is on the marriage market and how they are valued, and may affect reproductive decision-making power. Gender norms can also directly affect sex ratios, and we hypothesize that they structure how individuals respond to market value gained or lost through biased sex ratios. Importantly, gender norms are in part a product of women’s and men’s sometimes conflicting reproductive interests, but these norms are also subject to other evolutionary processes. An integration of sexual conflict theory and cultural evolutionary theory is required to allow for a full understanding of sexual conflict in humans. © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Purzycki, Benjamin Grant AU - Bendixen, Theiss TI - Material insecurity and religiosity: A causal analysis JF - Evolutionary Human Sciences J2 - Evolut. Hum. Sci. VL - 6 PY - 2024 SN - 2513-843X DO - 10.1017/ehs.2023.29 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/34528646 ID - 34528646 AB - Some cultural evolutionary models predict that under stressful reductions of well-being, individuals will be more attracted and fastidiously adhere to traditional systems of norms that promote solidarity and cooperation. As religious systems can bolster human relationships with a variety of mechanisms, the material insecurity hypothesis of religion posits that individual religiosity will increase under conditions of material insecurity. The bulk of the literature up to this point has been correlational and cross-national. Here, across 14 field sites, we examine the causal role that educational attainment and food insecurity play in religiosity. We find that years of formal education and food insecurity do not consistently contribute to individual religiosity cross-culturally. We conclude with a discussion of some theoretical and methodological implications. As a general workflow for cross-cultural causal research in the quantitative social sciences, the present work is a modest but necessary first step in reliably estimating causation in the material insecurity hypothesis of religiosity. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Mccool, Weston C. AU - Codding, Brian F. TI - US homicide rates increase when resources are scarce and unequally distributed JF - Evolutionary Human Sciences J2 - Evolut. Hum. Sci. VL - 6 PY - 2023 PG - 11 SN - 2513-843X DO - 10.1017/ehs.2023.31 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/34668890 ID - 34668890 LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Bonell, Sarah AU - Klebl, Christoph AU - Blake, Khandis AU - Griffiths, Scott TI - How intrasexual competitiveness shapes attitudes towards cosmetic surgery recipients JF - Evolutionary Human Sciences J2 - Evolut. Hum. Sci. VL - 5 PY - 2023 PG - 16 SN - 2513-843X DO - 10.1017/ehs.2023.26 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/34624009 ID - 34624009 LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Dunbar, R. I. M. TI - Why did doctrinal religions first appear in the Northern Subtropical Zone? JF - Evolutionary Human Sciences J2 - Evolut. Hum. Sci. VL - 5 PY - 2023 PG - 19 SN - 2513-843X DO - 10.1017/ehs.2023.13 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/34334843 ID - 34334843 AB - Doctrinal religions that involve recognised gods, more formal theologies, moral codes, dedicated religious spaces and professional priesthoods emerged in two phases during the Neolithic. Almost all of these appeared in a narrow latitudinal band (the northern Subtropical Zone). I suggest that these developments were the result of a need to facilitate community bonding in response to scalar stresses that developed as community sizes increased dramatically beyond those typical of hunter-gatherer societies. Conditions for population growth (as indexed by rainfall patterns and the difference between pathogen load and the length of the growing season) were uniquely optimised in this zone, creating an environment of ecological release in which populations could grow unusually rapidly. The relationship between latitude, religion and language in contemporary societies suggests that the peculiar characteristics of the northern (but not the southern) Subtropical Zone were especially favourable for the evolution of large scale religions as a way of enforcing community cohesion. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Durkee, Patrick K. K. AU - Lukaszewski, Aaron W. W. AU - Buss, David M. M. TI - Status-impact assessment: is accuracy linked with status motivations? JF - Evolutionary Human Sciences J2 - Evolut. Hum. Sci. VL - 5 PY - 2023 PG - 14 SN - 2513-843X DO - 10.1017/ehs.2023.12 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/34296841 ID - 34296841 AB - Status hierarchies are ubiquitous across cultures and have been over deep time. Position in hierarchies shows important links with fitness outcomes. Consequently, humans should possess psychological adaptations for navigating the adaptive challenges posed by living in hierarchically organised groups. One hypothesised adaptation functions to assess, track, and store the status impacts of different acts, characteristics and events in order to guide hierarchy navigation. Although this status-impact assessment system is expected to be universal, there are several ways in which differences in assessment accuracy could arise. This variation may link to broader individual difference constructs. In a preregistered study with samples from India (N = 815) and the USA (N = 822), we sought to examine how individual differences in the accuracy of status-impact assessments covary with status motivations and personality. In both countries, greater overall status-impact assessment accuracy was associated with higher status motivations, as well as higher standing on two broad personality constructs: Honesty-Humility and Conscientiousness. These findings help map broad personality constructs onto variation in the functioning of specific cognitive mechanisms and contribute to an evolutionary understanding of individual differences. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - Brandl, Eva AU - Mace, Ruth AU - Heyes, Cecilia TI - The cultural evolution of teaching JF - Evolutionary Human Sciences J2 - Evolut. Hum. Sci. VL - 5 PY - 2023 PG - 19 SN - 2513-843X DO - 10.1017/ehs.2023.14 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/34236458 ID - 34236458 AB - Teaching is an important process of cultural transmission. Some have argued that human teaching is a cognitive instinct - a form of 'natural cognition' centred on mindreading, shaped by genetic evolution for the education of juveniles, and with a normative developmental trajectory driven by the unfolding of a genetically inherited predisposition to teach. Here, we argue instead that human teaching is a culturally evolved trait that exhibits characteristics of a cognitive gadget. Children learn to teach by participating in teaching interactions with socialising agents, which shape their own teaching practices. This process hijacks psychological mechanisms involved in prosociality and a range of domain-general cognitive abilities, such as reinforcement learning and executive function, but not a suite of cognitive adaptations specifically for teaching. Four lines of evidence converge on this hypothesis. The first, based on psychological experiments in industrialised societies, indicates that domain-general cognitive processes are important for teaching. The second and third lines, based on naturalistic and experimental research in small-scale societies, indicate marked cross-cultural variation in mature teaching practice and in the ontogeny of teaching among children. The fourth line indicates that teaching has been subject to cumulative cultural evolution, i.e. the gradual accumulation of functional changes across generations.Social media summary: Teaching is an important means by which we transmit culture. We argue that teaching is itself thoroughly cultural. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - de Courson, Benoit AU - Thouzeau, Valentin AU - Baumard, Nicolas TI - Quantifying the scientific revolution JF - Evolutionary Human Sciences J2 - Evolut. Hum. Sci. VL - 5 PY - 2023 PG - 22 SN - 2513-843X DO - 10.1017/ehs.2023.6 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/34234038 ID - 34234038 AB - The Scientific Revolution represents a turning point in the history of humanity. Yet it remains ill -understood, partly because of a lack of quantification. Here, we leverage large datasets of individual biographies (N = 22,943) and present the first estimates of scientific production during the late medieval and early modern period (1300-1850). Our data reveal striking differences across countries, with England and the United Provinces being much more creative than other countries, suggesting that economic development has been key in generating the Scientific Revolution. In line with recent results in behavioural sciences, we show that scientific creativity and economic development are associated with other kinds of creative activities in philosophy, literature, music and the arts, as well as with inclusive institutions and ascetic religiosity, suggesting a common underlying mindset associated with long-term orientation and exploration. Finally, we investigate the interplay between economic development and cultural transmission (the so-called Republic of Letters') using partially observed Markov models imported from population biology. Surprisingly, the role of horizontal transmission (from one country to another) seems to have been marginal. Beyond the case of science, our results suggest that economic development is an important factor in the evolution of aspects of human culture. LA - English DB - MTMT ER - TY - JOUR AU - de Courson, Benoit AU - Thouzeau, Valentin AU - Baumard, Nicolas TI - Quantifying the scientific revolution JF - Evolutionary Human Sciences J2 - Evolut. Hum. Sci. VL - 5 PY - 2023 PG - 22 SN - 2513-843X DO - 10.1017/ehs.2023.6 UR - https://m2.mtmt.hu/api/publication/34234037 ID - 34234037 AB - The Scientific Revolution represents a turning point in the history of humanity. Yet it remains ill-understood, partly because of a lack of quantification. Here, we leverage large datasets of individual biographies (N = 22,943) and present the first estimates of scientific production during the late medieval and early modern period (1300-1850). Our data reveal striking differences across countries, with England and the United Provinces being much more creative than other countries, suggesting that economic development has been key in generating the Scientific Revolution. In line with recent results in behavioural sciences, we show that scientific creativity and economic development are associated with other kinds of creative activities in philosophy, literature, music and the arts, as well as with inclusive institutions and ascetic religiosity, suggesting a common underlying mindset associated with long-term orientation and exploration. Finally, we investigate the interplay between economic development and cultural transmission (the so-called 'Republic of Letters') using partially observed Markov models imported from population biology. Surprisingly, the role of horizontal transmission (from one country to another) seems to have been marginal. Beyond the case of science, our results suggest that economic development is an important factor in the evolution of aspects of human culture. LA - English DB - MTMT ER -