scholarly journals Hawkish but helpful: When cultural group selection favors within-group aggression

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Hanowell
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Violence ◽  
Group Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Group Conflict ◽  
Cultural Group ◽  
Cultural Group Selection ◽  
Human Tendency ◽  
Group Variation ◽  
Selection For

The origin of cooperation is a central problem in evolutionary biology and social science. Cultural group selection and parochial altruism are popular but controversial evolutionary explanations for large-scale cooperation. Proponents of the cultural group selection hypothesis argue that the human tendency to conform - a consequence of our reliance on 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. Proponents of the parochial altruism hypothesis argue that altruism could emerge in tandem with hostility toward other groups if the combination of the two traits increased success in inter-group contests. Proponents of both hypotheses assume that cooperation is altruistic and that within-group conflict is antithetical to cooperation, implying that group selection for cooperation reduces within-group conflict. Yet within-group conflict need not be antithetical to cooperation. This essay uses a mathematical model to show that selection between groups can lead to greater within-group aggression if within-group aggression enhances the value of individually costly public goods contributions. This model may help to explain cross-cultural associations between warfare, socialization for aggression, aggressive sports, and interpersonal violence among humans. It may also apply to other forms of inter-group conflict among humans. Finally, the model suggests that group selection can lead to disharmony within groups, a caveat to the use of group selection models to inform social policy.

The role of cultural group selection in explaining human cooperation is a hard case to prove

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Mace ◽  
Antonio S. Silva
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Group Selection ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Cultural Group ◽  
Hard Case ◽  
Cultural Group Selection ◽  
Group Variation ◽  
Theoretical Issues

AbstractWe believe cultural group selection is an elegant theoretical framework to study the evolution of complex human behaviours, including large-scale cooperation. However, the empirical evidence on key theoretical issues – such as levels of within- and between-group variation and effects of intergroup competition – is so far patchy, with no clear case where all the relevant assumptions and predictions of cultural group selection are met, to the exclusion of other explanations.

Does cultural group selection explain the evolution of pet-keeping?

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Herzog
Keyword(s):  
Group Selection ◽  
Cultural Group ◽  
Cultural Group Selection ◽  
Intergroup Competition ◽  
Inheritance System ◽  
Group Variation

AbstractPet-keeping is highly variable across cultures in both frequency and form. Cultural group selection offers a plausible explanation for the development and spread of this uniquely human phenomenon in that pet-keeping involves an inheritance system, socially transmitted norms and preferences, substantial between-group variation, and (albeit indirectly) intergroup competition.

Foundations of Cooperation

2018 ◽  
pp. 264-282
Author(s):  
Kevin N. Laland
Keyword(s):  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Group Selection ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Cultural Group ◽  
Social Tolerance ◽  
Indirect Reciprocity ◽  
Cultural Group Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Pathways

This chapter reveals that there is strong evidence that the large-scale cooperation observed solely in human societies arises because of our uniquely potent capacities for social learning, imitation, and teaching, combined with the coevolutionary feedbacks that these capabilities have generated on the human mind. Culture took human populations down evolutionary pathways not available to noncultural species, either by creating conditions that promoted established cooperative mechanisms, such as indirect reciprocity and mutualism; or by generating novel cooperative mechanisms not seen in other taxa, such as cultural group selection. In the process, gene–culture coevolution seemingly generated an evolved psychology, comprising an enhanced ability and motivation to learn, teach, communicate through language, imitate, and emulate, as well as predispositions to docility, social tolerance, and the sharing of goals, intentions, and attention. The chapter concludes that this evolved psychology is entirely different from that observed in any other animal, or that could have evolved through genes alone.

Social selection is a powerful explanation for prosociality

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randolph M. Nesse
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Kin Selection ◽  
Group Selection ◽  
Social Selection ◽  
Cultural Group ◽  
Cultural Group Selection ◽  
Social Partners ◽  
Selection For ◽  
Powerful Explanation

AbstractCultural group selection helps explain human cooperation, but social selection offers a complementary, more powerful explanation. Just as sexual selection shapes extreme traits that increase matings, social selection shapes extreme traits that make individuals preferred social partners. Self-interested partner choices create strong and possibly runaway selection for prosocial traits, without requiring group selection, kin selection, or reciprocity.

scholarly journals Social learning in cooperative dilemmas

2014 ◽  
Vol 281 (1787) ◽  
pp. 20140417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shakti Lamba
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Group Selection ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Cultural Group ◽  
Cultural Group Selection ◽  
Cooperative Strategies ◽  
Public Goods Games ◽  
Large Populations

Helping is a cornerstone of social organization and commonplace in human societies. A major challenge for the evolutionary sciences is to explain how cooperation is maintained in large populations with high levels of migration, conditions under which cooperators can be exploited by selfish individuals. Cultural group selection models posit that such large-scale cooperation evolves via selection acting on populations among which behavioural variation is maintained by the cultural transmission of cooperative norms. These models assume that individuals acquire cooperative strategies via social learning. This assumption remains empirically untested. Here, I test this by investigating whether individuals employ conformist or payoff-biased learning in public goods games conducted in 14 villages of a forager–horticulturist society, the Pahari Korwa of India. Individuals did not show a clear tendency to conform or to be payoff-biased and are highly variable in their use of social learning. This variation is partly explained by both individual and village characteristics. The tendency to conform decreases and to be payoff-biased increases as the value of the modal contribution increases. These findings suggest that the use of social learning in cooperative dilemmas is contingent on individuals' circumstances and environments, and question the existence of stably transmitted cultural norms of cooperation.

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