Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T01:06:49.489Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The empirical evidence that does not support cultural group selection models for the evolution of human cooperation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Shakti Lamba
Shakti Lamba*
Affiliation:
Centre for Ecology and Conservation, College for Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9FE, United Kingdom. [email protected]://biosciences.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=Shakti_Lamba
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I outline key empirical evidence from my research and that of other scholars, testing the role of cultural group selection (CGS) in the evolution of human cooperation, which Richerson et al. failed to mention and which fails to support the CGS hypothesis.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 39 , 2016 , e44
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Falk, A. & Zehnder, C. (2013) A city-wide experiment on trust discrimination. Journal of Public Economics 100: 15–27.Google Scholar
Gurven, M. (2004) Economic games among the Amazonian Tsimane: Exploring the roles of market access, costs of giving, and cooperation on pro-social game behavior. Experimental Economics 7(1):5–24.Google Scholar
Gurven, M., Zanolini, A. & Schniter, E. (2008) Culture sometimes matters: Intra-cultural variation in pro-social behavior among Tsimane Amerindians. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 67(3–4):587–607.Google Scholar
Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E. & Gintis, H. (2004) Foundations of human sociality: Economic experiments and ethnographic evidence from fifteen small-scale societies. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Henrich, J., Ensminger, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., Cardenas, J. C., Gurven, M., Gwako, E., Henrich, N., Lesorogol, C., Marlowe, F., Tracer, D. P. & Ziker, J. (2010a) Markets, religion, community size, and the evolution of fairness and punishment. Science 327(5972):1480–84. doi: 10.1126/science.1182238. Available at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5972/1480.Google Scholar
Henrich, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Ensminger, J., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., Cardenas, J. C., Gurven, M., Gwako, E. L., Henrich, N. S., Lesorogol, C., Marlowe, F., Tracer, D. & Ziker, J. (2006) Costly punishment across human societies. Science 312(5781):1767–70. doi: 10.1126/science.1127333.Google Scholar
Herrmann, B., Thöni, C. & Gächter, S. (2008) Antisocial punishment across societies. Science 319(5868):1362–67. doi: 10.1126/science.1153808.Google Scholar
Huxley, T. H. (1894) Discourses, biological and geological: Essays (vol. 8). D. Appleton.Google Scholar
Lamba, S. (2014) Social learning in cooperative dilemmas. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 281(1787):e20140417. (Published Online May 28, 2014). Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.0417.Google Scholar
Lamba, S. & Mace, R. (2011) Demography and ecology drive variation in cooperation across human populations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 108(35):14426–30. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1105186108.Google Scholar
Lamba, S. & Mace, R. (2012) Reply to Henrich et al.: Behavioral variation needs to be quantified at multiple levels. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 109(2):e34. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1118858109. Available at: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/2/E34.full.Google Scholar
Lamba, S. & Mace, R. (2013) The evolution of fairness: Explaining variation in bargaining behaviour. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 280(1750):e201220128. (Published Online November 21, 2012). doi: 10.1098/rspb.2012.2028. Available at: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1750/20122028.Google Scholar
Nettle, D., Colléony, A. & Cockerill, M. (2011) Variation in cooperative behaviour within a single city. PLoS One 6(10):e26922.Google Scholar
Tognetti, A., Berticat, C., Raymond, M. & Faurie, C. (2012) Sexual selection of human cooperative behaviour: An experimental study in rural Senegal. PLoS ONE 7(9):e44403.Google Scholar