Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-nt87m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-21T05:22:48.166Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Coalitional psychology and the evolution of nationalistic cultures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2025

Amine Sijilmassi*
Affiliation:
Département d’études cognitives, Institut Jean Nicod, ENS, EHESS, PSL University, CNRS, Paris, France [email protected] [email protected] https://nicolasbaumards.org/
Lou Safra
Affiliation:
Center for Political Research-CEVIPOF, Sciences Po (CNRS UMR 7048), Paris, France [email protected] https://sites.google.com/site/lousafra/home
Nicolas Baumard
Affiliation:
Département d’études cognitives, Institut Jean Nicod, ENS, EHESS, PSL University, CNRS, Paris, France [email protected] [email protected] https://nicolasbaumards.org/
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

The commentaries addressed various aspects of our account of historical myths. We respond by clarifying the evolutionary theory of coalitional psychology that underlies our claims (R1). This addresses concerns about the role of fitness interdependence in large groups (R2), cultural transmission processes (R3), alternative routes to nation-building (R4) and the role of proximal mechanisms (R5). Finally, we evaluate alternative theories (R6) and discuss directions for future research (R7).

Type
Authors' Response
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

These authors contributed equally to this work.

References

Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. A. (2012). Why nations fail: The origins of power, prosperity and poverty. Profile Books.Google Scholar
Al-Shawaf, L., Conroy-Beam, D., Asao, K., & Buss, D. M. (2016). Human emotions: An evolutionary psychological perspective. Emotion Review, 8(2), 173186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, B. R. O'G. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Revised and extended edition). Verso.Google Scholar
André, J., Fitouchi, L., Debove, S., & Baumard, N. (2022). An evolutionary contractualist theory of morality. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/2hxguCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balliet, D., Wu, J., & De Dreu, C. K. (2014). Ingroup favoritism in cooperation: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 140(6), 1556.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barclay, P. (2020). Reciprocity creates a stake in one's partner, or why you should cooperate even when anonymous. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 287(1929), 20200819.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barclay, P., & Benard, S. (2020). The effects of social vs. asocial threats on group cooperation and manipulation of perceived threats. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2, e54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barclay, P., Bliege Bird, R., Roberts, G., & Számadó, S. (2021). Cooperating to show that you care: Costly helping as an honest signal of fitness interdependence. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 376(1838), 20200292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartoš, V., & Levely, I. (2021). Sanctioning and trustworthiness across ethnic groups: Experimental evidence from Afghanistan. Journal of Public Economics, 194, 104347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ben-Amos, A. (2000). Funerals, politics, and memory in modern France 1789–1996. OUP, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ben-Amos, A. (2003). War commemoration and the formation of Israeli national identity. Journal of Political & Military Sociology, 31(2), 171195.Google Scholar
Ben-Yehuda, N. (1996). Masada myth: Collective memory and mythmaking in Israel. University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Bieber, F. (2002). Nationalist mobilization and stories of Serb suffering: The Kosovo myth from 600th anniversary to the present. Rethinking History, 6(1), 95110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1994). Beyond intuition and instinct blindness: Toward an evolutionarily rigorous cognitive science. Cognition, 50(1–3), 4177.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
De Freitas, J., Thomas, K., DeScioli, P., & Pinker, S. (2019). Common knowledge, coordination, and strategic mentalizing in human social life. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(28), 1375113758.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dessalles, J. L. (2018). Self-sacrifice as a social signal. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 41, e200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dessalles, J. L. (2024). Why honor heroes? Praise as a social signal. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08893Google Scholar
Deutchman, P., Amir, D., Jordan, M. R., & McAuliffe, K. (2022). Common knowledge promotes cooperation in the threshold public goods game by reducing uncertainty. Evolution and Human Behavior, 43(2), 155167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dubourg, E., & Baumard, N. (2022). Why imaginary worlds?: The psychological foundations and cultural evolution of fictions with imaginary worlds. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45, e76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitouchi, L., & Singh, M. (2022). Supernatural punishment beliefs as cognitively compelling tools of social control. Current Opinion in Psychology, 44, 252257.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fitouchi, L., André, J. B., & Baumard, N. (2023). Moral disciplining: The cognitive and evolutionary foundations of puritanical morality. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 46, e293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitouchi, L., Singh, M., André, J., & Baumard, N. (2023). Prosocial religions as folk-technologies of mutual policing. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/qdhkaCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitouchi, L., André, J.-B., & Baumard, N. (2024), Are there really so many moral emotions? Carving morality at its functional joints. In Al-Shawaf, L., & Shackelford, T. K. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of evolution and the emotions (pp. 944967). Oxford Academic.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gal, A. (2009). National restoration and moral renewal: The dialectics of the past in the emergence of modern Israel. In Carvalho, S., & Gemenne, F. (Eds.), Nations and their histories: Constructions and representations (pp. 172188). Palgrave Macmillan UK.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gervais, W. M. (2013). In godlessness we distrust: Using social psychology to solve the puzzle of antiatheist prejudice: In godlessness we distrust. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7(6), 366377. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12035CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gervais, W. M. (2014). Everything is permitted? People intuitively judge immorality as representative of atheists. PloS one, 9(4), e92302.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gervais, W. M., Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2011). Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(6), 11891206. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025882CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gervais, W. M., Xygalatas, D., McKay, R. T., van Elk, M., Buchtel, E. E., Aveyard, M., … Bulbulia, J. (2017). Global evidence of extreme intuitive moral prejudice against atheists. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(8), 0151. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0151CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenburgh, A., & Raihani, N. J. (2022). Paranoia and conspiracy thinking. Current Opinion in Psychology, 47, 101362.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Habyarimana, J., Humphreys, M., Posner, D. N., & Weinstein, J. M. (2007). Why does ethnic diversity undermine public goods provision? American Political Science Review, 101(4), 709725.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hechter, M. (2000). Containing nationalism. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Horowitz, D. L. (1985). Ethnic groups in conflict. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, E. (2015). Land, history or modernization? Explaining ethnic fractionalization. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(2), 193210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirkpatrick, L. A., & Navarrete, C. D. (2006). Reports of my death anxiety have been greatly exaggerated: A critique of terror management theory from an evolutionary perspective. Psychological Inquiry, 17(4), 288298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klor, E. F., & Shayo, M. (2010). Social identity and preferences over redistribution. Journal of Public Economics, 94(3–4), 269278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuzio, T. (2016). Nationalism and authoritarianism in Russia: Introduction to the special issue. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 49(1), 111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, N. P., Van Vugt, M., & Colarelli, S. M. (2018). The evolutionary mismatch hypothesis: Implications for psychological science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(1), 3844.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lie-Panis, J., Fitouchi, L., Baumard, N., & André, J. (2023). A model of endogenous institution formation through limited reputational incentives. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/uftzbCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lienard, P. (2014). Beyond kin: cooperation in a tribal society. In Van Lange, P. A. M., Rockenbach, B., & Yamagishi, T. (Eds.), Reward and punishment in social dilemmas (pp. 214234). Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lomonosov, M. (2021). ‘Ethnic memories’ from above? The Kosovo myth among the South Slavs and minimalist ethnosymbolism. Nations and Nationalism, 27(4), 11111126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mercier, H. (2020). Not born yesterday: The science of who we trust and what we believe. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Moya, C. (2023). What does it mean for humans to be groupish? Philosophy Compass, 18(2), e12893.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nettle, D., & Bateson, M. (2012). The evolutionary origins of mood and its disorders. Current Biology, 22(17), R712R721.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nettle, D., Gibson, M. A., Lawson, D. W., & Sear, R. (2013). Human behavioral ecology: Current research and future prospects. Behavioral Ecology, 24(5), 10311040.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neuberg, S. L., & Schaller, M. (2016). An evolutionary threat-management approach to prejudices. Current Opinion in Psychology, 7, 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noyes, A., & Dunham, Y. (2017). Mutual intentions as a causal framework for social groups. Cognition, 162, 133142.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Olson, M. (1965). The logic of collective action. Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osborne, D., Milojev, P., & Sibley, C. G. (2017). Authoritarianism and national identity: Examining the longitudinal effects of SDO and RWA on nationalism and patriotism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(8), 10861099.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ostrom, E. (2015). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action (Canto Classics edition). Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posner, D. N. (2004). The political salience of cultural difference: Why Chewas and Tumbukas are allies in Zambia and adversaries in Malawi. American Political Science Review, 98(4), 529545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powers, S. T., & Lehmann, L. (2013). The co-evolution of social institutions, demography, and large-scale human cooperation. Ecology Letters, 16(11), 13561364.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Powers, S. T., Van Schaik, C. P., & Lehmann, L. (2016). How institutions shaped the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371(1687), 20150098.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shayo, M. (2009). A model of social identity with an application to political economy: Nation, class, and redistribution. American Political Science Review, 103(2), 147174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, A. D. (1999). Myths and memories of the nation. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swann, W. B. Jr., Buhrmester, M. D., Gómez, A., Jetten, J., Bastian, B., Vázquez, A., … Zhang, A. (2014). What makes a group worth dying for? Identity fusion fosters perception of familial ties, promoting self-sacrifice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(6), 912.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tajfel, H. (1982). Social psychology of intergroup relations. Annual Review of Psychology, 33(1), 139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tooby, J., Cosmides, L., & Price, M. E. (2006). Cognitive adaptations for n-person exchange: The evolutionary roots of organizational behavior. Managerial and Decision Economics, 27(2–3), 103129.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weber, E. (1976). Peasants into Frenchmen: The modernization of rural France, 1870–1914. Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitehouse, H., Jong, J., Buhrmester, M. D., Gómez, Á, Bastian, B., Kavanagh, C. M., … Gavrilets, S. (2017). The evolution of extreme cooperation via shared dysphoric experiences. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 44292.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Williams, D. (2022). Signalling, commitment, and strategic absurdities. Mind & Language, 37(5), 10111029.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimmer, A. (2018). Nation building. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Yamagishi, T., & Kiyonari, T. (2000). The group as the container of generalized reciprocity. Social Psychology Quarterly, 63(2), 116132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar