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Jackson JC, Medvedev D. Worldwide divergence of values. Nat Commun 2024; 15:2650. [PMID: 38594270 PMCID: PMC11004123 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-46581-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/14/2023] [Accepted: 03/01/2024] [Indexed: 04/11/2024] Open
Abstract
Social scientists have long debated the nature of cultural change in a modernizing and globalizing world. Some scholars predicted that national cultures would converge by adopting social values typical of Western democracies. Others predicted that cultural differences in values would persist or even increase over time. We test these competing predictions by analyzing survey data from 1981 to 2022 (n = 406,185) from 76 national cultures. We find evidence of global value divergence. Values emphasizing tolerance and self-expression have diverged most sharply, especially between high-income Western countries and the rest of the world. We also find that countries with similar per-capita GDP levels have held similar values over the last 40 years. Over time, however, geographic proximity has emerged as an increasingly strong correlate of value similarity, indicating that values have diverged globally but converged regionally.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Danila Medvedev
- Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, Chicago, USA.
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Nichols R, Charbonneau M, Chellappoo A, Davis T, Haidle M, Kimbrough EO, Moll H, Moore R, Scott-Phillips T, Purzycki BG, Segovia-Martin J. Cultural evolution: A review of theoretical challenges. EVOLUTIONARY HUMAN SCIENCES 2024; 6:e12. [PMID: 38516368 PMCID: PMC10955367 DOI: 10.1017/ehs.2024.2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/14/2023] [Revised: 01/15/2024] [Accepted: 01/16/2024] [Indexed: 03/23/2024] Open
Abstract
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.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ryan Nichols
- Department of Philosophy, CSU Fullerton, Fullerton, CA, USA
- Center for the Study of Human Nature, CSU Fullerton, Fullerton, CA, USA
| | - Mathieu Charbonneau
- Africa Institute for Research in Economics and Social Sciences, Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique, Rabat, Morocco
| | - Azita Chellappoo
- School of Social Sciences and Global Studies, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
| | - Taylor Davis
- Department of Philosophy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
| | - Miriam Haidle
- Research Center ‘The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans’, Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Erik O. Kimbrough
- Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy, Chapman University, Orange, CA, USA
| | - Henrike Moll
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Richard Moore
- Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick, Coventry, England, UK
| | - Thom Scott-Phillips
- Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, Institute for Logic, Cognition, Language & Information, Bilbao, Spain
| | - Benjamin Grant Purzycki
- Benjamin Grant Purzycki, Department of the Study of Religion, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Jose Segovia-Martin
- M6 Polytechnic University, Rabat, Morocco
- Complex Systems Institute, Paris Île-de-France, Paris, France
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Teixidor-Toneu I, Kool A, Greenhill SJ, Kjesrud K, Sandstedt JJ, Manzanilla V, Jordan FM. Historical, archaeological and linguistic evidence test the phylogenetic inference of Viking-Age plant use. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2021; 376:20200086. [PMID: 33993763 PMCID: PMC8126462 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0086] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 03/10/2021] [Indexed: 11/28/2022] Open
Abstract
In this paper, past plant knowledge serves as a case study to highlight the promise and challenges of interdisciplinary data collection and interpretation in cultural evolution. Plants are central to human life and yet, apart from the role of major crops, people-plant relations have been marginal to the study of culture. Archaeological, linguistic, and historical evidence are often limited when it comes to studying the past role of plants. This is the case in the Nordic countries, where extensive collections of various plant use records are absent until the 1700s. Here, we test if relatively recent ethnobotanical data can be used to trace back ancient plant knowledge in the Nordic countries. Phylogenetic inferences of ancestral states are evaluated against historical, linguistic, and archaeobotanical evidence. The exercise allows us to discuss the opportunities and shortcomings of using phylogenetic comparative methods to study past botanical knowledge. We propose a 'triangulation method' that not only combines multiple lines of evidence, but also quantitative and qualitative approaches. This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Irene Teixidor-Toneu
- Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Sars' Gate 1, 0562 Oslo, Norway
- Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Darwinweg 2, 2333CR Leiden, The Netherlands
| | - Anneleen Kool
- Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Sars' Gate 1, 0562 Oslo, Norway
| | - Simon J. Greenhill
- Australian National University College of Arts and Social Sciences, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
- Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max-Planck-Institut fur Menschheitsgeschichte, 07745 Jena, Thüringen, Germany
| | - Karoline Kjesrud
- Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, St Olavs Gate 29, 0130 Oslo, Norway
| | - Jade J. Sandstedt
- Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Sars' Gate 1, 0562 Oslo, Norway
| | - Vincent Manzanilla
- Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Sars' Gate 1, 0562 Oslo, Norway
- BaseClear, Sylviusweg 74, 2333BE Leiden, The Netherlands
| | - Fiona M. Jordan
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UU, UK
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Richerson PJ, Gavrilets S, de Waal FBM. Modern theories of human evolution foreshadowed by Darwin's Descent of Man. Science 2021; 372:372/6544/eaba3776. [PMID: 34016754 DOI: 10.1126/science.aba3776] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/04/2020] [Accepted: 03/15/2021] [Indexed: 12/17/2022]
Abstract
Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man, published 150 years ago, laid the grounds for scientific studies into human origins and evolution. Three of his insights have been reinforced by modern science. The first is that we share many characteristics (genetic, developmental, physiological, morphological, cognitive, and psychological) with our closest relatives, the anthropoid apes. The second is that humans have a talent for high-level cooperation reinforced by morality and social norms. The third is that we have greatly expanded the social learning capacity that we see already in other primates. Darwin's emphasis on the role of culture deserves special attention because during an increasingly unstable Pleistocene environment, cultural accumulation allowed changes in life history; increased cognition; and the appearance of language, social norms, and institutions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Peter J Richerson
- Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA
| | - Sergey Gavrilets
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Department of Mathematics, National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA.
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Abstract
Why do people take revenge? This question can be difficult to answer. Vengeance seems interpersonally destructive and antithetical to many of the most basic human instincts. However, an emerging body of social scientific research has begun to illustrate a logic to revenge, demonstrating why revenge evolved in humans and when and how people take revenge. We review this evidence and suggest that future studies on revenge would benefit from a multilevel perspective in which individual acts of revenge exist within higher-level cultural systems, with the potential to instigate change in these systems over time. With this framework, we can better understand the interplay between revenge's psychological properties and its role in cultural evolution.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joshua Conrad Jackson
- Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA
| | - Virginia K. Choi
- Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
| | - Michele J. Gelfand
- Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
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Lamon N, Neumann C, Gier J, Zuberbühler K, Gruber T. Wild chimpanzees select tool material based on efficiency and knowledge. Proc Biol Sci 2018; 285:rspb.2018.1715. [PMID: 30305440 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.1715] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/31/2018] [Accepted: 09/18/2018] [Indexed: 12/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Some animals have basic culture, but to date there is not much evidence that cultural traits evolve as part of a cumulative process as seen in humans. This may be due to limits in animal physical cognition, such as an inability to compare the efficiency of a novel behavioural innovation with an already existing tradition. We investigated this possibility with a study on a natural tool innovation in wild chimpanzees: moss-sponging, which recently emerged in some individuals to extract mineral-rich liquids at a natural clay-pit. The behaviour probably arose as a variant of leaf-sponging, a tool technique seen in all studied chimpanzee communities. We found that moss-sponges not only absorbed more liquid but were manufactured and used more rapidly than leaf-sponges, suggesting a functional improvement. To investigate whether chimpanzees understood the advantage of moss- over leaf-sponges, we experimentally offered small amounts of rainwater in an artificial cavity of a portable log, together with both sponge materials, moss and leaves. We found that established moss-spongers (having used both leaves and moss to make sponges) preferred moss to prepare a sponge to access the rainwater, whereas leaf-spongers (never observed using moss) preferred leaves. Survey data finally demonstrated that moss was common in forest areas near clay-pits but nearly absent in other forest areas, suggesting that natural moss-sponging was at least partly constrained by ecology. Together, these results suggest that chimpanzees perceive functional improvements in tool quality, a crucial prerequisite for cumulative culture.
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Affiliation(s)
- Noemie Lamon
- Department of Comparative Cognition, University of Neuchâtel, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland .,Budongo Conservation Field Station, Masindi, Uganda
| | - Christof Neumann
- Department of Comparative Cognition, University of Neuchâtel, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland
| | - Jennifer Gier
- Department of Comparative Cognition, University of Neuchâtel, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland
| | - Klaus Zuberbühler
- Department of Comparative Cognition, University of Neuchâtel, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland.,Budongo Conservation Field Station, Masindi, Uganda.,School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, KY16 9JP, UK
| | - Thibaud Gruber
- Budongo Conservation Field Station, Masindi, Uganda .,Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland.,Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK
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Gendron M, Crivelli C, Barrett LF. Universality Reconsidered: Diversity in Making Meaning of Facial Expressions. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 2018; 27:211-219. [PMID: 30166776 PMCID: PMC6099968 DOI: 10.1177/0963721417746794] [Citation(s) in RCA: 56] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
It has long been claimed that certain facial movements are universally perceived as emotional expressions. The critical tests of this universality thesis were conducted between 1969 and 1975 in small-scale societies in the Pacific using confirmation-based research methods. New studies conducted since 2008 have examined a wider sample of small-scale societies, including on the African and South American continents. They used more discovery-based research methods, providing an important opportunity for reevaluating the universality thesis. These new studies reveal diversity, rather than uniformity, in how perceivers make sense of facial movements, calling the universality thesis into doubt. Instead, they support a perceiver-constructed account of emotion perception that is consistent with the broader literature on perception.
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Lumaca M, Ravignani A, Baggio G. Music Evolution in the Laboratory: Cultural Transmission Meets Neurophysiology. Front Neurosci 2018; 12:246. [PMID: 29713263 PMCID: PMC5911491 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2018.00246] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/21/2017] [Accepted: 03/29/2018] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the biological and cultural evolution of music, and specifically in the role played by perceptual and cognitive factors in shaping core features of musical systems, such as melody, harmony, and rhythm. One proposal originates in the language sciences. It holds that aspects of musical systems evolve by adapting gradually, in the course of successive generations, to the structural and functional characteristics of the sensory and memory systems of learners and “users” of music. This hypothesis has found initial support in laboratory experiments on music transmission. In this article, we first review some of the most important theoretical and empirical contributions to the field of music evolution. Next, we identify a major current limitation of these studies, i.e., the lack of direct neural support for the hypothesis of cognitive adaptation. Finally, we discuss a recent experiment in which this issue was addressed by using event-related potentials (ERPs). We suggest that the introduction of neurophysiology in cultural transmission research may provide novel insights on the micro-evolutionary origins of forms of variation observed in cultural systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Massimo Lumaca
- Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University and The Royal Academy of Music Aarhus/Aalborg, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Andrea Ravignani
- Artificial Intelligence Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium.,Research Department, Sealcentre Pieterburen, Pieterburen, Netherlands.,Language and Cognition Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands
| | - Giosuè Baggio
- Language Acquisition and Language Processing Lab, Department of Language and Literature, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
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Tao T, Abades S, Teng S, Huang ZYX, Reino L, Chen BJW, Zhang Y, Xu C, Svenning JC. Macroecological factors shape local-scale spatial patterns in agriculturalist settlements. Proc Biol Sci 2017; 284:rspb.2017.2003. [PMID: 29118138 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2017.2003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Macro-scale patterns of human systems ranging from population distribution to linguistic diversity have attracted recent attention, giving rise to the suggestion that macroecological rules shape the assembly of human societies. However, in which aspects the geography of our own species is shaped by macroecological factors remains poorly understood. Here, we provide a first demonstration that macroecological factors shape strong local-scale spatial patterns in human settlement systems, through an analysis of spatial patterns in agriculturalist settlements in eastern mainland China based on high-resolution Google Earth images. We used spatial point pattern analysis to show that settlement spatial patterns are characterized by over-dispersion at fine spatial scales (0.05-1.4 km), consistent with territory segregation, and clumping at coarser spatial scales beyond the over-dispersion signals, indicating territorial clustering. Statistical modelling shows that, at macroscales, potential evapotranspiration and topographic heterogeneity have negative effects on territory size, but positive effects on territorial clustering. These relationships are in line with predictions from territory theory for hunter-gatherers as well as for many animal species. Our results help to disentangle the complex interactions between intrinsic spatial processes in agriculturalist societies and external forcing by macroecological factors. While one may speculate that humans can escape ecological constraints because of unique abilities for environmental modification and globalized resource transportation, our work highlights that universal macroecological principles still shape the geography of current human agricultural societies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tingting Tao
- School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
| | - Sebastián Abades
- GEMA Center for Genomics, Ecology & Environment, Universidad Mayor, Camino La Pirámide 5750, Huechuraba, Chile
| | - Shuqing Teng
- Section for Ecoinformatics & Biodiversity, Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 114, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
| | - Zheng Y X Huang
- College of Life Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210046, China
| | - Luís Reino
- CIBIO/InBIO, Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources, Campus Agrário de Vairão, University of Porto, 4485-661 Vairão, Portugal.,CIBIO/InBIO, Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources, Universidade de Évora, 7004-516 Évora, Portugal.,CEABN/InBIO-Centro de Estudos Ambientais 'Prof. Baeta Neves', Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa, Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-017 Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Bin J W Chen
- College of Biology and the Environment, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China
| | - Yong Zhang
- College of Biology and the Environment, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China
| | - Chi Xu
- School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
| | - Jens-Christian Svenning
- Section for Ecoinformatics & Biodiversity, Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 114, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.,Center for Biodiversity, Dynamics in a Changing World (BIOCHANGE), Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 114, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
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