The cultural evolution of emergent group-level traits

Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Volumn 37, Issue 3, 2014, Pages 243-254

  Smaldino, Paul E ^a  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

altruism; cooperation; cultural group selection; inclusive fitness; innovation; institutions; interdependence; multilevel selection; niche construction

Indexed keywords

ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR; ARTICLE; CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK; COOPERATION; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; EVOLUTIONARY ADAPTATION; HUMAN; SOCIETY; ALTRUISM; EVOLUTION; GENETIC SELECTION; GROUP PROCESS; PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY; ADAPTATION; COLLABORATIVE INTERDEPENDENCE; COMPETITION; CULTURAL FACTOR; CULTURAL VALUE; DECISION MAKING; EMERGENT GROUP LEVEL TRAIT; EMPATHY; GROUP STRUCTURE; LABOR; LEADERSHIP; NONHUMAN; PERSONAL EXPERIENCE; PERSONALITY; RELIGION; RESPONSIBILITY; RITUAL; SKILL; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL COMPETENCE; SOCIAL INTERACTION; SOCIAL LEARNING; SOCIAL NETWORK; SOCIAL STATUS; SOCIAL STRUCTURE; TECHNOLOGY;

ALTRUISM; BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION; COOPERATIVE BEHAVIOR; CULTURAL EVOLUTION; GROUP PROCESSES; HUMANS; PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY; SELECTION, GENETIC;

EID: 84903544792     PISSN: 0140525X     EISSN: 14691825     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X13001544     Document Type: Article

References (5)

1. In some social insect colonies, the presence of multiple foundresses leads to low degrees of genetic relatedness. Nevertheless, control of differentiation and organization is still genetic in nature.
2. In evolutionary theory, "ultimate" explanations of a trait deal with the adaptive properties that caused natural selection to favor that trait, whereas "proximate" explanations deal with the immediate physiological and developmental mechanisms that give rise to the trait in an organism. Laland et al. (2011) discuss how feedback between organism and environment complicates this distinction.
3. Both Read (1958) and Ridley (2010) make compelling cases for the complexity and interconnectedness of technologies, but they also conclude that this complexity supports the case for unconstrained free markets, which I do not believe follows necessarily from their premises.
4. The adaptive fitness of group-level traits, as with individuallevel traits, is of course dependent on the selective environment. In a densely treed forest, the organizational properties of the Roman Legion may hinder rather than help, leading to domination by less encumbered Barbarians.
5. Explanations for the loss of complex technology in Tasmania have been proposed that do not rely explicitly on group-level traits, but instead rely on success-based biases in social learning (Henrich 2004b; Powell et al. 2009). Nevertheless, the arguments made in this target article imply that group organization and differentiated roles are crucial (and missing) parts of the Tasmanian story.