(4) Cultural Group Selection

Question 1

What is Macroevolution?

Answer 1

Long term cultural change at or above the level of society. Large-scale patterns of historical change. Happens between populations.

Question 2

Theories of the Origins of Cooperation

Answer 2

Individualist models
- Kin selection (make sacrifices for those who share your genes)
- Reciprocal altruism (non-kin, I help you and you help me!)

Group models
- Genetic Group Selection
- Cultural Group Selection (CGS)
[Both argue that a group can be a unit of selection, not just the individuals within that group. Traditional theorists argue that groups are not stable units of selection.]

Question 3

Group Selection (GS) Concept (two tenants)

Answer 3

• Within groups, selfish people outcompete altruists.
• Between groups, altruistic groups outcompete selfish groups.

Question 4

Multilevel Selection

Answer 4

At any level, everything can be subject to selection.
- Selection between groups within a population,
- Selection between individuals within a group,
- Selection between genes within an individual…

Question 5

Mesoudi – Evolutionary Economics

Answer 5

• Variation: arises from technological innovations coming from firms research and development efforts.
• Competition: exists between firms, where the firm is the unit of selection.
• Selection: CGS, causes firms to increase or decrease in size, or go extinct.
• Winner-Take-All Process: a small number of established firms tend to dominate any given industry.

Question 6

Adaptive Radiation

Answer 6

A proliferation of variants in a newly-created niche where competition is very low. (ie. a vacant market)

Question 7

Mesoudi – Behavioural Economics

Answer 7

• Self-interest: the traditional view in economics is that human behaviour is guided solely by self interest.
• The human sense of fairness contradicts pure selfishness. (Cultures differ in fairness norms.)
• Genetic group selection may have generated prosocial psychological motives favouring altruism, which CGS then used to build large cooperative institutions.

Question 8

The Epochs

Answer 8

Pleistocene: early human evolution, extending back to Homo Habilis

Holocene: Extends back to the emergence of agriculture, population expansion, cities, and civilization.

Anthropocene: (roughly 1950) human generated things begin to affect the geology of the earth. [Debated.]

Question 9

Cultural Group Selection (CGS)

Answer 9

Where the group is the unit of selection. Related to situations where groups compete.
- Requires mechanisms that maintain between-group variation.

Question 10

Between-Group Variation and Within-Group Variation

Answer 10

Any factor that reduces within-group variation increases between-group variation, and vice versa.

Question 11

Factors that maintain Between-Group Variation

Answer 11

• High-fidelity social learning
• Conformity among group members
• Punishment of anti-social behaviour
• Prestige bias
• Symbolic markers of group identity
• Institutional complexity
• Ethnocentrism

Question 12

Cultural Fst

Answer 12

The proportion of the total variance in a cultural trait that is due to between-group variation.

0 = groups have everything in common, between-group variation is minimal.
1 = groups have nothing in common, between-group variation is maximal.

Question 13

Forms of Competition between Social Groups

Answer 13

• Warfare
• Economic
• Religious

Question 14

Warfare

Answer 14

• Results in the differential survival of groups. Traits of the losers are not passed on, while traits of the winners are. Could result in extinctions.
• Defeated people can be killed, or absorbed into the successful group (in lower status forms, like enslavement).

Question 15

Economic Competition

Answer 15

• Results in the differential survival of firms.
• Markets are discussed as ecosystems within which firms compete.
• Governments play a role in economic competition.

Question 16

Religious Competition

Answer 16

• Results in the differential survival of religions.
• Strong connection with warfare and conquest.
• Some religions are highly proselytizing, while others are more isolationist.
• Religions have an influence on biological evolution via their impact on birth rates (ie. pronatal norms).

Question 17

If CGS is active in human social evolution, we should see evidence that…

Answer 17

• Culture acts as an inheritance system.
• Group variable social norms and institutions are transmitted.
• Success or failure in intergroup competition is caused by institutional variation.
• Group level functionality in cultures, particularly in their social norms and institutions.

Question 18

Cultural Inertia In Firms

Answer 18

Fixedness. Sticking with old routines and not adapting to changing market conditions.