Boyd, Robert, Peter J Richerson, and Joseph Henrich. “
The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 26 (2011): 10918-10925.
PDF Broesch, Tanya Lynn, Tara Callaghan, Joseph Henrich, Christine Murphy, and Philippe Rochat. “
Cultural Variations in Children's Mirror Self-Recognition.”
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 42, no. 6 (2011): 1019-1031.
Abstract
Western children first show signs of mirror self-recognition (MSR) from 18 to 24 months of age, the benchmark index of emerging self-concept. Such signs include self-oriented behaviors while looking at the mirror to touch or remove a mark surreptitiously placed on the child’s face. The authors attempted to replicate this finding across cultures using a simplified version of the classic “mark test.” In Experiment 1, Kenyan children (N = 82, 18 to 72 months old) display a pronounced absence of spontaneous self-oriented behaviors toward the mark. In Experiment 2, the authors tested children in Fiji, Saint Lucia, Grenada, and Peru (N = 133, 36 to 55 months old), as well as children from urban United States and rural Canada. As expected from existing reports, a majority of the Canadian and American children demonstrate spontaneous self-oriented behaviors toward the mark. However, markedly fewer children from the non-Western rural sites demonstrate such behaviors. These results suggest that there are profound cross-cultural differences in the meaning of the MSR test, questioning the validity of the mark test as a universal index of self-concept in children’s development.
PDF Chudek, Maciej, and Joseph Henrich. “
Culture–gene coevolution, norm-psychology and the emergence of human prosociality.”
Trends in cognitive sciences 15, no. 5 (2011): 218-226.
PDF Henrich, Joseph, and James Broesch. “
On the nature of cultural transmission networks: evidence from Fijian villages for adaptive learning biases.”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 366, no. 1567 (2011): 1139-1148.
Audio File PDF Supplement Boyd, R., P. J. Richerson, and J. Henrich. “
Rapid cultural adaptation can facilitate the evolution of large-scale cooperation.”
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 65, no. 3 (2011): 431-444.
AbstractOver the past several decades, we have argued that cultural evolution can facilitate the evolution of large-scale cooperation because it often leads to more rapid adaptation than genetic evolution, and, when multiple stable equilibria exist, rapid adaptation leads to variation among groups. Recently, Lehmann, Feldman, and colleagues have published several papers questioning this argument. They analyze models showing that cultural evolution can actually reduce the range of conditions under which cooperation can evolve and interpret these models as indicating that we were wrong to conclude that culture facilitated the evolution of human cooperation. In the main, their models assume that rates of cultural adaption are not strong enough compared to migration to maintain persistent variation among groups when payoffs create multiple stable equilibria. We show that Lehmann et al. reach different conclusions because they have made different assumptions. We argue that the assumptions that underlie our models are more consistent with the empirical data on large-scale cultural variation in humans than those of Lehmann et al., and thus, our models provide a more plausible account of the cultural evolution of human cooperation in large groups.
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