Article
Biology
Thomas J. H. Morgan, Jordan W. Suchow, Thomas L. Griffiths
Summary: This study examines the ability of human social learning to respond to environmental changes and finds that human social learning shows some signs of adaptation to environmental instability, but these adaptations are insufficient to avoid significant declines in fitness. Additionally, the study finds that many individuals are highly conformist, exacerbating the fitness effects of environmental change.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Mason Youngblood, David C. Lahti
Summary: This study investigates how individual level cultural transmission mechanisms drive population level changes in birdsong using three years of house finch song recordings spanning four decades. The researchers developed an agent-based model and used approximate Bayesian computation and machine learning to estimate parameter values. The study found that syllable complexity plays a central role in the cultural evolution of house finch song.
Article
Biology
Maxime Derex
Summary: Human cultural diversity and complexity are achieved through cumulative cultural evolution, which relies on the exploitation and optimization of natural phenomena. This process involves optimizing existing cultural traits and expanding the range of natural phenomena that are utilized.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
L. Brinkmann, D. Gezerli, K. V. Kleist, T. F. Mueller, I. Rahwan, N. Pescetelli
Summary: Humans are impressive social learners capable of cultural transmission. Researchers suggest that with the emergence of superhuman algorithms, a hybrid form of cultural transmission from algorithms to humans may have lasting effects on human culture. The study explores the possibility that algorithms, with their distinct behaviors, biases, and problem-solving abilities, can enhance decision-making in environments where diversity in problem-solving strategies is beneficial. Results show that algorithms can improve performance in short-term but face challenges in long-term preservation due to human bias. This research contributes to the understanding of the role algorithms play in shaping human culture.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY A-MATHEMATICAL PHYSICAL AND ENGINEERING SCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Biology
Fredrik Jansson, Elliot Aguilar, Alberto Acerbi, Magnus Enquist
Summary: The field of cultural evolution aims to understand how individual-level processes of transmission and selection lead to population-wide patterns of cultural diversity and change; cultural traits bear relationships to one another that affect the transmission and selection process; introducing structure changes cultural dynamics.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Ecology
Brendan J. Barrett
Summary: Two-option choice experimental designs are commonly used to study social learning in captive and wild animal populations. However, in nature, animals often have more than two behavioral options, and multiple innovations can occur simultaneously. This study shows that increasing the number of behavioral options an animal can choose from improves the accuracy and certainty of identifying social learning strategies, particularly in studies with small sample sizes. These findings highlight the importance of considering the behaviors that animals did not choose when studying social learning strategies.
JOURNAL OF ANIMAL ECOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Ecology
David W. Kikuchi, Margaret W. Simon
Summary: We study the social transmission of innovations between predators and find that innovations can destabilize predator-prey systems. Destabilizing effects include increasing oscillations or limit cycles, mainly due to overexploitation of prey. Innovations that benefit individual predators may not have long-term positive effects on predator populations when instability increases the risk of extinction. Additionally, instability can maintain behavioral variability among predators. Interestingly, innovations that could help predators exploit prey better are least likely to spread when predator populations are low despite coexisting with prey populations near their carrying capacity.
AMERICAN NATURALIST
(2023)
Article
Biology
Adrian Varallyay, Nathalia Beller, Francys Subiaul
Summary: This study investigates whether the unique compositional nature of human cultures contributes to their distinct cumulative nature. Through a learning experiment, the researchers found that both children and adults were able to observe and replicate learned behaviors, and apply them to new situations. However, only adults in the imitation condition were able to combine newly learned elements. These findings suggest that early in development, humans possess cognitive skills that transform social learning competencies into cultural learning, enabling the evolution of complex human cultures.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Helena Miton, Simon DeDeo
Summary: This study presents a domain-general model of 'tacit teaching', drawn from statistical physics, to explain the transmission and evolution of tacit knowledge in cultural practices. The model predicts key features of the teaching process and the cultural evolution of tacit knowledge.
JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY INTERFACE
(2022)
Review
Biology
Alex Mesoudi
Summary: This article discusses two broad versions of human cultural evolution in the literature, one emphasizing cultural selection and the other biased transformation of cultural variants, pointing out that they are not mutually exclusive. Identifying cultural dynamics in real-world cultural data is challenging, but fine-grained historical analysis, experiments, and formal models offer the best way to distinguish them.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Biological
Robert Jagiello, Cecilia Heyes, Harvey Whitehouse
Summary: Cultural evolution relies on both innovation and high-fidelity transmission. The bifocal stance theory proposes that the co-existence of innovative change and stable tradition is a result of our ability to adopt different motivational stances during social learning. This theory provides a unified framework for understanding various areas of research and sheds new light on the cognitive foundations of cultural change and spread.
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Biology
Lies Zandberg, Robert F. Lachlan, Luca Lamoni, Ellen C. Garland
Summary: Humpback whale song reflects vocal cultural behavior, with distinct patterns in populations of the Southern and Northern Hemispheres. Learning parameters are associated with cultural evolution patterns in these whale populations.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Roman Stengelin, Hanna Schleihauf, Anna Seidl, Anne Boeckler-Raettig
Summary: The study found subtle yet consistent links between children's overimitation behavior and their tendency to transmit and modify conventional information. Overimitators were more likely to use normative language when transmitting game information, while non-overimitators modified games more frequently in the initial phase.
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Biology
Bill Thompson, Thomas L. Griffiths
Summary: The study suggests that biases in human cognition can restrict technological advancement and knowledge transmission, as participants tend to converge on worse solutions in environments misaligned with their biases. The results highlight formal relationships between cultural evolution and distributed stochastic optimization, emphasizing concerns about bias in creative, scientific, and educational contexts.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Anthropology
Bonnie Hewlett
Summary: This study found that in hunter-gatherer communities, cultural context influences whether adolescents seek out adult innovators, with transmission modes tending to be oblique, and knowledge and skill transmission subject to notable gender biases.
HUMAN NATURE-AN INTERDISCIPLINARY BIOSOCIAL PERSPECTIVE
(2021)
Review
Biology
Alex Mesoudi
Summary: This article discusses two broad versions of human cultural evolution in the literature, one emphasizing cultural selection and the other biased transformation of cultural variants, pointing out that they are not mutually exclusive. Identifying cultural dynamics in real-world cultural data is challenging, but fine-grained historical analysis, experiments, and formal models offer the best way to distinguish them.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Charlotte O. Brand, Alex Mesoudi, Thomas J. H. Morgan
Summary: Prestige-biased social learning occurs when individuals prefer to learn from prestigious group members. While previous research has confirmed the adaptive use of prestige-bias, the domain-specificity and generality of this bias has not been explicitly addressed experimentally.Results from an online experiment suggest that individuals overwhelmingly prefer domain-specific prestige cues, but also show a preference for domain-general cues when only cross-domain cues are available. This indicates that people may vary in the extent to which they employ domain-specific or domain-general prestige-bias depending on their experience and understanding of different domains.
Article
Family Studies
Lei Chang, Yuan Yuan Liu, Hui Jing Lu, Jennifer E. Lansford, Marc H. Bornstein, Laurence Steinberg, Kirby Deater-Deckard, W. Andrew Rothenberg, Ann T. Skinner, Kenneth A. Dodge
Summary: The study found that slow life history strategies play an adaptive role in reducing COVID-19-related externalizing problems, while also moderating and mediating the impact of early adversity on COVID-19-related internalizing and externalizing problems.
JOURNAL OF RESEARCH ON ADOLESCENCE
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Hui Jing Lu, Yuan Yuan Liu, Lei Chang
Summary: This study proposes a maternal socialization hypothesis and suggests that the attachment system in humans adds to the fast life history principle by regulating environmental harshness and unpredictability. The results support the moderating effect of caregiver-child attachment on the relationship between childhood environmental adversities and fast life history strategies.
DEVELOPMENT AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Social
Nan Zhu, Bi Bin Chen, Hui Jing Lu, Lei Chang
Summary: Research indicates that followers' life-history profiles can influence their leadership preferences, with relational social investment playing a key mediating role between childhood adversity and a preference for dominant leadership styles. This finding opens up new avenues for studying leadership preferences and applying life-history theory to social psychology.
PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
(2022)
Review
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Anting Yang, Nan Zhu, Hui Jing Lu, Lei Chang
Summary: Life history theory has provided a theoretical framework for understanding human individual differences. This review introduces the evolutionary biological background and basic principles of LHT, along with applications in developmental psychology. The discussion covers key concepts, trade-offs, environmental risks, and calibration models that shape human life history strategies.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Shaolingyun Guo, Hui Jing Lu
Summary: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused individuals to reconsider death and dying, leading to changes in their adaptation to the changing environment. This study aims to examine how the fear of death varies based on individual life history strategy and current environment under the COVID-19 pandemic.
EVOLUTIONARY BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Hui Jing Lu
Summary: Findings on female sexual motivation across the ovulatory cycle are mixed, with some studies reporting increased sexual desire on fertile days and others reporting increased sexual desire on nonfertile days. This study found that women with a fast life history experience peak sexual desire midcycle, whereas women with a slow life history experience two peaks of sexual desire midcycle and around their menses. These findings suggest that cyclically differential peaking of sexual desire may serve different reproductive functions.
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY
(2023)
Editorial Material
Biology
Alex Thornton, Alex Mesoudi
PHYSICS OF LIFE REVIEWS
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Yuan Yuan Liu, Hui Jing Lu, Nan Zhu, Lei Chang
Summary: This study examined the longitudinal relationships between adverse environment, life history profile, and crystalized intelligence in Chinese adolescents. The findings showed that early familial environmental harshness was negatively related to slow life history profiles and crystalized intelligence, while slow life history profiles were positively related to crystallized intelligence. Additionally, early community-level environmental harshness strengthened the positive association between slow life history and crystalized cognitive abilities. These results underscore the importance of childhood environment in fostering individual life history and cognitive development.
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Hui Jing Lu, Xin Rui Wang, Yuan Yuan Liu, Lei Chang
Summary: This paper challenges the assumption that infectious diseases drive fast life history, proposing that they can actually enact either slower or faster life history strategies based on disease severity. Through a study of 662 adult residents in mainland China, this theory was tested and supported, providing new insights into how infectious diseases can impact human behavior and social phenomena.
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Angel V. Jimenez, Alex Mesoudi
Summary: This study investigates how informal social hierarchies within small human groups are based on prestige, dominance, or a combination of both. The authors hypothesized that prestige and dominance cues are better recalled and transmitted than social rank cues. While their findings supported the better transmission of both prestige and dominance cues over medium social rank cues, they did not find evidence to support the hypothesis that dominance cues are better transmitted than prestige cues. The results raise questions about specific social-rank content transmission biases and general emotional content transmission biases.
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Hui Jing Lu, Yuan Yuan Liu, O. Jiaqing, Shaolingyun Guo, Nan Zhu, Bin Bin Chen, Jennifer E. Lansford, Lei Chang
Summary: Through analysis of publicly available data from over 150 countries, the study found that countries with a higher historical prevalence of infectious diseases tend to adopt slower life history strategies, which are related to prompter COVID-19 containment actions by the government and greater compliance from the population.
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY
(2021)
Correction
Anthropology
Angel V. Jimenez, Adam Flitton, Alex Mesoudi
EVOLUTIONARY HUMAN SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Nan Zhu, Binbin Chen, Hui Jing Lu, Lei Chang
Summary: Based on two experiments, individuals with faster psychosocial traits tend to prefer dominant leaders, while those emphasizing slower life history-related traits have a preference for prestigious leaders.
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
(2021)