Denmark

**Author(s):** Abe, S; Tsuchida, S; Takezawa, M &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;Cultural group selection (CGS) has been regarded as the most plausible theory which explains the evolutionary process of group beneficial norms. The key mechanisms of CGS are called intergroup conflict, which takes multiple forms and propagates the group&#39;s beneficial cultural traits in a population. Abe et al. (2021) experimentally investigated whether payoff-biased imitation, a form of intergroup conflict, diffuses the group beneficial traits across groups playing an n-person stag-hunt game. They showed the frequency of group beneficial traits increased faster when payoff-biased imitation across groups was feasible. In this study, we analyzed the participants’ decision processes by fitting and comparing five individual/social learning models employed by McElreath et al. (2008). Both the model simulations and model comparison analyses showed that participants’ choices were best explained by the hierarchical model of payoff-biased social learning and frequency-dependent social learning. Our results suggest that cultural group selection processes are driven without lethal intergroup conflicts with the help of payoff-biased imitation, which supports the result of Boyd &amp; Richerson (2002)’s model.

Cultural Evolution Society 2022

Cultural evolution of group beneficial norms: The analysis of social learning strategies by computational modeling

evolutionary social sciences; cultural group selection; social norms; social learning; computational modeling

Welcome to the Cultural Evolution Society (CES) Conference 2024, which was a hybrid conference held at Durham University (UK). The conference was hosted in Durham by the Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre (DCERC) with administrative assistance from the CES Transformation Fund team.

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#### Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre (DCERC) 
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**Interdisciplinary study of cultural change and diversity**

We are a highly interdisciplinary group of researchers using evolutionary models to study cultural change and diversity. We apply cultural evolutionary methods to a wide variety of topics including cognition, innovation, social learning, technology, art, music, narrative, religion, sociality, language and communication. We have a growing interest in applying cultural evolutionary theory to current societal challenges such as understanding the spread of prosocial health behaviours and health conspiracies. 
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Cultural Evolution Society Conference 2024

The field of cultural evolution is growing in size and scope; its theories, methods and applications - both academic and applied - are getting ever more robust. Do join us in what promises to be an exciting exchange of ideas and a celebration of our field.

**Author(s):** Abe, S; Tsuchida, S; Takezawa, M Cultural group selection (CGS) has been regarded as the most plausible theory which explains the evolutionary process of group beneficial norms. The key mechanisms of CGS are called intergroup conflict, which takes multiple forms and propagates the group's beneficial cultural traits in a population. Abe et al. (2021) experimentally investigated whether payoff-biased imitation, a form of intergroup conflict, diffuses the group beneficial traits across groups playing an n-person stag-hunt game. They showed the frequency of group beneficial traits increased faster when payoff-biased imitation across groups was feasible. In this study, we analyzed the participants’ decision processes by fitting and comparing five individual/social learning models employed by McElreath et al. (2008). Both the model simulations and model comparison analyses showed that participants’ choices were best explained by the hierarchical model of payoff-biased social learning and frequency-dependent social learning. Our results suggest that cultural group selection processes are driven without lethal intergroup conflicts with the help of payoff-biased imitation, which supports the result of Boyd & Richerson (2002)’s model.

technical paper

### Welcome to the fourth Cultural Evolution Society Conference, CES2022! 

As last year, Underline will support the online component of the conference. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is causing a great deal of uncertainty for all of us. Therefore, we seek to offer a hybrid format that will hopefully allow some folks to travel to Aarhus, others to meet up locally or regionally in CES hub-lets, and other yet to participate online. The field of cultural evolution is growing in size and scope; its theories, methods and applications - both academic and applied - are getting ever more robust. Do join us in what promises to be an exciting exchange of ideas and a celebration of our field.

##### ***For SoMe interaction and live tweeting please tag @CulturalEvolSoc and use #CESconf2022***


#### The CES 2022 local organising committee
* Luseadra Joy McKerracher
* Jesper Sørensen 
* Niels Nørkjær Johannsen 
* Benjamin Grant Purzycki 
* Mette Løvschal 
* Felix Riede
* Iza Romanowska 
* Karsten Olsen

Please click on the button bellow if you want to watch the videos

**Author(s):** Kaše, Vojtěch; Glomb, Tomáš Introduction
In this paper, we offer a diachronic computational text analysis of a large corpus of ancient Greek inscriptions, especially focusing on changes in their religious and moral content. Comparing our results with proxy data on economic development of the Ancient Mediterranean, we suggest that our analysis offers important insights into the cultural evolutionary dynamics of religions in general.

Materials and Methods
The paper is based on PHI, a comprehensive dataset of ancient Greek inscriptions. In total, it contains 218,162 inscriptions and 4,419,743 words. We analyze semantic trends in the inscriptions during the period from the 8th c. BCE to the 4th c. CE using the methods of distributional semantic modeling (word-embeddings).

Results and Discussion
Our results indicate a high extent of fluctuations in the moral load of inscriptions over time. However, our attempt to statistically compare our results with other data concerning the economic and demographic development of the Ancient Mediterranean reveals clear methodological limitations of our approach.

The Cultural Evolution of Graeco-Roman Religions in the Light of Epigraphic Evidence: A computational approach

 Humans are unique in their sophisticated culture and diverse societal structures, their complex languages, and their extensive use of tools. According to the human self-domestication hypothesis, this unique set of traits may be the result of an evolutionary process of self-induced domestication, in which humans have evolved to be less aggressive and more cooperative. Notably, the only other species that has been argued to be self-domesticated besides humans so far is bonobos, resulting in a narrow scope for investigating this theory beyond the primate family. Here, we propose a new animal model for studying self-domestication: the elephant. First, we support our hypothesis with an extensive cross-species comparison which suggests that elephants indeed exhibit many of the features associated with self-domestication (e.g., reduced aggression, increased prosocial behavior, extended juvenile period, increased play behavior, socially regulated cortisol levels and complex vocal behavior). Next, we present novel genetic evidence to reinforce our proposal, showing that genes positively selected in elephants are enriched in pathways associated with domestication traits and include several candidate genes previously associated with domestication. Together, our findings underpin the idea that elephants, like humans and bonobos, may have been self-domesticated.

Self-domestication in non-human species: elephants as a case study

 Humans evolved cultural cognition that allows for the fastest and highest fidelity social learning in the animal world. Our derived cultural cognition enhances cooperative-communication, develops early in infancy and is not shared with other great ape species. I will present evidence that domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) possess cognition that allows for similar forms of cooperative-communication as seen in human infants. I will make the case (relying on comparisons between dogs, wolves and foxes) that these human-like abilities evolved in dogs convergently as a result of self-domestication. The unusual skills dogs demonstrate for working and communicating with humans are by-products of selection for friendliness toward humans that altered their cognitive development. I will also argue that dogs provide a model for how human cultural cognition evolved through a similar process of self-domestication.

Dogs and humans evolved cooperative-communication through self-domestication

Our theme of this session is to build a bridge between two continents – Continent “E” of
Evolutionary scientists, Continent “L” of Legal scholars. Building this bridge offers a new
horizon. These two Continents meet today. We follow up a dialogue between Gintis, H. on
“E” and Jones, O.D. on “L” (2007, in Behav. &amp; Brain Sci.) as a good precedence.
The Continent “E” is populated with Big Names, who had cautiously avoided the term “law”
but practically dealt with evolution of law. They include theoretical model research by
Axelrod &amp; Hamilton (1981), Boyd (et al 2003), Bowles &amp; Gintis (2004; 2011), Sigmund (et al
2005), and empirical studies by Rand (et al 2011), Jordan (et al 2016), followed by
behavioral scientists Suchak &amp; deWaal (2016) who evidenced third-party punishment for
social norm enforcement among non-human primates (but modestly did not refer to “law”).
The other Continent “L” has also shown interest in Continent “E”. The Society for
Evolutionary Analysis in Law (SEAL, established by Jones, O.D.) also targets at “evolution
of law” per se. A SEAL member and laureate of Nobel Prize for Economics, Ostrom, E.
evidenced her keen interest in law’s evolution (1990, 1994). A German sociology giant
Luhmann was an early advocate of cultural evolution of law (1993; English 2004, OUP).
Building this bridge today is a big gain for science.

Introduction

**Author(s):** Kido, Y., Takezawa, M. People are willing to pursue virtues or social rules often incurring material costs. It has been argued that evolving such norm psychology was a crucial step on the path to large-scale human cooperation. Research on social norms has broadly identified two types of norms: injunctive and descriptive norms. It has been shown that if cooperative dilemmas were the only adaptive problem humans faced, the tendency to follow descriptive norms (i.e., conformity) would never evolve from scratch (Kido & Takezawa, 2021). However, conformity was selected for allowing us to develop adaptive behaviors over a wide range of domains. Thereby, it remains unclear how norm psychology and cooperation coevolve. In the present study, we explored the impact of exapted conformity by modeling the coevolution of cooperation and norm psychology. In our simulations, agents make a decision, maximizing a utility function that captures three motives: gaining material payoff, following injunctive and descriptive norms. Group and individual level selective pressures drive evolution of utility function. We show that evolved conformity could radically change what type of norm psychology is evolutionarily adaptive. Our findings suggest that injunctive norms encouraging only punishments will not be internalized under evolved conformity. Rather, humans tend to embody norms for cooperation per se and exhibit cooperation.

Coevolution of norm-psychology and cooperation under exapted conformity

**Author(s):** Andrews, K; Fitzpatrick, S; Westra, E Social norms—rules governing which behaviors are deemed appropriate or inappropriate within a given community—are typically taken to be uniquely human. Recently, this position has been challenged (Andrews 2020; Danón 2019; Fitzpatrick 2020; Kappeler et al. 2019; von Rohr et al. 2011). The view that norms are human unique stems from commitments regarding the psychological capacities required for having them, and skepticism that animals possess these prerequisites (Birch 2020; Rakoczy and Schmidt 2019; Schlingoff and Moore 2017; Tomasello 2016). However, among norm cognition researchers there is little agreement about the cognitive architecture that underpins social norms in humans. This makes empirical study of animal social norms difficult at this stage. To make progress, we draw inspiration from the animal culture research program, and offer an an operationalized account of social norms. We propose examining normative regularities: a socially maintained pattern of behavioral conformity within a community (Westra and Andrews, in preparation). We suggest methods for studying social norms in wild and captive primate populations, and examine the implication of animal social norms for theories of cultural evolution.

Investigating social norms in nonhuman animals

Introduction: Inferences about others' minds seem necessary for successful human social life, but Opacity of Mind (OoM) norms against mentalizing in small, traditional communities challenge this notion. This research employs the concept of relational mobility – or the capacity to freely move among social groups – as an index of the socio-cultural adaptive pressure that might promote the evolution of mentalizing norms. Method: This research recruits Indigenous iTaukei Fijians with Opacity of Mind norms (n=90), New Zealanders with mind-centric norms (n=280), and Pacific people living in New Zealand (n=600) who live in a cultural middle-zone. I test whether preference for outcome focus (rather than a more mentalizing intent focus) can be explained by ToM measures or ecological factors like relational mobility with pre-existing mentalizing scales and vignettes assessing social judgments. Results: Results suggest OoM norms mitigate relational (im)mobility by shifting focus to external, observable behaviors, rather than focusing on intent which may be perceived as more hostile when relational mobility is low. Discussion: Cognitive capacities like mentalizing form the backbone of human social life. Core cognitive functions may be modulated to suit particular environmental constraints via inheritance pathways of norm psychology.

Do Opaque Minds Make Better Neighbors? Examining Relational Mobility as a Predictor of Outcome Focus Across Three Folk Theories of Mind

**Author(s):** Schulze, J N; Denkinger, J; Oña, J; Poole, M M; Garland, E C Cultural transmission of behaviour is an important aspect of many animal communities ranging from humans to birds. Male humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) sing a repetitive, stereotyped, socially learnt, and culturally transmitted song display that slowly evolves each year. Most males within a population sing the same, slow-evolving song type; but in the South Pacific, song ‘revolutions’ have led to rapid and complete replacement of one song type by another introduced from a neighbouring population. Songs spread eastwards, from eastern Australia to French Polynesia, but the easterly extent of this transmission was unknown. Here, we investigated whether song revolutions continue to spread from the central (French Polynesia) into the eastern (Ecuador) South Pacific region. Similarity analyses using three consecutive years of song data (2016-2018) revealed that song themes recorded in 2016-18 French Polynesian song matched song themes sung in 2018 Ecuadorian song, suggesting continued easterly transmission of song to Ecuador, and vocal connectivity across the entire South Pacific Ocean basin. This study demonstrates songs first identified in western populations can be transmitted across the entire South Pacific, supporting the potential for a circumpolar Southern Hemisphere cultural transmission of song and a vocal culture rivalled in its extent only by our own.

Humpback whale song revolutions continue to spread from the central into the eastern South Pacific

**Author(s):** Borofsky, T; Feldman, MW; Ram, Y Introduction:
Despite being widespread, the benefit of cooperative hunting (CH) is unclear. When rare, CH may allow predators to escape competition and access "big prey" (BP). However, a lonely CH predator cannot catch food. Cultural transmission may allow CH to spread fast enough so cooperators can find hunting partners, but there is a catch: competition for BP will rise. 
 Methods: We model a one-predator, two-prey model in which the predators either learn to hunt "small prey" (SP) alone, or learn CH to target BP. The predators first learn vertically and then choose partners from whom they learn horizontally at rate $H$. CH predators only catch the BP if their partner is cooperative. 
 Results: Without horizontal learning, CH cannot spread from rarity. High rates of horizontal learning, combined with competition for the SP, allow CH to evolve. However, the CH can only fix in the predator population if the BP is very abundant.
 Discussion:
Competition for prey is not enough to explain the initial evolution of CH. We found that the addition of horizontal learning allows CH to spread, but future models should explore other factors that can select for CH, such as territorial defense.

Cultural transmission, competition for prey, and the evolution of cooperative hunting

 The development of studies on cultural evolution in Argentine Patagonia is linked to the pioneering work of Luis Alberto Borrero, who during the 1980s and early 1990s introduced both, processual and evolutionary thinking in the archaeology of the area. From these initial proposals we can highlight the need of a materialist approach to technology centered on variation along the explicit use of evolutionary models. Then, the focus was set in to address technological change, by taking into account past environments and space variability. Based on these foundational proposals, our work seeks to understand the tempo and mode of technological change in hunter-gatherer societies throughout the Holocene. Modeling these broad-scale processes presented challenges that we have addressed through the development of quantitative methodologies such as geometric morphometrics, spatial analysis and experimental based models. Likewise cultural phylogenetics helped us to model temporal trajectories of stone tools, in particular, projectile points. In this presentation I will discuss our work oriented to assess the role of space and environment in lithic technology as well in the emergence and diversification of technological lineages. Last but not least, our research shows that technological change in Patagonia is multidirectional, multicausal and complex, demonstrating the resilience and adaptive capacity of the hunter-gatherer societies of the Holocene of Patagonia.

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The Cultural Evolution of Graeco-Roman Religions in the Light of Epigraphic Evidence: A computational approach

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