IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/thpobi/v73y2008i4p506-516.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The co-evolution of culturally inherited altruistic helping and cultural transmission under random group formation

Author

Listed:
  • Lehmann, Laurent
  • Feldman, Marcus W.

Abstract

Limited migration results in kin selective pressure on helping behaviors under a wide range of ecological, demographic and life-history situations. However, such genetically determined altruistic helping can evolve only when migration is not too strong and group size is not too large. Cultural inheritance of helping behaviors may allow altruistic helping to evolve in groups of larger size because cultural transmission has the potential to markedly decrease the variance within groups and augment the variance between groups. Here, we study the co-evolution of culturally inherited altruistic helping behaviors and two alternative cultural transmission rules for such behaviors. We find that conformist transmission, where individuals within groups tend to copy prevalent cultural variants (e.g., beliefs or values), has a strong adverse effect on the evolution of culturally inherited helping traits. This finding is at variance with the commonly held view that conformist transmission is a crucial factor favoring the evolution of altruistic helping in humans. By contrast, we find that under one-to-many transmission, where individuals within groups tend to copy a “leader†(or teacher), altruistic helping can evolve in groups of any size, although the cultural transmission rule itself hitchhikes rather weakly with a selected helping trait. Our results suggest that culturally determined helping behaviors are more likely to be driven by “leaders†than by popularity, but the emergence and stability of the cultural transmission rules themselves should be driven by some extrinsic factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Lehmann, Laurent & Feldman, Marcus W., 2008. "The co-evolution of culturally inherited altruistic helping and cultural transmission under random group formation," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 73(4), pages 506-516.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:73:y:2008:i:4:p:506-516
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tpb.2008.02.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040580908000233
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tpb.2008.02.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vincent A. A. Jansen & Minus van Baalen, 2006. "Altruism through beard chromodynamics," Nature, Nature, vol. 440(7084), pages 663-666, March.
    2. Hisashi Ohtsuki & Christoph Hauert & Erez Lieberman & Martin A. Nowak, 2006. "A simple rule for the evolution of cooperation on graphs and social networks," Nature, Nature, vol. 441(7092), pages 502-505, May.
    3. Ken Binmore, 2006. "Why do people cooperate?," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 5(1), pages 81-96, February.
    4. Henrich, Joseph, 2004. "Cultural group selection, coevolutionary processes and large-scale cooperation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 3-35, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alberto Micheletti, 2020. "Modelling cultural selection on biological fitness to integrate social transmission and adaptive explanations for human behaviour," Post-Print hal-02563204, HAL.
    2. Denton, Kaleda K. & Ram, Yoav & Feldman, Marcus W., 2022. "Conformity and content-biased cultural transmission in the evolution of altruism," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 52-61.
    3. Ozgur Aydogmus & Hasan Cagatay & Erkan Gürpinar, 2020. "Does social learning promote cooperation in social dilemmas?," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 15(3), pages 633-648, July.
    4. Robin Watson & Thomas J. H. Morgan & Rachel L. Kendal & Julie Van de Vyver & Jeremy Kendal, 2021. "Social Learning Strategies and Cooperative Behaviour: Evidence of Payoff Bias, but Not Prestige or Conformity, in a Social Dilemma Game," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-26, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. van den Bergh, Jeroen C.J.M. & Gowdy, John M., 2009. "A group selection perspective on economic behavior, institutions and organizations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 1-20, October.
    2. Fabio Della Rossa & Fabio Dercole & Anna Di Meglio, 2020. "Direct Reciprocity and Model-Predictive Strategy Update Explain the Network Reciprocity Observed in Socioeconomic Networks," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-28, March.
    3. Matthijs van Veelen & Benjamin Allen & Moshe Hoffman & Burton Simon & Carl Veller, 2016. "Inclusive Fitness," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 16-055/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    4. Charles G Nathanson & Corina E Tarnita & Martin A Nowak, 2009. "Calculating Evolutionary Dynamics in Structured Populations," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(12), pages 1-7, December.
    5. Swami Iyer & Timothy Killingback, 2020. "Evolution of Cooperation in Social Dilemmas with Assortative Interactions," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-31, September.
    6. Fu, Xiao & Liu, Xuesong & Hu, Yuhan & Huang, Shaoxu, 2023. "Emotion-based renewal strategies to promote cooperation in spatial prisoner’s dilemma games," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 455(C).
    7. Faqi Du & Feng Fu, 2011. "Partner Selection Shapes the Strategic and Topological Evolution of Cooperation," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 354-369, September.
    8. Wang, Xiaofeng & Chen, Xiaojie & Gao, Jia & Wang, Long, 2013. "Reputation-based mutual selection rule promotes cooperation in spatial threshold public goods games," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 181-187.
    9. Jahnke, Bjoern, 2015. "Tax morale and reciprocity. A case study from Vietnam," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-563, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    10. Konno, Tomohiko, 2013. "An imperfect competition on scale-free networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(21), pages 5453-5460.
    11. Catherine C Eckel & Enrique Fatas & Sara Godoy & Rick K Wilson, 2016. "Group-Level Selection Increases Cooperation in the Public Goods Game," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(8), pages 1-13, August.
    12. Cordes, Christian & Richerson, Peter J. & Schwesinger, Georg, 2010. "How corporate cultures coevolve with the business environment: The case of firm growth crises and industry evolution," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 465-480, December.
    13. Trenchard, Hugh, 2015. "The peloton superorganism and protocooperative behavior," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 270(C), pages 179-192.
    14. Mengel, Friederike, 2008. "Matching structure and the cultural transmission of social norms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(3-4), pages 608-623, September.
    15. R. Bentley & Michael O’Brien & Paul Ormerod, 2011. "Quality versus mere popularity: a conceptual map for understanding human behavior," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 10(2), pages 181-191, December.
    16. Jorge Peña & Yannick Rochat, 2012. "Bipartite Graphs as Models of Population Structures in Evolutionary Multiplayer Games," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(9), pages 1-13, September.
    17. Cordes, Christian & Richerson, Peter J. & McElreath, Richard & Strimling, Pontus, 2008. "A naturalistic approach to the theory of the firm: The role of cooperation and cultural evolution," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 125-139, October.
    18. Guzmán, Ricardo Andrés & Rodríguez-Sickert, Carlos & Rowthorn, Robert, 2006. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do: the coevolution of altruistic punishment, conformist learning, and cooperation," MPRA Paper 2037, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Genki Ichinose & Masaya Saito & Hiroki Sayama & Hugues Bersini, 2015. "Transitions Between Homophilic and Heterophilic Modes of Cooperation," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 18(4), pages 1-3.
    20. Peng Liu & Haoxiang Xia, 2015. "Structure and evolution of co-authorship network in an interdisciplinary research field," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(1), pages 101-134, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:73:y:2008:i:4:p:506-516. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/intelligence .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.