Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T17:37:20.421Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The cultural evolution of emergent group-level traits

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2014

Paul E. Smaldino
Paul E. Smaldino*
Affiliation:
Center for Advanced Modeling in the Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21209. [email protected]://www.smaldino.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Many of the most important properties of human groups – including properties that may give one group an evolutionary advantage over another – are properly defined only at the level of group organization. Yet at present, most work on the evolution of culture has focused solely on the transmission of individual-level traits. I propose a conceptual extension of the theory of cultural evolution, particularly related to the evolutionary competition between cultural groups. The key concept in this extension is the emergent group-level trait. This type of trait is characterized by the structured organization of differentiated individuals and constitutes a unit of selection that is qualitatively different from selection on groups as defined by traditional multilevel selection (MLS) theory. As a corollary, I argue that the traditional focus on cooperation as the defining feature of human societies has missed an essential feature of cooperative groups. Traditional models of cooperation assume that interacting with one cooperator is equivalent to interacting with any other. However, human groups involve differential roles, meaning that receiving aid from one individual is often preferred to receiving aid from another. In this target article, I discuss the emergence and evolution of group-level traits and the implications for the theory of cultural evolution, including ramifications for the evolution of human cooperation, technology, and cultural institutions, and for the equivalency of multilevel selection and inclusive fitness approaches.

Keywords

altruismcooperationcultural group selectioninclusive fitnessinnovationinstitutionsinterdependencemultilevel selectionniche construction
Type
Target Article
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , June 2014 , pp. 243 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aktipis, C. A. (2004) Know when to walk away: Contingent movement and the evolution of cooperation. Journal of Theoretical Biology 231:249–60.Google Scholar
Antal, T., Ohtsuki, H., Wakeley, J., Taylor, P. D. & Nowak, M. A. (2009) Evolution of cooperation by phenotypic similarity. PNAS 106:8597–600.Google Scholar
Aoki, M. (2007) Endogenizing institutions and institutional changes. Journal of Institutional Economics 3:1–31.Google Scholar
Atran, S. & Henrich, J. (2010) The evolution of religion: How cognitive by-products, adaptive learning heuristics, ritual displays, and group competition generate deep commitments to prosocial religions. Biological Theory 5(1):18–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atran, S. & Norenzayan, A. (2004) Religion's evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27(6):713–30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Axelrod, R., Hammond, R. A. & Grafen, A. (2004) Altruism via kin-selection strategies that rely on arbitrary tags with which they coevolve. Evolution 58:1833–38.Google ScholarPubMed
Baldini, R., Beheim, B., Bell, A., Demps, K., Frost, K., Hillis, V., Mathew, S., Newton, E. K., Newson, L., Ross, C., Smaldino, P. E., Waring, T., Zefferman, M. & Richerson, P. J. (under review). A sketch of the evidence for selection on inter-group cultural variation in humans.Google Scholar
Barrett, J. L. (2000) Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4:29–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barrett, L. F. (2006) Are emotions natural kinds? Perspectives on Psychological Science 1:28–58.Google Scholar
Barrett, L. F., Lindquist, K. A. & Gendron, M. (2007) Language as a context for the perception of emotion. Trends in Cognitive Science 11:327–32.Google Scholar
Bergmüller, R., Johnstone, R. A., Russell, A. F. & Bshary, R. (2007) Integrating cooperative breeding into theoretical concepts of cooperation. Behavioral Processes 76:61–72.Google Scholar
Bijma, P. & Aanen, D. K. (2010) Assortment, Hamilton's rule and multilevel selection. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 277:673–75.Google Scholar
Boehm, C. (1997) Impact of the human egalitarian syndrome on Darwinian selection mechanics. American Naturalist 150:S100–21.Google Scholar
Bouchard, T. J. & Loehlin, J. C. (2001) Genes, evolution, and personality. Behavioral Genetics 31:243–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bourke, A. F. G. (2011) Principles of social evolution. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. (2011) A cooperative species: Human reciprocity and its evolution. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bowles, S. (2004) Microeconomics, behavior, institutions, and evolution. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bowles, S., Choi, J-K. & Hopfensitz, A. (2003) The co-evolution of individual behaviors and social institutions. Journal of Theoretical Biology 223:135–47.Google Scholar
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (1985) Culture and the evolutionary process. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (1992) Punishment allows the evolution of cooperation (or anything else) in sizable groups. Ethology and Sociobiology 13:171–95.Google Scholar
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (2005) The origin and evolution of cultures. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (2008) Gene-culture coevolution and the evolution of social institutions. In: Better than conscious? Decision making, the human mind, and implications for institutions, ed. Engel, C. & Singer, W., pp. 305–23. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Boyd, R., Richerson, P. J. & Henrich, J. (2011) The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108:10918–25.Google Scholar
Brewer, M. B. (2004) Taking the social origins of human nature seriously: Toward a more imperialist social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Review 8:107–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calcott, B. (2008) The other cooperation problem: Generating benefit. Biology and Philosophy 23:179–203.Google Scholar
Caporael, L. (2003) Repeated assembly. In: Evolutionary psychology: Alternative approaches, ed. Scher, S. J. & Rauscher, F., pp. 71–89. Kluwer Academic.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caporael, L. R. (2001) Evolutionary psychology: Toward a unifying theory and a hybrid science. Annual Reviews of Psychology 52:607–28.Google Scholar
Caporael, L. R. & Brewer, M. B. (1995) Hierarchical evolutionary theory: There is an alternative, and it's not creationism. Psychological Inquiry 6:31–34.Google Scholar
Caporael, L. R., Griesemer, J. R. & Wimsatt, W. C. (2014) Developing scaffolds in evolution, culture, and cognition. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. & Feldman, M. (1981) Cultural transmission and evolution: A quantitative approach. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., Feldman, M. W., Chen, K. H. & Dornbusch, S. M. (1982) Theory and observation in cultural transmission. Science 218:19–27.Google Scholar
Chudek, M., Brosseau-Liard, P., Birch, S. & Henrich, J. (2013) Culture-gene coevolutionary theory and children's selective social learning. In: Navigating the social world: What infants, children, and other species can teach us, ed. Banaji, M. R. & Gelman, S. A., pp. 181–85. Oxford University Press Google Scholar
Chudek, M. & Henrich, J. (2011) Culture-gene coevolution, norm-psychology and the emergence of human prosociality. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 15(5):218–26.Google Scholar
Claidière, N. & André, J-B. (2012) The transmission of genes and culture: A questionable analogy. Evolutionary Biology 39:12–24.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H. & Brennan, S. E. (1991) Grounding in communication. In: Perspectives on socially shared cognition, ed. Resnick, L. B., Levine, J. M. & Teasley, S. D., pp. 127–49. American Psychological Association.Google Scholar
Cohen, J. E. (2004) Mathematics is biology's next microscope, only better; biology is mathematics' next physics, only better. PLoS Biology 2(12):e439.Google Scholar
Csibra, G. & Gergely, G. (2011) Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 366:1149–57.Google Scholar
Cunningham, W. A., Zelazo, P. D., Packer, D. J. & Van Bavel, J. J. (2007) The iterative reprocessing model: A multilevel framework for attitudes and evaluation. Social Cognition 25:736–60.Google Scholar
Damuth, J. & Heisler, I. L. (1988) Alternative formulations of multilevel selection. Biology & Philosophy 3:407–30.Google Scholar
Darwin, C. (1871) The descent of man and selection in relation to sex. Appleton Press.Google Scholar
Davidson, I. & Roberts, D. A. (2009) On being alone: The isolation of the Tasmanians. In: Turning points in Australian history, ed. Crotty, M. & Andrews, D. A., pp. 18–31. University of New South Wales Press.Google Scholar
Dennett, D. C. (2006a) Breaking the spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon. Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Dennett, D. C. (2006b) Dan Dennett: Responding to Pastor Rick Warren [Video file]. Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_s_response_to_rick_warren.html.Google Scholar
Diamond, J. M. (1978) The Tasmanians: The longest isolation, the simplest technology. Nature 273:185–86.Google Scholar
Diamond, J. M. (1999) Guns, germs, and steel. W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Durham, W. H. (1991) Coevolution: Genes, culture, and human diversity. Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Durrett, R. & Levin, S. (1994) The importance of being discrete (and spatial). Theoretical Population Biology 46:363–94.Google Scholar
Fewell, J. H. & Page, R. E. (1999) The emergence of division of labour in forced associations of normally solitary ant queens. Evolutionary Ecology Research 1:537–48.Google Scholar
Fletcher, J. A. & Doebeli, M. (2009) A simple and general explanation for the evolution of altruism. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 276:13–19.Google Scholar
Fothergill, A. & Berlowitz, V. (2011) Frozen planet: A world beyond imagination. Firefly Books.Google Scholar
Fracchia, J. & Lewontin, R. C. (1999) Does culture evolve? History and Theory 38:52–78.Google Scholar
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M. & the ABC Research Group. (1999) Simple heuristics that make us smart. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gladwell, M. (2008) Outliers: The story of success. Little, Brown, & Co.Google Scholar
Gong, T. & Shuai, L. (2012) Modelling the coevolution of joint attention and language. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 279:4643–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goodnight, C. J. & Stevens, L. (1997) Experimental studies of group selection: What do they tell us about group selection in nature? American Naturalist 150:S59–S79.Google Scholar
Gottesman, I. I. & Hanson, D. R. (2006) Human development: Biological and genetic processes. Annual Review of Psychology 56:263–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grammich, C., Hadaway, K., Houseal, R., Jones, D. E., Krindatch, A., Stanley, R. & Taylor, R. H. (2012) 2010 U.S. Religion census: Religious congregations & membership study. Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies.Google Scholar
Greif, A. & Laitin, D. D. (2004) A theory of endogenous institutional change. American Political Science Review 98:633–52.Google Scholar
Grossman, K. E. & Grossman, K. (2006) Universality of human social attachment as an adaptive process. In: Attachment and bonding: A new synthesis, ed. Carter, C. S. et al. , pp. 199–228. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hammond, R. A. & Axelrod, R. (2006) Evolution of contingent altruism when cooperation is expensive. Theoretical Population Biology 69:333–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harris, P. L. (2012) Trusting what you're told: How children learn from others. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Helbing, D. & Yu, W. (2009) The outbreak of cooperation among success-driven individuals under noisy conditions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 106:3680–85.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. (2004a) Cultural group selection, coevolutionary processes and large-scale cooperation. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 53:3–35.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. (2004b) Demography and cultural evolution: How adaptive cultural processes can produce maladaptive losses: The Tasmanian case. American Antiquity 69:197–214.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. (2010) The evolution of innovation-enhancing institutions. In: Innovation in cultural systems: Contributions from evolutionary anthropology, ed. O'Brien, M. J. & Shennan, S. J., pp. 99–120. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. & Boyd, R. (2001) Why people punish defectors: Weak conformist transmission can stabilize costly enforcement of norms in cooperative dilemmas. Journal of Theoretical Biology 208:79–89.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. & Boyd, R. (2008) Division of labor, economic specialization, and the evolution of social stratification. Current Anthropology 49(4):715–24.Google Scholar
Henrich, J., Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (2008) Five misunderstandings about cultural evolution. Human Nature 19:119–37.Google Scholar
Herrmann, E., Call, J., Hernández-Lloreda, M. V., Hare, B. & Tomasello, M. (2007) Humans have evolved specialized skills of social cognition: The cultural intelligence hypothesis. Science 317:1360–66.Google Scholar
Hill, K. & Hurtado, A. M. (2009) Cooperative breeding in South American hunter-gatherers. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 276:3863–70.Google Scholar
Hinde, R. A. (1976b) Interactions, relationships and social structure. Man 11:1–17.Google Scholar
Ihara, Y. & Feldman, M. W. (2004) Cultural niche construction and the evolution of small family size. Theoretical Population Biology 65:105–11.Google Scholar
Jablonka, E. & Lamb, M. J. (2005) Evolution in four dimensions: Genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic variation in the history of life. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jansen, V. A. A. & van Baalen, M. (2006) Altruism through beard chromodynamics. Nature 440:663–66.Google Scholar
Kendler, K. S. & Greenspan, R. J. (2006) The nature of genetic influences on behavior: Lessons from “simpler” organisms. American Journal of Psychiatry 163:1683–94.Google Scholar
Kline, M. A. & Boyd, R. (2010) Population size predicts technological complexity in Oceania. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 277:2559–64.Google Scholar
Koella, J. C. (2000) The spatial spread of altruism versus the evolutionary response of egoists. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 267:1979–85.Google Scholar
Laland, K. N., Odling-Smee, J. & Feldman, M. W. (2000) Niche construction, biological evolution, and cultural change. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23:131–75.Google Scholar
Laland, K. N., Odling-Smee, J. & Feldman, M. W. (2001) Cultural niche construction and human evolution. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 14:22–33.Google Scholar
Laland, K. N. & O'Brien, M. J. (2012) Cultural niche construction: An introduction. Biological Theory 6:191–202.Google Scholar
Laland, K. N. & Sterelny, K. (2006) Seven reasons (not) to neglect niche construction. Evolution 60:1751–62.Google Scholar
Laland, K. N., Sterlny, K., Odling-Smee, J., Hoppitt, W. & Uller, T. (2011) Cause and effect in biology revisited: Is Mayr's proximate-ultimate dichotomy still useful? Science 334:1512–16.Google Scholar
Lewontin, R. (1982) Organism and environment. In: Learning, development, and culture ed. Plotkin, H. C., pp. 151–70. Wiley.Google Scholar
Lewontin, R. (2000) The triple helix: Gene, organism, and environment. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lindquist, K. A., Wager, T. D., Kober, H., Bliss-Moreau, E. & Barrett, L. F. (2012) The brain basis of emotion: A meta-analytic review. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35:121–202.Google Scholar
Lion, S. & van Baalen, M. (2008) Self-structuring in spatial evolutionary ecology. Ecology Letters 11:277–95.Google Scholar
Marshall, J. A. R. (2011) Group selection and kin selection: Formally equivalent approaches. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 26:325–32.Google Scholar
Masuda, T. & Nisbett, R. E. (2001) Attending holistically versus analytically: Comparing the context sensitivity of Japanese and Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81:922–34.Google Scholar
Maynard Smith, J. & Szathmary, E. (1995) The major transitions in evolution. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McElreath, R. & Boyd, R. (2007) Mathematical models of social evolution. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McElreath, R., Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (2003) Shared norms and the evolution of ethnic markers. Current Anthropology 44(1):122–29.Google Scholar
Mesoudi, A. (2007) Biological and cultural evolution: Similar but different. Biological Theory 2:119–223.Google Scholar
Mesoudi, A. (2011) Cultural evolution: How Darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences. University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michod, R. E. (2005) On the transfer of fitness from the cell to the multicellular organism. Biology and Philosophy 20:967–87.Google Scholar
Michod, R. E. (2007) Evolution of individuality during the transition from unicellular to multicellular life. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104:8613–18.Google Scholar
Michod, R. E. & Nedelcu, A. M. (2003) On the reorganization of fitness during evolutionary transitions in individuality. Integrative and Comparative Biology 43:64–73.Google Scholar
Michod, R. E. & Roze, D. (1997) Transitions in individuality. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 264:853–57.Google Scholar
Michod, R. E. & Roze, D. (2001) Cooperation and conflict in the evolution of multicellularity. Heredity 86:1–7.Google Scholar
Moll, H. & Tomasello, M. (2007) Cooperation and human cognition: The Vygotskian intelligence hypothesis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 362:639–48.Google Scholar
Nagel, M. (2010) A mathematical model of democratic elections. Current Research Journal of Social Sciences 2:255–61.Google Scholar
Nijhout, H. F. (2003) The importance of context in genetics. American Scientist 91:416–23.Google Scholar
Nisbett, R. E. & Miyamoto, Y. (2005) The influence of culture: holistic versus analytic perception. Trends in Cognitive Science 9:467–73.Google Scholar
Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I. & Norenzayan, A. (2001) Culture and systems of thought: Holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychological Review 108:291–310.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (1990) Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nowak, M. A. (2011) Supercooperators: Altruism, evolution, and why we need each other to succeed. Free Press.Google Scholar
Nowak, M. A. & Sigmund, K. (2005) Evolution of indirect reciprocity. Nature 437:1291–98.Google Scholar
Odling-Smee, F. J., Laland, K. N. & Feldman, M. W. (2003) Niche construction: The neglected process in evolution. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Okasha, S. (2005) Multilevel selection and the major transitions in evolution. Philosophy of Science 72:1013–25.Google Scholar
Okasha, S. (2006) Evolution and the levels of selection. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Page, R. E. & Mitchell, S. D. (1991) Self organization and adaptation in insect societies. In: PSA 1990, Vol. 2, ed. Fine, A., Forbes, M. & Wessels, L., pp. 289–98. Philosophy of Science Association.Google Scholar
Page, S. E. (2007) The difference: How the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Perc, M. & Szolnoki, A. (2010) Coevolutionary games: A mini review. Biosystems 99:109–25.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (2012) The false allure of group selection. Available at: http://www.edge.org/conversation/the-false-allure-of-group-selection Google Scholar
Post, C., De Lia, E., DiTomaso, N., Tirpal, T. M. & Borwankar, R. (2009) Capitalizing on thought diversity for innovation. Research Technology Management 52:14–25.Google Scholar
Powell, A., Shennan, S. & Thomas, M. G. (2009) Late Pleistocene demography and the appearance of modern human behavior. Science 324:1298–301.Google Scholar
Price, G. R. (1972) Extension of covariance selection mathematics. Annals of Human Genetics 35:485–90.Google Scholar
Read, D. (2006) Tasmanian knowledge and skill: Maladaptive imitation or adequate technology? American Antiquity 71:164–84.Google Scholar
Read, L. (1958) I, pencil: My family tree as told to Leonard E. Read. In: The Freeman; reprinted by The Library of Economics and Liberty, found on 9/3/12 at http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html.Google Scholar
Reeve, H. K. & Hölldobler, B. (2007) The emergence of a superorganism through intergroup competition. PNAS 104:9736–40.Google Scholar
Richerson, P. J. & Boyd, R. (1998) The evolution of human ultra-sociality. In: Ideology, warfare, and indoctrinability, ed. Eibl-Eibisfeldt, I. & Slater, F., pp. 71–95. Bergahn Books.Google Scholar
Richerson, P. J. & Boyd, R. (2005) Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Richerson, P. J. & Henrich, J. (2012) Tribal social instincts and the cultural evolution of institutions to solve collective action problems. Cliodynamics 3:38–80.Google Scholar
Ridley, M. (2010) The rational optimist: How prosperity evolves. HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Simonton, D. K. (1999) Talent and its development: An emergenic and epigenetic model. Psychological Review 106:435–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smaldino, P. E. & Lubell, M. (2011) An institutional mechanism for assortment in an ecology of games. PLoS ONE 6:e23019.Google Scholar
Smaldino, P. E. & Lubell, M. (2014) Institutions and cooperation in an ecology of games. Artificial Life 20:207–21.Google Scholar
Smaldino, P. E., Newson, L., Schank, J. C. & Richerson, P. J. (2013a) Simulating the evolution of the human family: Cooperative breeding increases in harsh environments. PLoS ONE 8(11):e80753.Google Scholar
Smaldino, P. E. & Richerson, P. J. (2012) The origins of options. Frontiers in Neuroscience 6:50.Google Scholar
Smaldino, P. E. & Schank, J. C. (2012a) Movement patterns, social dynamics, and the evolution of cooperation. Theoretical Population Biology 82:48–58.Google Scholar
Smaldino, P. E. & Schank, J. C. (2012b) Invariants of human emotion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35:164.Google Scholar
Smaldino, P. E., Schank, J. C. & McElreath, R. (2013b) Increased costs of cooperation help cooperators in the long run. The American Naturalist 181(4):451–63.Google Scholar
Soltis, J., Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (1995) Can group-functional behaviors evolve by cultural group selection? An empirical test. Current Anthropology 36:473–94.Google Scholar
Sperber, D. & Claidière, N. (2006) Why modeling cultural evolution is still such a challenge. Biological Theory 1:20–22.Google Scholar
Sumpter, D. J. T. (2006) The principles of collective animal behaviour. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 361:5–22.Google Scholar
Surowiecki, J. (2004) The wisdom of crowds. Anchor Books and Doubleday.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2009) Why we cooperate. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T. & Moll, H. (2005) Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28(05):675–735. doi:10.1017/S0140525X05000129.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1992) The psychological foundations of culture. In: The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the evolution of culture. ed. Barkow, J. H., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J., pp. 19–136. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Trivers, R. (1971) The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology 46:35–57.Google Scholar
Vaesen, K. (2012) Cumulative cultural evolution and demography. PLoS ONE 7:e40989.Google Scholar
van den Bergh, J. C. J. M. & Gowdy, J. M. (2009) A group selection perspective on economic behavior, institutions and organizations. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 72:1–20.Google Scholar
van Ijzendoorn, M. H., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J. & Sagi-Schwartz, A. (2006) Attachment across diverse sociocultural contexts: The limits of universality. In: Parenting beliefs, behaviors, and parent-child relations: A cross-cultural perspective, ed. Rubin, K. H., pp. 107–42. Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Wade, M. J. (1978) A critical review of models of group selection. Quarterly Review of Biology 53:101–14.Google Scholar
Wade, M. J., Wilson, D. S., Goodnight, C., Taylor, D., Bar-Yam, Y., de Aguiar, M. A. M., Stacey, B., Werfel, J., Hoelzer, G. A., Brodie, E. D., Fields, P., Breden, F., Linksvayer, T. A., Fletcher, J. A., Richerson, P. J., Bever, J. D., Van Dyken, J. D. & Zee, P. (2010) Multilevel and kin selection in a connected world. Nature 463:E8–E10.Google Scholar
Waring, T. M. (2012) Cooperation dynamics in a multi-ethnic society: A case study from Tamil Nadu. Current Anthropology 53(5):642–49.Google Scholar
White, O. (1965) Parliament of a thousand tribes: A study of New Guinea. Heinemann.Google Scholar
Whiten, A., Hinde, R. A., Laland, K. N. & Stringer, C. B. (2011) Culture evolves. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 366:938–48.Google Scholar
Wild, G., Gardner, A. & West, S. A. (2009) Adaptation and the evolution of parasite virulence in a connected world. Nature 459:983–86.Google Scholar
Williams, G. C. (1966) Adaptation and natural selection. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, D. S. (1975) A theory of group selection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 72:143–46.Google Scholar
Wilson, D. S. (1997) Altruism and organism: Disentangling the themes of multilevel selection theory. American Naturalist 150:S122–34.Google Scholar
Wilson, D. S. (2002) Darwin's cathedral: evolution, religion, and the nature of society. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, D. S. & Dugatkin, L. A. (1997) Group selection and assortative interactions. American Naturalist 149:336–51.Google Scholar
Wilson, D. S. & Sober, E. (1994) Reintroducing group selection to the human behavioral sciences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17(4):585–607.Google Scholar
Wilson, D. S. & Wilson, E. O. (2007) Rethinking the theoretical foundation of sociobiology. The Quarterly Review of Biology 82(4):327–48.Google Scholar
Wimsatt, W. C. (1974) Complexity and organization. In: PSA 1972, ed. Schaffner, K. & Cohen, R. S., pp. 67–86. Philosophy of Science Association.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimsatt, W. C. (1997) Aggregativity: Reductive heuristics for finding emergence. Philosophy of Science 64(4):S372–84.Google Scholar
Wimsatt, W. C. (2006) Aggregate, composed, and evolved systems: Reductionistic heuristics as means to more holistic theories. Biology & Philosophy 21:667–702.Google Scholar
Wimsatt, W. C. & Griesemer, J. R. (2007) Reproducing entrenchments to scaffold culture: The central role of development in cultural evolution. In: Integrating evolution and development: From theory to practice, ed. Sansom, R. & Brandon, R., pp. 227–323. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Woolley, A. W., Chabris, C. F., Pentland, A., Hashmi, N. & Malone, T. W. (2010) Evidence for a collective intelligence factor in the performance of human groups. Science 330:686–88.Google Scholar
Wynne-Edwards, V. C. (1962) Animal dispersion in relation to social behavior. Oliver & Boyd.Google Scholar
Young, H. P. (1998) Individual strategy and social structure: An evolutionary theory of institutions. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar