Cultural kinship as a computational system: from bottom-up to top-down forms of social organization

Human cooperation (paying a cost to benefit others) is puzzling from a Darwinian perspective, particularly in groups with strangers who cannot repay nor are family members. The beneficial effects of cooperation typically increase nonlinearly with the number of cooperators, e.g., increasing returns when cooperation is low and diminishing returns when cooperation is high. Such nonlinearity can allow cooperation between strangers to persist evolutionarily if a large enough proportion of the population are already cooperators. However, if a lone cooperator faces a conflict between the group’s and its own interests (a social dilemma), that raises the question of how cooperation arose in the first place. We use a mathematically tractable evolutionary model to formalise a chronological narrative that has previously only been investigated verbally: given that ancient humans interacted mostly with family members (genetic homophily), cooperation evolved first by kin selection, and then persisted in situations with nonlinear benefits as homophily declined or even if interactions with strangers became the norm. The model also predicts the coexistence of cooperators and defectors observed in the human population (polymorphism), and may explain why cooperators in behavioural experiments prefer to condition their contribution on the contributions of others (conditional cooperation in public goods games).

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ancestral social environments plus nonlinear benefits can explain cooperation in human societies

Kristensen

Ohtsuki

Chisholm

2022

Sci Rep

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“…The exact mechanisms (including cultural 104 ) are outside the scope of our model, but we note that contemporary humans often cooperate with nonkin using cooptations of kin psychology [105][106][107] . For example, socially constructed notions of kinship 61,108 coopt both the kinship framework that coordinates cooperation 109,110 and the kin-psychological impulse to do so 111 . Interestingly, homophily in the broader sense of generalised attraction to similar others 112,113 likely also has roots in kin psychology 105,114 , and the human tendency to empathise 115 and cooperate with similar others even based on meaningless traits 116,117 may have provided a starting point for nongenetic bases of group identity 118 , which functions by triggering the expectation that others will coordinate their cooperation with one's own (cf., 21,75 ).…”

Section: /12mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ancestral social environments plus nonlinear benefits can explain cooperation in human societies

Kristensen

Ohtsuki

Chisholm

2022

Preprint

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Human cooperation (paying a cost to benefit others) is puzzling from a Darwinian perspective, particularly in groups with strangers who cannot repay nor are family members. The beneficial effects of cooperation typically increase nonlinearly with the number of cooperators, e.g., increasing returns when cooperation is low and diminishing returns when cooperation is high. Such nonlinearity can allow cooperation between strangers to persist evolutionarily if a large enough proportion of the population are already cooperators. However, if a lone cooperator faces a conflict between the group's and its own interests (a social dilemma), that raises the question of how cooperation arose in the first place. We use a mathematically tractable evolutionary model to formalise a chronological narrative that has previously only been investigated verbally: given that ancient humans interacted mostly with family members (genetic homophily), cooperation evolved first by kin selection, and then persisted in situations with nonlinear benefits as homophily declined or even if interactions with strangers became the norm. The model also predicts the coexistence of cooperators and defectors observed in the human population (polymorphism), and may explain why cooperators in behavioural experiments prefer to condition their contribution on the contributions of others (conditional cooperation in public goods games).

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“…We briefly trace currents of theoretical development that arose amid the initial wave of responses to Schneider's critiques; in doing so, we contextualize developments over the past 10 years. Due to constraints of space and the dense nature of this literature, we omit from this discussion recent developments in formal (i.e., quantitative) kinship analysis (e.g., Leaf 2013;Read 2007Read , 2011Read , 2012, historical linguistics (e.g., Ehret 2011;Fortunato 2011a, b;Jones 2010;Jones and Milicic 2011), and isonymy (e.g., Darlu et al 2012;King and Jobling 2009;Larmuseau et al 2012). Readers interested in developments within these approaches to kinship should consult the preceding citations as well as the Bibliography of Recent Literature.…”

Section: Recent Developments In Sociocultural Approaches To Kinshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bioarchaeology and Kinship: Integrating Theory, Social Relatedness, and Biology in Ancient Family Research

Johnson

Paul

2015

J Archaeol Res

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Theoretical developments in sociocultural anthropology have transformed the study of kinship. Here, we review these theoretical developments, consider their influence on bioarchaeological kinship research, and propose an alternative framework for studying relatedness in antiquity. We find that broader, more flexible conceptions of relatedness have grown increasingly prevalent in 21st-century bioarchaeology, but kinship research largely continues to emphasize methodological improvement and identification of biological kin in archaeological contexts. By approaching kinship as a multiscalar dimension of social identity, bioarchaeologists can leverage complex conceptions of relatedness with diverse types of data to gain nuanced perspectives on family-based social organization in the past.

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Cultural kinship as a computational system: from bottom-up to top-down forms of social organization

Cited by 7 publications

References 9 publications

Ancestral social environments plus nonlinear benefits can explain cooperation in human societies

Ancestral social environments plus nonlinear benefits can explain cooperation in human societies

Ancestral social environments plus nonlinear benefits can explain cooperation in human societies

Bioarchaeology and Kinship: Integrating Theory, Social Relatedness, and Biology in Ancient Family Research

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