Hunters and gatherers past and present: Perspectives on diversity, teaching, and information transmission

Hitchcock, Robert K.

doi:10.1080/00938157.2019.1578025

Cited by 16 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 101 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In fact, the contagious nature of a narrative has been tied to the role social value plays in making decisions about others (Scholz et al, 2017). Others have suggested that storytelling has played an important role in the evolution of cooperation in human societies by serving as means of transmitting cultural beliefs and knowledge beyond the first-hand experience of any individual (Smith et al, 2017;Bietti et al, 2019;Hitchcock, 2019). Further, a number of legal scholars and trial lawyers have adopted a narrative-based account of juror decision making.…”

Section: Social Cognitive Processes Track Crime-type Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social cognitive processes explain bias in juror decisions

Castrellon

Hakimi²,

Parelman³

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Jury decisions are among the most consequential social decisions in which bias plays a notable role. While courts take a number of measures to reduce the influence of bias on decisions about case strength or deserved punishment based on evidence introduced during a trial, jurors may still incorporate personal biases based on knowledge, experience, emotion, and beliefs independent of evidence. One common form of this bias, crime-type bias, is the extent to which the perceived strength of a case depends on the severity of the crime. A number of explanations from psychology and law point to the role of moral judgment, social cognition, and affect as core processes of bias. However, behavioral evidence alone makes these explanations difficult to distinguish. To overcome this challenge, we used fMRI to record brain activation patterns of mock jurors as they read a series of criminal scenarios and rated the strength of the cases and deserved punishment. Compared to patterns of brain activation derived from large neuroimaging databases, mock jurors’ neural activation patterns related to crime-type bias were most similar to patterns associated with social cognition (such as those associated with mentalizing and racial bias) but not affect or moral judgment. Further, results indicated that crime-type bias could be explained by variability in victim harm. Our results support a central role for social cognition in juror decision making and suggest that crime-type bias may arise from similar mechanisms that precipitate other biases like stereotypes about culture or race.

show abstract

Section: Social Cognitive Processes Track Crime-type Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social cognitive processes explain bias in juror decisions

Castrellon

Hakimi²,

Parelman³

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In fact, the contagious nature of a narrative has been tied to the role social value plays in making decisions about others 38 . Others have suggested that storytelling has played an important role in the evolution of cooperation in human societies by serving as means of transmitting cultural beliefs and knowledge beyond the first-hand experience of any individual 39–41 . Within this framework, social cognition generally (and culture and ideation biases in particular) could be understood as providing a basis for evaluating the plausibility of a narrative suggested by uncertain or incomplete evidence in a particular case.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Narrative models attempt to explain unusual behaviors like the nonlinear spread of preferences and the role of affect in decision making by assessing the cohesiveness of a story and comparing it to previous experiences. Work in anthropology and evolutionary biology suggest that storytelling has played an important role in human evolution as means of communicating plausibility based on past experience from generation to generation (Smith et al, 2017;Bietti et al, 2019;Hitchcock, 2019). In fact, recent work on the estimation of risk has found that human subjects are better at estimating risk when it is described as part of a story than when asked to do so numerically (Sinclair et al, 2021).…”

Section: Broader Significance Of Narrative As a Mechanism Of Decision Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural support for contributions of utility and narrative processing of evidence in juror decision making

Castrellon

Hakimi

Parelman

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Efforts to explain jury decisions have focused on competing models emphasizing utility, narrative, and social-affective mechanisms, but these are difficult to distinguish using behavior alone. Here, we use patterns of brain activation derived from large neuroimaging databases to look for signatures of the cognitive processes associated with models of juror decision making. We asked jury-eligible subjects to rate the strength of a series of criminal cases while recording the resulting patterns of brain activation. When subjects considered evidence, utility and narrative processes were both active, but cognitive processes associated with narrative models better explain the patterns of brain activation. In contrast, a biasing effect of crime type on perceived strength of the case was best explained by brain patterns associated with social cognition.

show abstract

“…Thus, hunter-gatherer subsistence strategies include a diverse set of niche construction activities, which allows foragers to be flexible, adaptable and able to withstand change and which also debunk characterisations of these populations as passive consumers of natural resources (Hitchcock, 2019;Kelly, 2013;. While these activities could increase the local abundance of the plant and animal resources on which hunter-gatherers rely, these and other foraging and hunting activities could also depress resources (Feeney, 2019).…”

Section: Ethnographic Observations Of Hunter-gatherer Impact On Landscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracking Hunter-Gatherer Impact on Vegetation in Last Interglacial and Holocene Europe: Proxies and Challenges

Nikulina

MacDonald

Scherjon

et al. 2022

J Archaeol Method Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We review palaeoenvironmental proxies and combinations of these relevant for understanding hunter-gatherer niche construction activities in pre-agricultural Europe. Our approach consists of two steps: (1) identify the possible range of hunter-gatherer impacts on landscapes based on ethnographic studies; (2) evaluate proxies possibly reflecting these impacts for both the Eemian (Last Interglacial, Middle Palaeolithic) and the Early–Middle Holocene (Mesolithic). We found these paleoenvironmental proxies were not able to unequivocally establish clear-cut differences between specific anthropogenic, climatic and megafaunal impacts for either time period in this area. We discuss case studies for both periods and show that published evidence for Mesolithic manipulation of landscapes is based on the interpretation of comparable data as available for the Last Interglacial. If one applies the ‘Mesolithic’ interpretation schemes to the Neanderthal record, three common niche construction activities can be hypothesised: vegetation burning, plant manipulation and impact on animal species presence and abundance. Our review suggests that as strong a case can be made for a Neanderthal impact on landscapes as for anthropogenic landscape changes during the Mesolithic, even though the Neanderthal evidence comes from only one high-resolution site complex. Further research should include attempts (e.g. by means of modelling studies) to establish whether hunter-gatherer impact on landscapes played out at a local level only versus at a larger scale during both time periods, while we also need to obtain comparative data on the population sizes of Last Interglacial and Holocene hunter-gatherers, as these are usually inferred to have differed significantly.

show abstract

Hunters and gatherers past and present: Perspectives on diversity, teaching, and information transmission

Cited by 16 publications

References 101 publications

Social cognitive processes explain bias in juror decisions

Social cognitive processes explain bias in juror decisions

Neural support for contributions of utility and narrative processing of evidence in juror decision making

Tracking Hunter-Gatherer Impact on Vegetation in Last Interglacial and Holocene Europe: Proxies and Challenges

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About