Style of pictorial representation is shaped by intergroup contact

Granito, Carmen; Tehrani, Jamshid J.; Kendal, Jeremy; Scott‐Phillips, Thom

doi:10.1017/ehs.2019.8

Cited by 27 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Kegl et al, 1999;Meir et al, 2010;Brentari & Goldin-Meadow, 2017; inter alia), and studied experimentally in the laboratory (e.g. Fay et al, 2013;Schouwstra & de Swart, 2014;Granito et al, 2019;Motamedi et al, 2019;Raviv et al, 2019;inter alia). What is commonly observed in these literatures is how behaviour that is sufficiently similar to previously successfully informative behaviour tends to be interpreted by audiences as a further token of the same type as previously used, even after just one interaction; and also how further repetition causes the focal behaviours to become increasingly conventional.…”

Section: Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expression unleashed: The evolutionary and cognitive foundations of human communication

Heintz

Scott‐Phillips²

2022

Behav Brain Sci

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Human expression is open-ended, versatile and diverse, ranging from ordinary language use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid coordination. Here we present and defend the claim that this expressive diversity is united by an interrelated suite of cognitive capacities, the evolved functions of which are the expression and recognition of informative intentions. We describe how evolutionary dynamics normally leash communication to narrow domains of statistical mutual benefit, and how they are unleashed in humans. The relevant cognitive capacities are cognitive adaptations to living in a partner choice social ecology; and they are, correspondingly, part of the ordinarily developing human cognitive phenotype, emerging early and reliably in ontogeny. In other words, we identify distinctive features of our species’ social ecology to explain how and why humans, and only humans, evolved the cognitive capacities that, in turn, lead to massive diversity and open-endedness in means and modes of expression. Language use is but one of these modes of expression, albeit one of manifestly high importance. We make cross-species comparisons, describe how the relevant cognitive capacities can evolve in a gradual manner, and survey how unleashed expression facilitates not only language use but novel behaviour in many other domains too, focusing on the examples of joint action, teaching, punishment and art, all of which are ubiquitous in human societies but relatively rare in other species. Much of this diversity derives from graded aspects of human expression, which can be used to satisfy informative intentions in creative and new ways. We aim to help reorient cognitive pragmatics, as a phenomenon that is not a supplement to linguistic communication and on the periphery of language science, but rather the foundation of the many of the most distinctive features of human behaviour, society and culture.

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Section: Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expression unleashed: The evolutionary and cognitive foundations of human communication

Heintz

Scott‐Phillips²

2022

Behav Brain Sci

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“…Although art is a medium of communication and assorting with others with similar social norms or behaviors can facilitate successful coordination and cooperation, we believe that styles in art in this context do not play a coordinating role. One possible reason for the lack of covariation of artistic styles along cultural boundaries is that artists might have grown more similar to each other over time due to increased interactions (Healey et al, 2007;Granito et al, 2019). Due to the crosssectional nature of our data, we might have not been able to see such a change over time.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Due to the crosssectional nature of our data, we might have not been able to see such a change over time. However, since the kolam tradition is considered community knowledge and artists share their designs with each other (Nagarajan, 2018), the development of styles might have been influenced by frequent intergroup contact, and shared attention and learning (Tomasello et al, 1993;Granito et al, 2019). Precisely, the notion of kolam art as community knowledge might have led to pressures to make artistic styles accessible and transparent to any potential audience.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Limited Scope for Group Coordination in Stylistic Variations of Kolam Art

et al. 2021

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In large, complex societies, assorting with others with similar social norms or behaviors can facilitate successful coordination and cooperation. The ability to recognize others with shared norms or behaviors is thus assumed to be under selection. As a medium of communication, human art might reflect fitness-relevant information on shared norms and behaviors of other individuals thus facilitating successful coordination and cooperation. Distinctive styles or patterns of artistic design could signify migration history, different groups with a shared interaction history due to spatial proximity, as well as individual-level expertise and preferences. In addition, cultural boundaries may be even more pronounced in a highly diverse and socially stratified society. In the current study, we focus on a large corpus of an artistic tradition called kolam that is produced by women from Tamil Nadu in South India (N = 3, 139 kolam drawings from 192 women) to test whether stylistic variations in art can be mapped onto caste boundaries, migration and neighborhoods. Since the kolam art system with its sequential drawing decisions can be described by a Markov process, we characterize variation in styles of art due to different facets of an artist's identity and the group affiliations, via hierarchical Bayesian statistical models. Our results reveal that stylistic variations in kolam art only weakly map onto caste boundaries, neighborhoods, and regional origin. In fact, stylistic variations or patterns in art are dominated by artist-level variation and artist expertise. Our results illustrate that although art can be a medium of communication, it is not necessarily marked by group affiliation. Rather, artistic behavior in this context seems to be primarily a behavioral domain within which individuals carve out a unique niche for themselves to differentiate themselves from others. Our findings inform discussions on the evolutionary role of art for group coordination by encouraging researchers to use systematic methods to measure the mapping between specific objects or styles onto groups.

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“…Recently, there has been growing interest in empirically studying the general mechanisms of musical change (Mehr et al, 2019;Ravignani et al, 2016;Youngblood et al, 2021) and, more broadly, artistic change (Fraiberger et al, 2018;Granito et al, 2019;Sobchuk, 2018). These mechanisms tend to fall into two broad categories.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

First-mover advantage in music

Sobchuk¹,

Youngblood²,

Morin³

2022

Preprint

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Explaining the mechanisms of success and failure in culture remains an important challenge. In this paper we suggest that a first-mover advantage hypothesis, borrowed from economics, can explain the success in cultural industries such as music. The hypothesis claims that companies that enter a new market niche early on become more successful. In music, a genre is analogous to a niche, and early representatives of a genre may be considered first movers. To test whether early representatives of music genres are indeed more successful, we study ten new music genres using large data on musical success collected by the Spotify streaming service. Our findings support the hypothesis that successful artists may owe their popularity to innovativeness in new artistic niches.

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Style of pictorial representation is shaped by intergroup contact

Abstract: Abstract

Cited by 27 publications

References 51 publications

Expression unleashed: The evolutionary and cognitive foundations of human communication

Expression unleashed: The evolutionary and cognitive foundations of human communication

Limited Scope for Group Coordination in Stylistic Variations of Kolam Art

First-mover advantage in music

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