Why and How Did Narrative Fictions Evolve? Fictions as Entertainment Technologies

Abstract

Narrative fictions have surely become the single most widespread source of entertainment in the world. In their free time, humans read novels and comics, watch movies and TV series, and play video games: they consume stories that they know to be false. Such behaviors are expanding at lightning speed in modern societies. Yet, the question of the origin of fictions has been an evolutionary puzzle for decades: Are fictions biological adaptations, or the by-products of cognitive mechanisms that evolved for another purpose? The absence of any consensus in cognitive science has made it difficult to explain how narrative fictions evolve culturally. We argue that current conflicting hypotheses are partly wrong, and partly right: narrative fictions are by-products of the human mind, because they obviously co-opt some pre-existing cognitive preferences and mechanisms, such as our interest for social information, and our abilities to do mindreading and to imagine counterfactuals. But humans reap some fitness benefits from producing and consuming such appealing cultural items, making fictions adaptive. To reconcile these two views, we put forward the hypothesis that narrative fictions are best seen as entertainment technologies that is, as items crafted by some people for the proximate goal to grab the attention of other people, and with the ultimate goal to fulfill other evolutionary-relevant functions that become easier once other people’s attention is caught. This hypothesis explains why fictions are filled with exaggerated and entertaining stimuli, why they fit so well the changing preferences of the audience they target, and why producers constantly make their fictions more attractive as time goes by, in a cumulative manner.

Imaginary worlds through the evolutionary lens: Ultimate functions, proximate mechanisms, cultural distribution

“…It is all the more important to clarify this point as we believe that developmental predictions derived from our framework could be both highly specific and straightforwardly testable. As we argue elsewhere (Dubourg & Baumard, in press), this framework (bringing together cultural attraction theory and adaptive developmental plasticity) could explain the presence and absence of a myriad of content features in fictions, by considering the age of their targeted audience. Why?…”

“…Consuming fictions can also be used to coordinate with others: Discussing fictions in a diner and going to the theater allow individuals to have enjoyable interactions with others, leading to more beneficial interactions. (e.g., finding mates, strengthening friendship, building partnership, detecting potential allies; Dubourg, André, & Baumard, 2021a, 2021b; Dubourg & Baumard, in press). All these fitness-enhancing activities are made easier when people are entertained.…”

“…Each human life stage from infancy to old age, and including childhood, juvenility, adolescence, and adulthood, is endowed with age-specific preferences (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2000; Del Giudice et al, 2009), because natural selection has favored individuals who are able to adopt an optimal scheduling of preferences (Gangestad & Kaplan, 2015; Hill, 1993; Kaplan & Gangestad, 2005). Because our general framework suggests that the cultural evolution of fictions is driven by the consumers' preferences, we can derive a series of predictions about the distribution of content features in fictional narratives by considering the age of the people who find them entertaining (Dubourg & Baumard, in press).…”

When instrumental inference hides behind seemingly arbitrary conventions

“…The authors similarly argue that competitive sports (e.g., football), despite being oriented toward some instrumental outcomes (e.g., playing a ball into the opposing teams' net), are constrained by slavishly copied, causally opaque conventions (e.g., the prohibition to use one's hands to do so). We argue, however, that people adopt an instrumental stance toward these conventional rules themselves , designing and selectively retaining them to satisfy the goals they pursue by playing or watching sports and games – such as being entertained and signaling one's skills (Lombardo, 2012; see Dubourg & Baumard [2022] for another example of entertainment technology).…”

Tradition and invention: The bifocal stance theory of cultural evolution

“…The authors similarly argue that competitive sports (e.g., football), despite being oriented toward some instrumental outcomes (e.g., playing a ball into the opposing teams' net), are constrained by slavishly copied, causally opaque conventions (e.g., the prohibition to use one's hands to do so). We argue, however, that people adopt an instrumental stance toward these conventional rules themselves, designing and selectively retaining them to satisfy the goals they pursue by playing or watching sports and gamessuch as being entertained and signaling one's skills (Lombardo, 2012; see Dubourg & Baumard [2022] for another example of entertainment technology). This is manifested by the fact that sport and game rules are transformed, under people's impulse, in a direction that increasingly satisfies those goals.…”