Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T10:33:30.271Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Adding culture and context improves evolutionary theorizing about human cognition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2018

Rita Anne McNamara  and
Ronald Fischer
Rita Anne McNamara
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington 6140, New Zealand. rita.mcnamara@vuw.ac.nzronald.fischer@vuw.ac.nzhttp://ramcnama.wordpress.comhttps://mindcultureevolution.com
Ronald Fischer
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington 6140, New Zealand. rita.mcnamara@vuw.ac.nzronald.fischer@vuw.ac.nzhttp://ramcnama.wordpress.comhttps://mindcultureevolution.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Boyer & Petersen (B&P) lay out an evolutionarily grounded framework to produce concrete, testable predictions about economic phenomena. We commend this step forward, but suggest the framework requires more consideration of cultural contexts that provide necessary input for cognitive systems to operate on. We discuss the role of culture when examining both evolved cognitive systems and social exchange contexts.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 41 , 2018 , e181
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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

Ames, D. R., Knowles, E. D., Morris, M. W., Kalish, C. W., Rosati, A. D. & Gopnik, A. (2001) The social folk theorist: Insights from social and cultural psychology on the contents and contexts of folk theorizing. In: Intentions and intentionality: Foundations of social cognition, ed. Malle, B. F., Moses, L. & Baldwin, D., pp. 307–30. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Apicella, C. L., Azevedo, E. M., Christakis, N. A. & Fowler, J. H. (2014) Evolutionary origins of the endowment effect: Evidence from hunter-gatherers. American Economic Review 104(6):1793–1805. http://doi.org/10.1257/aer.104.6.1793.Google Scholar
Apperly, I. A. (2011) Mindreaders: The cognitive basis of “theory of mind.” Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Barrett, H. C., Bolyanatz, A., Crittenden, A. N., Fessler, D. M. T., Fitzpatrick, S., Gurven, M., Henrich, J., Kanovsky, M., Kushnick, G., Pisor, A., Scelza, B. A., Stich, S., von Rueden, C., Zhao, W. & Laurence, S. (2016) Small-scale societies exhibit fundamental variation in the role of intentions in moral judgment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 113(17): 4688–93. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1522070113.Google Scholar
Barrett, L., Pollet, T. V. & Stulp, G. (2014) From computers to cultivation: Reconceptualizing evolutionary psychology. Frontiers in Psychology 5: article no. 963. (Online publication, e1001109). Available at: http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00867.Google Scholar
Choi, I. & Nisbett, R. E. (1998) Situational salience and cultural differences in the correspondence bias and actor-observer bias. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 24(9):949–60. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1177/0146167298249003.Google Scholar
Delton, A. W., Cosmides, L., Guemo, M., Robertson, T. E. & Tooby, J. (2012) The psychosemantics of free riding: Dissecting the architecture of a moral concept. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102(6):1252–70. doi: 10.1037/a0027026.Google Scholar
Duranti, A. (2015) The anthropology of intentions: Language in a world of others. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fiske, A. P. (1992) The four elementary forms of sociality: Framework for a unified theory of social relations. Psychological Review 99(4):689–723. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.99.4.689.Google Scholar
Gampe, A. & Daum, M. M. (2018) How preschoolers react to norm violations is associated with culture. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 165:135–47.Google Scholar
Gurven, M. (2004) To give and to give not: The behavioral ecology of human food transfers. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27(4):543–60.Google Scholar
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J. & Norenzayan, A. (2010) The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33(2–3):61–135. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0999152X.Google Scholar
House, B. R., Silk, J. B., Henrich, J., Barrett, H. C., Scelza, B. A., Boyette, A. H., Hewlett, B. S., McElreath, R. & Laurence, S. (2013) Ontogeny of prosocial behavior across diverse societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 110(36):14586–91. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1221217110.Google Scholar
Hughes, C., Devine, R. T. & Wang, Z. (2017) Does parental mind-mindedness account for cross-cultural differences in preschoolers' theory of mind? Child Development 49A:216. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12746.Google Scholar
Kunst, J. R., Fischer, R., Sidanius, J. & Thomsen, L. (2017) Preferences for group dominance track and mediate the effects of macro-level social inequality and violence across societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 114(21):5407–12. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1616572114.Google Scholar
Lillard, A. A. (1998) Ethnopsychologies: Cultural variations in theories of mind. Psychological Bulletin 123(1):3–32.Google Scholar
Luhrmann, T. (2011) Toward an anthropological theory of mind. Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 36(4):5–69.Google Scholar
Mesoudi, A. (2011) Cultural evolution: How Darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pierce, J. L., Kostova, T. & Dirks, K. T. (2003) The state of psychological ownership: Integrating and extending a century of research. Review of General Psychology 7(1):84–107. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.7.1.84.Google Scholar
Shahaeian, A., Peterson, C. C., Slaughter, V. & Wellman, H. M. (2011) Culture and the sequence of steps in theory of mind development. Developmental Psychology 47(5):1239–47. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1037/a0023899.Google Scholar
Smaldino, P. E. (2014) The cultural evolution of emergent group-level traits. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37(3):243–54. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X13001544.Google Scholar