ArticleNature communications2017
Cooperation and the evolution of hunter-gatherer storytelling.
Article in Nature communications, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 58 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
58 citing papers in PubMed, 339 citations in OpenAlex.
- Storytelling increases oxytocin and positive emotions and decreases cortisol and pain in hospitalized children.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Trial
- King Lear in the upper palaeolithic: searching for ethical principles in prehistory.Monash bioethics review · 2026Article
- Natural language processing captures memory content associated with shared neural patterns at encoding and retrieval.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Brain organization of a memory champion.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Narrative inquiry for beginners: A practical guide for health professions education researchers.Anatomical sciences education · 2026Review
- Exploring the relationship between entertainment and education in anatomy public engagement: A qualitative examination of anatomists' perspectives.Anatomical sciences education · 2025Article
- Higher-order interactions shape collective human behaviour.Nature human behaviour · 2025Review
- Neural dynamics of semantic control underlying generative storytelling.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Feathers, folklore, and eco-literacy: Stories ascribe cultural keystone status to avian scavengers in South Asian cities.Ornithological applications · 2025Article
- Harry Potter and personality assessment: The utility of the Sorting Hat Quiz in personality traits' assessment.PloS one · 2025Article
- The story so far………- current opinion in the use and applications of interactive storytelling in physiology and clinical education.Current research in physiology · 2025Review
- Bridging theory and data: A computational workflow for cultural evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Turns around periodic spatial boundaries facilitate increasing event segmentation over time.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Beyond the here and now: hunter-gatherer socio-spatial complexity and the evolution of language.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Revisiting the Heider and Simmel experiment for social meaning attribution in virtual reality.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Music as an Evolved Tool for Socio-Affective Fiction.Emotion review : journal of the International Society for Research on Emotion · 2024Article
- Biogeographical distributions of trickster animals.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Narrative as active inference: an integrative account of cognitive and social functions in adaptation.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Hunter-Gatherer children's close-proximity networks: Similarities and differences with cooperative and communal breeding systems.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- A large-scale repository of spoken narratives in French, German and Spanish from Cantonese-speaking learners.Scientific data · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Storytelling is a human universal. From gathering around the camp-fire telling tales of ancestors to watching the latest television box-set, humans are inveterate producers and consumers of stories. Despite its ubiquity, little attention has been given to understanding the function and evolution of storytelling. Here we explore the impact of storytelling on hunter-gatherer cooperative behaviour and the individual-level fitness benefits to being a skilled storyteller. Stories told by the Agta, a Filipino hunter-gatherer population, convey messages relevant to coordinating behaviour in a foraging ecology, such as cooperation, sex equality and egalitarianism. These themes are present in narratives from other foraging societies. We also show that the presence of good storytellers is associated with increased cooperation. In return, skilled storytellers are preferred social partners and have greater reproductive success, providing a pathway by which group-beneficial behaviours, such as storytelling, can evolve via individual-level selection. We conclude that one of the adaptive functions of storytelling among hunter gatherers may be to organise cooperation.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.