ArticleNature communications2020
Human large-scale cooperation as a product of competition between cultural groups.
Article in Nature communications, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 134 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- The Evolutionary-Ecological Basis of Xenophilia.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Perceived versus Objective Cultural Distance: Differential Effects on Acculturation Experiences.Journal of cross-cultural psychology · 2026Article
- Disclosing Group Members' Identities Reduces Cooperation in an Artefactual Public Goods Field Experiment.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Free mobility across group boundaries promotes intergroup cooperation.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Cultural evolution: Where we have been and where we are going (maybe).Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Asymmetric Adaption in Social Learning: Understanding the Dilemma of Competition and Cooperation.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Global musical diversity is largely independent of linguistic and genetic histories.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Indirect reciprocity undermines indirect reciprocity destabilizing large-scale cooperation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Group Formation and the Evolution of Human Social Organization.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2024Article
- Article
- Super-additive cooperation.Nature · 2024Article
- Characteristic processes of human evolution caused the Anthropocene and may obstruct its global solutions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Why cultural distance can promote - or impede - group-beneficial outcomes.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- Norm reinforcement, not conformity or environmental factors, is predicted to sustain cultural variation.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- Comparative physiological anthropogeny: exploring molecular underpinnings of distinctly human phenotypes.Physiological reviews · 2023Review
- Intergroup Cooperation in Shotgun Hunting Among BaYaka Foragers and Yambe Farmers from the Republic of the Congo.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2023Article
- "Doing what others do" does not stabilize continuous norms.PNAS nexus · 2023Article
- Article
- Variations in limited resources allocation towards friends and strangers in children and adolescents from seven economically and culturally diverse societies.Scientific reports · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A fundamental puzzle of human evolution is how we evolved to cooperate with genetically unrelated strangers in transient interactions. Group-level selection on culturally differentiated populations is one proposed explanation. We evaluate a central untested prediction of Cultural Group Selection theory, by assessing whether readiness to cooperate between individuals from different groups corresponds to the degree of cultural similarity between those groups. We documented the normative beliefs and cooperative dispositions of 759 individuals spanning nine clans nested within four pastoral ethnic groups of Kenya-the Turkana, Samburu, Rendille and Borana. We find that cooperation between groups is predicted by how culturally similar they are, suggesting that norms of cooperation in these societies have evolved under the influence of group-level selection on cultural variation. Such selection acting over human evolutionary history may explain why we cooperate readily with unrelated and unfamiliar individuals, and why humans' unprecedented cooperative flexibility is nevertheless culturally parochial.
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What OpenQuestion holds
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.