ReviewEvolutionary human sciences2020
Cultural group selection and human cooperation: a conceptual and empirical review.
Review in Evolutionary human sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Evolutionary-Ecological Basis of Xenophilia.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Evolutionary Mismatch, Stress, and Competition: Making Sense of Psychosocial Problems in the Polycrisis Era.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Empirical evidence for the spread of Cooperation through copying successful groups.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Cultural evolution: A review of theoretical challenges.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Review
- Cultural transmission, networks, and clusters among Austronesian-speaking peoples.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- Coevolution of norm psychology and cooperation through exapted conformity.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- Steps to individuality in biology and culture.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Cooperation and partner choice among Agta hunter-gatherer children: An evolutionary developmental perspective.PloS one · 2023Article
- Culture and group-functional punishment behaviour.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- Age- and sex-based differences in the moral intuitions of American early adolescents.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- A preference to learn from successful rather than common behaviours in human social dilemmas.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Tempo and Mode in Cultural Macroevolution.Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior · 2021Article
- A Naturalistic Study of Norm Conformity, Punishment, and the Veneration of the Dead at Texas A&M University, USA.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2021Article
- The cultural evolution and ecology of institutions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Cultural extinction in evolutionary perspective.Evolutionary human sciences · 2021Review
- Modelling cultural selection on biological fitness to integrate social transmission and adaptive explanations for human behaviour.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
- The group selection-inclusive fitness equivalence claim: not true and not relevant.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
- How evolutionary behavioural sciences can help us understand behaviour in a pandemic.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cultural group selection has been proposed as an explanation for humans' highly cooperative nature. This theory argues that social learning mechanisms, combined with rewards and punishment, can stabilise any group behaviour, cooperative or not. Equilibrium selection can then operate, resulting in cooperative groups outcompeting less-cooperative groups. This process may explain the widespread cooperation between non-kin observed in humans, which is sometimes claimed to be altruistic. This review explores the assumptions of cultural group selection to assess whether it provides a convincing explanation for human cooperation. Although competition between cultural groups certainly occurs, it is unclear whether this process depends on specific social learning mechanisms (e.g. conformism) or a norm psychology (to indiscriminately punish norm-violators) to stabilise groups at different equilibria as proposed by existing cultural group selection models. Rather than unquestioningly adopt group norms and institutions, individuals and groups appear to evaluate, design and shape them for self-interested reasons (where possible). As individual fitness is frequently tied to group fitness, this often coincides with constructing group-beneficial norms and institutions, especially when groups are in conflict. While culture is a vital component underlying our species' success, the extent to which current conceptions of cultural group selection reflect human cooperative evolution remains unclear.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.