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Self-interested agents create, maintain, and modify group-functional culture.

Manvir Singh1, Luke Glowacki2, Richard W Wrangham3

  • 1Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Peabody Museum, Cambridge, MA 02138. manvirsingh@fas.harvard.edu http://www.manvir.org

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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

This study explores how self-interested individuals create rules, proposing agent-based models as alternatives to cultural group selection for explaining human cooperation and sociality.

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Area of Science:

  • Social Sciences
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Behavioral Economics

Background:

  • Human sociality is significantly influenced by institutions and rules.
  • Existing theories, such as cultural group selection (CGS), attempt to explain institutionalized cooperation.
  • The sufficiency of CGS as the sole explanation for complex human societies is debated.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To challenge the assertion that no viable alternatives to CGS exist for explaining institutionalized cooperation.
  • To propose agent-based hypotheses as a potential alternative framework.
  • To explore the role of self-interested individuals in the coercive and collaborative creation of rules.

Main Methods:

  • Theoretical modeling based on agent-based hypotheses.
  • Comparative analysis of proposed agent-based mechanisms against cultural group selection.
  • Hypothesizing rule creation through coercive and collaborative actions of self-interested agents.

Main Results:

  • Agent-based hypotheses offer a plausible alternative to CGS for explaining institutionalized cooperation.
  • The proposed model suggests that self-interested individuals can collectively establish rules.
  • This framework provides a mechanism for the emergence of social order without solely relying on group-level selection.

Conclusions:

  • Agent-based models present a viable alternative to cultural group selection in understanding human sociality.
  • The coercive and collaborative rule-creation by self-interested agents is a key factor in social organization.
  • Further research into agent-based approaches can illuminate the evolution of complex human institutions.