Cognition and Culture in Evolutionary Context

• Fernando Colmenares ^[1] ; María Victoria Hernández Lloreda ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad Complutense de Madrid

     Universidad Complutense de Madrid

     Madrid, España

     
• Localización: The Spanish Journal of Psychology, ISSN 1138-7416, Vol. 19, 2016
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.1017/sjp.2016.102
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen

  • In humans and other animals, the individuals’ ability to adapt efficiently and effectively to the niches they have actively contributed to construct relies heavily on an evolved psychology which has been shaped by biological, social, and cultural processes over evolutionary time. As expected, although many of the behavioral and cognitive components of this evolved psychology are widely shared across species, many others are species-unique. Although many animal species are known to acquire group-specific traditions (or cultures) via social learning, human culture is unique in terms of its contents and characteristics (observable and unobservable products, cumulative effects, norm conformity, and norm enforcement) and of its cognitive underpinnings (imitation, instructed teaching, and language). Here we provide a brief overview of some of the issues that are currently tackled in the field. We also highlight some of the strengths of a biological, comparative, non-anthropocentric and evolutionarily grounded approach to the study of culture. The main contributions of this approach to the science of culture are its emphasis (a) on the integration of information on mechanisms, function, and evolution, and on mechanistic factors located at different levels of the biological hierarchy, and (b) on the search for general principles that account for commonalities and differences between species, both in the cultural products and in the processes of innovation, dissemination, and accumulation involved that operate during developmental and evolutionary timespans.

• Referencias bibliográficas
  • Acerbi A., & Mesoudi A. (2015). If we are all cultural Darwinians what’s the fuss about? Clarifying recent disagreements in the field...
  • Boyd R., & Richerson P. J. (2005). The origin and evolution of cultures. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  • Boyd R., & Richerson P. J. (2009). Culture and the evolution of human cooperation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of...
  • Boyd R., Gintis H., & Bowles S. (2010). Coordinated punishment of defectors sustains cooperation and can proliferate when rare. Science,...
  • Boyd R., Richerson P. J., & Henrich J. (2011). The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation. Proceedings...
  • Brüne M. (2008). Textbook of evolutionary psychiatry: The origins of psychopathology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  • Claidière N., & Whiten A. (2012). Integrating the study of conformity and culture in humans and nonhuman animals. Psychological Bulletin,...
  • Danchin É., & Wagner R. (2008). Cultural evolution. In É. Danchin, L.-A. Giraldeau, & F. Cézidy (Eds.), Behavioural ecology (pp. 693–725)....
  • Davis S. J., Vale G. L., Schapiro S. J., Lambeth S. P., & Whiten A. (2016). Foundations of cumulative culture in apes: Improved foraging...
  • Dean L. G., Vale G. L., Laland K. N., Flynn E., & Kendal R. L. (2014). Human cumulative culture: A comparative perspective. Biological...
  • Dobzhansky T. (1964). Biology, molecular and organismic. American Zoologist, 4, 443–452. https://doi.org/10.1093/ icb/4.4.443
  • Dugatkin L. A. (2009). Principles of animal behavior (2nd Ed.). New York, NY: Norton.
  • Dunbar R. I. M., & Barrett L. (Eds.). (2007). The Oxford handbook of evolutionary psychology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  • Fisher S. E., & Riddley M. (2013). Culture, genes, and the human revolution. Science, 340, 929–930. https://doi. org/10.1126/science.1236171
  • Fogarty L., Strimling P., & Laland K. N. (2011). The evolution of teaching. Evolution, 65, 2760–2770. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2011.01370.x
  • Galef B. G., & Laland K. N. (Eds.). (2009). The question of animal culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Gelfand M. J., & Kashima Y. (2016). Editorial overview: Culture: Advances in the science of culture and psychology. Current Opinion in...
  • Han S., Northoff G., Vogeley K., Wexler B. E., Kitayama S., & Varnum M. E. W. (2013). A cultural neuroscience approach to the biosocial...
  • Heine S. J., & Buchtel E. E. (2009). Personality: The universal and the culturally specific. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 369–394....
  • Herrmann B., Thöni C., & Gächter S. (2008). Antisocial punishment across societies. Science, 319, 1362–1367. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1153808
  • Heyes C. M. (1994). Social learning in animals: Categories and mechanisms. Biological Review, 69, 207–231. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-185X.1994.tb01506.x
  • Hopper L. M. (2010). ‘Ghost’ experiments and the dissection of social learning in humans and animals. Biological Reviews, 85, 685–701. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-185X.2010.00120.x
  • Hoppitt W. J. E., Brown G. R., Kendal R., Rendell L., Thornton A., Webster M. M., & Laland K. N. (2008). Lessons from animal teaching....
  • Kim H. S., & Sasaki J. Y. (2014). Cultural neuroscience: Biology of the mind in cultural contexts. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 487–514....
  • Kitayama S., & Uskul A. K. (2011). Culture, mind, and the brain: Current evidence and future directions. Annual Review of Psychology,...
  • Laland K. N., & Janik V. M. (2006). The animal cultures debate. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 21, 542–547. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.tree.2006.06.005
  • Laland K. N., Odling-Smee J., & Myles S. (2010). How culture shaped the human genome: Bringing genetics and the human sciences together....
  • Lehman D. R., Chiu C., & Schaller M. (2004). Psychology and culture. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 689–714. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.141927
  • Mesoudi A. (2011). Cultural evolution: How Darwinian Theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences. Chicago, IL: University...
  • Morgan T. J. H., & Laland K. N. (2012). The biological basis of conformity. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 6, 87. https://doi. org/10.3389/fnins.2012.00087
  • Morgan T. J. H., Cross C. P., & Rendell L. E. (2015). Nothing in human behavior makes sense except in the light of culture: Shared interests...
  • Nesse R. M., Bergstrom C. T., Ellison P. T., Flier J. S., Gluckman P., Govindaraju D. R., … Valle D. (2010). Making evolutionary biology a...
  • Reader S. M., & Laland K. N. (2002). Social intelligence, innovation, and enhanced brain size in primates. Proceedings of the National...
  • Reader S. M., Hager Y., & Laland K. N. (2011). The evolution of primate general and cultural intelligence. Philosophical Transactions...
  • Richerson P. J., & Boyd R. (2005). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
  • Richerson P. J., Boyd R., & Henrich J. (2010). Gene-culture coevolution in the age of genomics. Proceedings of the National Academy, 107,...
  • Rigato E., & Minelli A. (2013). The great chain of being is still here. Evolution: Education and Outreach, 6, 18. https:// doi.org/10.1186/1936-6434-6-18
  • Shettleworth S. J. (2010). Cognition, evolution, and behavior. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  • Thornton A., & Raihani N. J. (2010). Identifying teaching in wild animals. Learning & Behavior, 38, 297–309. https://doi.org/10.3758/LB.38.3.297
  • Tomasello M. (1994). The question of chimpanzee culture. In R. W. Wrangham, W. C. McGrew, F. B. M. de Waal, & P. G. Heltne (Eds.), Chimpanzee...
  • Tomasello M. (2011). Human culture in evolutionary perspective. In M. Gelfand (Ed.), Advances in culture and psychology (pp. 1–34). Oxford,...
  • Tomasello M. (2015). A natural history of human thinking. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Tomasello M. (2016a). A natural history of human morality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Tomasello M. (2016b). The ontogeny of cultural learning. Current Opinion in Psychology, 8, 1–4. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.09.008
  • Van Schaik C. P. (2012). Animal culture: Chimpanzee conformity? Current Biology, 22, R402–R404. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.04.001
  • Van Schaik C. P. (2016). The primate origins of human nature. New Jersey, NJ: Wiley.
  • Van Schaik C. P., & Burkart J. M. (2011). Social learning and evolution: The cultural intelligence hypothesis. Philosophical Transactions...
  • Whitehead H., & Rendell L. (2015). The cultural lives of whales and dolphins. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
  • Whiten A., & Erdal D. (2012). The human socio-cognitive niche and its evolutionary origins. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...
  • Whiten A., & van Schaik C. P. (2007). The evolution of animal ‘cultures’ and social intelligence. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal...
  • Whiten A., Caldwell C. A., & Mesoudi A. (2016). Cultural diffusion in humans and other animals. Current Opinion in Psychology, 8, 15–21....
  • Whiten A., Horner V., & de Waal F. B. M. (2005). Conformity to cultural norms of tool use in chimpanzees. Nature, 437, 737–740. https://doi....
  • Whiten A., Hinde R. A., Laland K. N., & Stringer C. B. (2011). Culture evolves. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London,...