Papers by Cathryn Townsend
Biology Letters
Recently Bratsberg & Rogeberg (2023) presented an analysis in Biology Letters of how cognitive ab... more Recently Bratsberg & Rogeberg (2023) presented an analysis in Biology Letters of how cognitive ability is associated with fertility in Norwegian men. Our concern relates to the theoretical framework of this paper. The analysis is framed around the concept of ‘dysgenic fertility’, which is treated throughout as a scientific theory, but ‘dysgenic fertility’ is not science, it is an ideological concept.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
A major evolutionary transition in individuality involves the formation of a cooperative group an... more A major evolutionary transition in individuality involves the formation of a cooperative group and the transformation of that group into an evolutionary entity. Human cooperation shares principles with those of multicellular organisms that have undergone transitions in individuality: division of labour, communication, and fitness interdependence. After the split from the last common ancestor of hominoids, early hominins adapted to an increasingly terrestrial niche for several million years. We posit that new challenges in this niche set in motion a positive feedback loop in selection pressure for cooperation that ratcheted coevolutionary changes in sociality, communication, brains, cognition, kin relations and technology, eventually resulting in egalitarian societies with suppressed competition and rapid cumulative culture. The increasing pace of information innovation and transmission became a key aspect of the evolutionary niche that enabled humans to become formidable cooperators...
Philosophical Transactions B, 2023
A major evolutionary transition in individuality involves the formation of a
cooperative group an... more A major evolutionary transition in individuality involves the formation of a
cooperative group and the transformation of that group into an evolutionary
entity.Human cooperation shares principles with those ofmulticellular organisms
that have undergone transitions in individuality: division of labour,
communication, and fitness interdependence. After the split from the last
common ancestor of hominoids, early hominins adapted to an increasingly
terrestrial niche for several million years. We posit that new challenges in
this niche set in motion a positive feedback loop in selection pressure for
cooperation that ratcheted coevolutionary changes in sociality, communication,
brains, cognition, kin relations and technology, eventually resulting
in egalitarian societies with suppressed competition and rapid cumulative culture.
The increasing pace of information innovation and transmission became a
key aspect of the evolutionary niche that enabled humans to become formidable
cooperators with explosive population growth, the ability to cooperate
and compete in groups of millions, and emergent social norms, e.g. private
property. Despite considerable fitness interdependence, the rise of private
property, in concert with population explosion and socioeconomic inequality,
subverts potential transition of human groups into evolutionary entities due to resurgence of latent competition and conflict.
Wiley Blackwell International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2018
Theory on the evolution of egalitarianism and its relevance to anthropology is described in three... more Theory on the evolution of egalitarianism and its relevance to anthropology is described in three sections. The first section carefully defines and delimits usage of the term egalitarianism in anthropology, outlines the form of social organization empirically observed in egalitarian societies, and clarifies the difference between egalitarian and acephalous societies. The second section describes multidisciplinary perspectives on the egalitarian disposition and behaviors found in humans, and how these contrast with those of nonhuman primates. Theories on how these behaviors and dispositions may have evolved are summarized. Finally, the roles of gender relations, sexual reproduction strategies, and cooperative breeding are mentioned in relation to the theory on the evolution of egalitarianism.
Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2020
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Sep 10, 2018
Human foragers are obligately group-living, and their high dependence on mutual aid is believed t... more Human foragers are obligately group-living, and their high dependence on mutual aid is believed to have characterized our species' social evolution. It was therefore a central adaptive problem for our ancestors to avoid damaging the willingness of other group members to render them assistance. Cognitively, this requires a predictive map of the degree to which others would devalue the individual based on each of various possible acts. With such a map, an individual can avoid socially costly behaviors by anticipating how much audience devaluation a potential action (e.g., stealing) would cause and weigh this against the action's direct payoff (e.g., acquiring). The shame system manifests all of the functional properties required to solve this adaptive problem, with the aversive intensity of shame encoding the social cost. Previous data from three Western(ized) societies indicated that the shame evoked when the individual anticipates committing various acts closely tracks the m...
Hunter Gatherer Research, 2015
Humanity has always been fascinated and horrified by the darker side of human nature. Rebellion, ... more Humanity has always been fascinated and horrified by the darker side of human nature. Rebellion, retribution, jealousy and murder all happened within the first biblical family. It is thus not surprising that a social scientist writing for a general audience on themes of violence, murder, cannibalism, war and genocide will find eager readers. This is especially so if your message, a result of decades of painstaking research on the nature and frequency of violence, is presented with good humour and optimism. Steven Pinker excels on all counts. If you are gloomy and sceptical about the claim that humanity has a rosy future, you will be less so after hearing this talk. So perhaps we are being spoilsports in mentioning a few quibbles. We admit to being astonished that the author of the The Blank Slate, who championed the importance of biology in understanding human behaviour, then went on to write The Better Angels of Our Nature, which appears to be championing the role of environment-specifically the cultural environment of state level civilisations-in changing human behaviour for the better. The implication is that in understanding human nature, environment does matter, at least as much as our evolved biology. We are considerably cheered by this. If human minds are not tabula rasa, neither are they to be understood as unresponsive to received experience.
Hunter Gatherer Research, 2015
Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2020
The Quarterly Review of Biology
The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2018
Theory on the evolution of egalitarianism and its relevance to anthropology is described in three... more Theory on the evolution of egalitarianism and its relevance to anthropology is described in three sections. The first section carefully defines and delimits usage of the term egalitarianism in anthropology, outlines the form of social organization empirically observed in egalitarian societies, and clarifies the difference between egalitarian and acephalous societies. The second section describes multidisciplinary perspectives on the egalitarian disposition and behaviors found in humans, and how these contrast with those of nonhuman primates. Theories on how these behaviors and dispositions may have evolved are summarized. Finally, the roles of gender relations, sexual reproduction strategies, and cooperative breeding are mentioned in relation to the theory on the evolution of egalitarianism.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation
Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2020
It is widely believed that there is strong association between physiological stress and an indivi... more It is widely believed that there is strong association between physiological stress and an individual's social status in their social hierarchy. This has been claimed for all humans cross-culturally, as well as in non-human animals living in social groups. However, the relationship between stress and social status has not been explored in any egalitarian hunter-gatherer society; it is also under investigated in exclusively female social groups. Most of human evolutionary history was spent in small, mobile foraging bands of hunter-gatherers with little economic differentiation-egalitarian societies. We analysed women's hair cortisol concentration along with two domains of women's social status (foraging reputation and popularity) in an egalitarian hunter-gatherer society, the Hadza. We hypothesized that higher social status would be associated with lower physiological indicators of stress in these women. Surprisingly, we did not find any association between either foragin...
Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2020
According to Turnbull's 1972 ethnography The Mountain People, the Ik of Uganda had a culture of s... more According to Turnbull's 1972 ethnography The Mountain People, the Ik of Uganda had a culture of selfishness that made them uncooperative. His claims contrast with two widely accepted principles in evolutionary biology, that humans cooperate on larger scales than other species and that culture is an important facilitator of such cooperation. We use recently collected data to examine Ik culture and its influence on Ik behaviour. Turnbull's observations of selfishness were not necessarily inaccurate but they occurred during a severe famine. Cooperation re-emerged when people once again had enough resources to share. Accordingly, Ik donations in unframed Dictator Games are on par with average donations in Dictator Games played by people around the world. Furthermore, Ik culture includes traits that encourage sharing with those in need and a belief in supernatural punishment of selfishness. When these traits are used to frame Dictator Games, the average amounts given by Ik players increase. Turnbull's claim that the Ik have a culture of selfishness can be rejected. Cooperative norms are resilient, and the consensus among scholars that humans are remarkably cooperative and that human cooperation is supported by culture can remain intact.
Human foragers are obligately group-living, and their high dependence on mutual aid is believed t... more Human foragers are obligately group-living, and their high dependence on mutual aid is believed to have characterized our species' social evolution. It was therefore a central adaptive problem for our ancestors to avoid damaging the willingness of other group members to render them assistance. Cognitively, this requires a predictive map of the degree to which others would devalue the individual based on each of various possible acts. With such a map, an individual can avoid socially costly behaviors by anticipating how much audience devaluation a potential action (e.g., stealing) would cause and weigh this against the action's direct payoff (e.g., acquiring). The shame system manifests all of the functional properties required to solve this adaptive problem, with the aversive intensity of shame encoding the social cost. Previous data from three Western(ized) societies indicated that the shame evoked when the individual anticipates committing various acts closely tracks the magnitude of devaluation expressed by audiences in response to those acts. Here we report data supporting the broader claim that shame is a basic part of human biology. We conducted an experiment among 899 participants in 15 small-scale communities scattered around the world. Despite widely varying languages, cultures, and subsistence modes, shame in each community closely tracked the devaluation of local audiences (mean r = +0.84). The fact that the same pattern is encountered in such mutually remote communities suggests that shame's match to audience devaluation is a design feature crafted by selection and not a product of cultural contact or convergent cultural evolution. emotion | cognition | culture | cooperation | evolutionary psychology
Publications by Cathryn Townsend
Human foragers are obligately group-living, and their high dependence on mutual aid is believed t... more Human foragers are obligately group-living, and their high dependence on mutual aid is believed to have characterized our species' social evolution. It was therefore a central adaptive problem for our ancestors to avoid damaging the willingness of other group members to render them assistance. Cognitively, this requires a predictive map of the degree to which others would devalue the individual based on each of various possible acts. With such a map, an individual can avoid socially costly behaviors by anticipating how much audience devaluation a potential action (e.g., stealing) would cause and weigh this against the action's direct payoff (e.g., acquiring). The shame system manifests all of the functional properties required to solve this adaptive problem, with the aversive intensity of shame encoding the social cost. Previous data from three Western(ized) societies indicated that the shame evoked when the individual anticipates committing various acts closely tracks the magnitude of devaluation expressed by audiences in response to those acts. Here we report data supporting the broader claim that shame is a basic part of human biology. We conducted an experiment among 899 participants in 15 small-scale communities scattered around the world. Despite widely varying languages, cultures, and subsistence modes, shame in each community closely tracked the devaluation of local audiences (mean r = +0.84). The fact that the same pattern is encountered in such mutually remote communities suggests that shame's match to audience devaluation is a design feature crafted by selection and not a product of cultural contact or convergent cultural evolution.
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Papers by Cathryn Townsend
cooperative group and the transformation of that group into an evolutionary
entity.Human cooperation shares principles with those ofmulticellular organisms
that have undergone transitions in individuality: division of labour,
communication, and fitness interdependence. After the split from the last
common ancestor of hominoids, early hominins adapted to an increasingly
terrestrial niche for several million years. We posit that new challenges in
this niche set in motion a positive feedback loop in selection pressure for
cooperation that ratcheted coevolutionary changes in sociality, communication,
brains, cognition, kin relations and technology, eventually resulting
in egalitarian societies with suppressed competition and rapid cumulative culture.
The increasing pace of information innovation and transmission became a
key aspect of the evolutionary niche that enabled humans to become formidable
cooperators with explosive population growth, the ability to cooperate
and compete in groups of millions, and emergent social norms, e.g. private
property. Despite considerable fitness interdependence, the rise of private
property, in concert with population explosion and socioeconomic inequality,
subverts potential transition of human groups into evolutionary entities due to resurgence of latent competition and conflict.
Publications by Cathryn Townsend
cooperative group and the transformation of that group into an evolutionary
entity.Human cooperation shares principles with those ofmulticellular organisms
that have undergone transitions in individuality: division of labour,
communication, and fitness interdependence. After the split from the last
common ancestor of hominoids, early hominins adapted to an increasingly
terrestrial niche for several million years. We posit that new challenges in
this niche set in motion a positive feedback loop in selection pressure for
cooperation that ratcheted coevolutionary changes in sociality, communication,
brains, cognition, kin relations and technology, eventually resulting
in egalitarian societies with suppressed competition and rapid cumulative culture.
The increasing pace of information innovation and transmission became a
key aspect of the evolutionary niche that enabled humans to become formidable
cooperators with explosive population growth, the ability to cooperate
and compete in groups of millions, and emergent social norms, e.g. private
property. Despite considerable fitness interdependence, the rise of private
property, in concert with population explosion and socioeconomic inequality,
subverts potential transition of human groups into evolutionary entities due to resurgence of latent competition and conflict.