The Coevolution of Cultural Groups and Ingroup Favoritism Export

@article{citeulike:3339302, abstract = {Cultural boundaries have often been the basis for discrimination, nationalism, religious wars, and genocide. Little is known, however, about how cultural groups form or the evolutionary forces behind group affiliation and ingroup favoritism. Hence, we examine these forces experimentally and show that arbitrary symbolic markers, though initially meaningless, evolve to play a key role in cultural group formation and ingroup favoritism because they enable a population of heterogeneous individuals to solve important coordination problems. This process requires that individuals differ in some critical but unobservable way and that their markers be freely and flexibly chosen. If these conditions are met, markers become accurate predictors of behavior. The resulting social environment includes strong incentives to bias interactions toward others with the same marker, and subjects accordingly show strong ingroup favoritism. When markers do not acquire meaning as accurate predictors of behavior, players show a markedly reduced taste for ingroup favoritism. Our results support the prominent evolutionary hypothesis that cultural processes can reshape the selective pressures facing individuals and so favor the evolution of behavioral traits not previously advantaged. 10.1126/science.1155805}, author = {Efferson, Charles and Lalive, Rafael and Fehr, Ernst}, citeulike-article-id = {3339302}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1155805}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/321/5897/1844}, citeulike-linkout-2 = {http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18818361}, citeulike-linkout-3 = {http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=18818361}, day = {26}, doi = {10.1126/science.1155805}, journal = {Science}, keywords = {controlled-experiment, coordination, culture, data, experiment, game-theory, groups, human, ingroup-outgroup, interaction, social-science}, month = {September}, number = {5897}, pages = {1844--1849}, posted-at = {2008-09-29 08:31:28}, priority = {2}, title = {The Coevolution of Cultural Groups and Ingroup Favoritism}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1155805}, volume = {321}, year = {2008} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:3339302 L3 - citeulike-article-id:3339302 N2 - Cultural boundaries have often been the basis for discrimination, nationalism, religious wars, and genocide. Little is known, however, about how cultural groups form or the evolutionary forces behind group affiliation and ingroup favoritism. Hence, we examine these forces experimentally and show that arbitrary symbolic markers, though initially meaningless, evolve to play a key role in cultural group formation and ingroup favoritism because they enable a population of heterogeneous individuals to solve important coordination problems. This process requires that individuals differ in some critical but unobservable way and that their markers be freely and flexibly chosen. If these conditions are met, markers become accurate predictors of behavior. The resulting social environment includes strong incentives to bias interactions toward others with the same marker, and subjects accordingly show strong ingroup favoritism. When markers do not acquire meaning as accurate predictors of behavior, players show a markedly reduced taste for ingroup favoritism. Our results support the prominent evolutionary hypothesis that cultural processes can reshape the selective pressures facing individuals and so favor the evolution of behavioral traits not previously advantaged. 10.1126/science.1155805 IS - 5897 JF - Science EP - 1849 TI - The Coevolution of Cultural Groups and Ingroup Favoritism VL - 321 SP - 1844 KW - controlled-experiment KW - coordination KW - culture KW - data KW - experiment KW - game-theory KW - groups KW - human KW - ingroup-outgroup KW - interaction KW - social-science AU - Efferson, Charles AU - Lalive, Rafael AU - Fehr, Ernst PY - 2008/09/26/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1155805 ER -