As a research program, ‘bounded rationality’ aims to understand the actual cognitive processes th... more As a research program, ‘bounded rationality’ aims to understand the actual cognitive processes that humans use to arrive at their behavioral repertoire. The assumptions of bounded rationality depart from the traditional assumptions of omniscient, ‘Laplacean Demons’ with unlimited information, time and processing ability, and instead assume that individuals possess fast, frugal algorithms which allow individuals to solve a variety of difficult problems under ecologically realistic circumstances without incurring substantial information-gathering or processing costs. In this paper, we explore three ways in which sociocultural processes produce adaptive (or boundedly rational) algorithms. First, simple imitation or social learning heuristics allow individuals to save the costs of individual learning, experimentation, and search by exploiting the information available in the minds of other individuals. Second, over cultural-evolutionary time scales, these algorithms give rise to complex...
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jan 5, 2012
The anthropological record indicates that approximately 85 per cent of human societies have permi... more The anthropological record indicates that approximately 85 per cent of human societies have permitted men to have more than one wife (polygynous marriage), and both empirical and evolutionary considerations suggest that large absolute differences in wealth should favour more polygynous marriages. Yet, monogamous marriage has spread across Europe, and more recently across the globe, even as absolute wealth differences have expanded. Here, we develop and explore the hypothesis that the norms and institutions that compose the modern package of monogamous marriage have been favoured by cultural evolution because of their group-beneficial effects-promoting success in inter-group competition. In suppressing intrasexual competition and reducing the size of the pool of unmarried men, normative monogamy reduces crime rates, including rape, murder, assault, robbery and fraud, as well as decreasing personal abuses. By assuaging the competition for younger brides, normative monogamy decreases (...
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2009
Much of human cooperation remains an evolutionary riddle. Unlike other animals, people frequently... more Much of human cooperation remains an evolutionary riddle. Unlike other animals, people frequently cooperate with non-relatives in large groups. Evolutionary models of large-scale cooperation require not just incentives for cooperation, but also a credible disincentive for free riding. Various theoretical solutions have been proposed and experimentally explored, including reputation monitoring and diffuse punishment. Here, we empirically examine an alternative theoretical proposal: responsibility for punishment can be borne by one specific individual. This experiment shows that allowing a single individual to punish increases cooperation to the same level as allowing each group member to punish and results in greater group profits. These results suggest a potential key function of leadership in human groups and provides further evidence supporting that humans will readily and knowingly behave altruistically.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010
The use of socially learned information (culture) is central to human adaptations. We investigate... more The use of socially learned information (culture) is central to human adaptations. We investigate the hypothesis that the process of cultural evolution has played an active, leading role in the evolution of genes. Culture normally evolves more rapidly than genes, creating novel environments that expose genes to new selective pressures. Many human genes that have been shown to be under recent or current selection are changing as a result of new environments created by cultural innovations. Some changed in response to the development of agricultural subsistence systems in the Early and Middle Holocene. Alleles coding for adaptations to diets rich in plant starch (e.g., amylase copy number) and to epidemic diseases evolved as human populations expanded (e.g., sickle cell and G6PD deficiency alleles that provide protection against malaria). Large-scale scans using patterns of linkage disequilibrium to detect recent selection suggest that many more genes evolved in response to agricultur...
Formal models of cultural evolution analyze how cognitive processes combine with social interacti... more Formal models of cultural evolution analyze how cognitive processes combine with social interaction to generate the distributions and dynamics of 'representations.' Recently, cognitive anthropologists have criticized such models. They make three points: mental representations are non-discrete, cultural transmission is highly inaccurate, and mental representations are not replicated, but rather are 'reconstructed' through an inferential process that is strongly affected by cognitive 'attractors.' They argue that it follows from these three claims that: 1) models that assume replication or replicators are inappropriate, 2) selective cultural learning cannot account for stable traditions, and 3) selective cultural learning cannot generate cumulative adaptation. Here we use three formal models to show that even if the premises of this critique are correct, the deductions that have been drawn from them are false. In the first model, we assume continuously varying ...
As a research program, ‘bounded rationality’ aims to understand the actual cognitive processes th... more As a research program, ‘bounded rationality’ aims to understand the actual cognitive processes that humans use to arrive at their behavioral repertoire. The assumptions of bounded rationality depart from the traditional assumptions of omniscient, ‘Laplacean Demons’ with unlimited information, time and processing ability, and instead assume that individuals possess fast, frugal algorithms which allow individuals to solve a variety of difficult problems under ecologically realistic circumstances without incurring substantial information-gathering or processing costs. In this paper, we explore three ways in which sociocultural processes produce adaptive (or boundedly rational) algorithms. First, simple imitation or social learning heuristics allow individuals to save the costs of individual learning, experimentation, and search by exploiting the information available in the minds of other individuals. Second, over cultural-evolutionary time scales, these algorithms give rise to complex...
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jan 5, 2012
The anthropological record indicates that approximately 85 per cent of human societies have permi... more The anthropological record indicates that approximately 85 per cent of human societies have permitted men to have more than one wife (polygynous marriage), and both empirical and evolutionary considerations suggest that large absolute differences in wealth should favour more polygynous marriages. Yet, monogamous marriage has spread across Europe, and more recently across the globe, even as absolute wealth differences have expanded. Here, we develop and explore the hypothesis that the norms and institutions that compose the modern package of monogamous marriage have been favoured by cultural evolution because of their group-beneficial effects-promoting success in inter-group competition. In suppressing intrasexual competition and reducing the size of the pool of unmarried men, normative monogamy reduces crime rates, including rape, murder, assault, robbery and fraud, as well as decreasing personal abuses. By assuaging the competition for younger brides, normative monogamy decreases (...
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2009
Much of human cooperation remains an evolutionary riddle. Unlike other animals, people frequently... more Much of human cooperation remains an evolutionary riddle. Unlike other animals, people frequently cooperate with non-relatives in large groups. Evolutionary models of large-scale cooperation require not just incentives for cooperation, but also a credible disincentive for free riding. Various theoretical solutions have been proposed and experimentally explored, including reputation monitoring and diffuse punishment. Here, we empirically examine an alternative theoretical proposal: responsibility for punishment can be borne by one specific individual. This experiment shows that allowing a single individual to punish increases cooperation to the same level as allowing each group member to punish and results in greater group profits. These results suggest a potential key function of leadership in human groups and provides further evidence supporting that humans will readily and knowingly behave altruistically.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010
The use of socially learned information (culture) is central to human adaptations. We investigate... more The use of socially learned information (culture) is central to human adaptations. We investigate the hypothesis that the process of cultural evolution has played an active, leading role in the evolution of genes. Culture normally evolves more rapidly than genes, creating novel environments that expose genes to new selective pressures. Many human genes that have been shown to be under recent or current selection are changing as a result of new environments created by cultural innovations. Some changed in response to the development of agricultural subsistence systems in the Early and Middle Holocene. Alleles coding for adaptations to diets rich in plant starch (e.g., amylase copy number) and to epidemic diseases evolved as human populations expanded (e.g., sickle cell and G6PD deficiency alleles that provide protection against malaria). Large-scale scans using patterns of linkage disequilibrium to detect recent selection suggest that many more genes evolved in response to agricultur...
Formal models of cultural evolution analyze how cognitive processes combine with social interacti... more Formal models of cultural evolution analyze how cognitive processes combine with social interaction to generate the distributions and dynamics of 'representations.' Recently, cognitive anthropologists have criticized such models. They make three points: mental representations are non-discrete, cultural transmission is highly inaccurate, and mental representations are not replicated, but rather are 'reconstructed' through an inferential process that is strongly affected by cognitive 'attractors.' They argue that it follows from these three claims that: 1) models that assume replication or replicators are inappropriate, 2) selective cultural learning cannot account for stable traditions, and 3) selective cultural learning cannot generate cumulative adaptation. Here we use three formal models to show that even if the premises of this critique are correct, the deductions that have been drawn from them are false. In the first model, we assume continuously varying ...
... Title. HM 1106.H44 2007 305.6'815dc22 2006048326 987654321 Printed in the United St... more ... Title. HM 1106.H44 2007 305.6'815dc22 2006048326 987654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Page 6. To our daughter, Zoey Diane. And in memory of Diane Margaret Henrich. To the Chaldeans, who warmly opened their homes and lives to us. ...
A considerable body of research cross-culturally examines the evolution of religious traditions, ... more A considerable body of research cross-culturally examines the evolution of religious traditions, beliefs and behaviors. The bulk of this research, however, draws from coded qualitative ethnographies rather than from standardized methods specifically designed to measure religious beliefs and behaviors. Psychological data sets that examine religious thought and behavior in controlled conditions tend to be disproportionately sampled from student populations. Some cross-national databases employ standardized methods at the individual level, but are primarily focused on fully market integrated, state-level societies. The Evolution of Religion and Morality Project sought to generate a data set that systematically probed individual level measures sampling across a wider range of human populations. The set includes data from behavioral economic experiments and detailed surveys of demographics, religious beliefs and practices, material security, and intergroup perceptions. This paper describes the methods and variables, briefly introduces the sites and sampling techniques, notes inconsistencies across sites, and provides some basic reporting for the data set.
Uploads
Papers by Joe Henrich