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Scholarly Works (9 results)

  • Thesis
  • Peer Reviewed
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2013)

The human species is more reliant on cultural adaptation than any other species, but it is unclear how observational learning can give rise to faithful transmission of cultural adaptations. One possibility is that teaching facilitates accurate social transmission by narrowing the range of the inferences that learners make. However, there is wide disagreement about how to define teaching, and how to interpret the empirical evidence for teaching across cultures and species. The work presented here addresses central questions in the study of the evolution of teaching through the presentation of new data and a new theoretical framework for an evolutionary approach to the study of teaching.

Chapter 1 presents predictions about when teaching and non-vertical transmission may be adaptive, and uses interview data from Fijian villages to demonstrate that parents are more likely to teach in comparison to other kin, high-skill and highly valued domains are more likely to be taught, and oblique transmission is associated with high-skill domains, which are learned later in life.

Chapter 2 reviews three major approaches to the study of teaching--mentalistic, culture-based, and functionalist--and shows how these definitions fail to structure the cross-cultural and cross-species study 0f teaching. This chapter proposes a new framework of teaching types based on the learning problems teaching can solve, and reinterprets the existing evidence for teaching in humans and other animals in this framework. This chapter discusses the implications of this new framework, including the roles of cognitive constraints and cooperative dilemmas in how and when teaching evolves. It also offers an explanation as to why some types of teaching are uniquely human, and discusses future research directions.

Chapter 3 applies this theoretical framework, develops an ethogram for identifying naturally occurring teaching behavior outside the laboratory, and presents quantitative data from focal follows with young children in Fiji to test predictions about the form and function of teaching behavior. These data demonstrate that, as predicted in Chapter 2, teaching is present in non-western societies, more common among close kin, and lower-effort teaching types are more common than higher-effort ones.

    Cover page: Cultural Transmission in the Real World: A Quantitative Study of Teaching and Cultural Learning in the Yasawa Islands, Fiji
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UCLA Previously Published Works (2013)
    To account for the widespread human tendency to cooperate in one-shot social dilemmas, some theorists have proposed that cooperators can be reliably detected based on ethological displays that are difficult to fake. Experimental findings have supported the view that cooperators can be distinguished from defectors based on "thin slices" of behavior, but the relevant cues have remained elusive, and the role of the judge's perspective remains unclear. In this study, we followed triadic conversations among unacquainted same-sex college students with unannounced dyadic one-shot prisoner's dilemmas, and asked participants to guess the PD decisions made toward them and among the other two participants. Two other sets of participants guessed the PD decisions after viewing videotape of the conversations, either with foreknowledge (informed), or without foreknowledge (naïve), of the post-conversation PD. Only naïve video viewers approached better-than-chance prediction accuracy, and they were significantly accurate at predicting the PD decisions of only opposite-sexed conversation participants. Four ethological displays recently proposed to cue defection in one-shot social dilemmas (arms crossed, lean back, hand touch, and face touch) failed to predict either actual defection or guesses of defection by any category of observer. Our results cast doubt on the role of "greenbeard" signals in the evolution of human prosociality, although they suggest that eavesdropping may be more informative about others' cooperative propensities than direct interaction.
      Cover page: Defectors Cannot Be Detected during“Small Talk” with Strangers
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      UCLA Previously Published Works (2013)
      During conversation, interlocutors coordinate their behavior on many levels. Two distinct forms of behavioral coordination have been empirically linked with affiliation and cooperation during or following face-to-face interaction: behavior matching and interpersonal synchrony. Only the latter form constitutes behavioral entrainment involving a coupling between independent oscillators. We present the first study of the association between spontaneously occurring behavioral coordination and post-interaction economic game play. Triads of same-sexed strangers conversed for 10. min, after which each participant played an unannounced one-shot prisoner's dilemma (PD) toward each co-participant. When dyads had higher language style matching scores (LSM: Gonzales, A.L., Hancock, J.T., & Pennebaker, J.W. (2010). Language style matching as a predictor of social dynamics in small groups. Communication Research, 31, 3-19), the individuals evaluated each other more positively, but they were no more likely to cooperate in the PD. However, when dyads' speech rates (mean syllable duration) converged more strongly from the beginning to the end of the conversation, they were more likely to cooperate in the PD, despite no effect on interpersonal evaluations. Speech rate convergence, a form of rhythmic entrainment, could benefit interlocutors by mutually reducing cognitive processing during interaction. We suggest that spontaneous, temporally based behavioral coordination might facilitate prosocial behavior when the joint cooperative effort is itself perceived as a form of coordination. © 2013 Elsevier Inc.
        Cover page: Convergence of speech rate in conversation predicts cooperation
        • Multimedia
        • Peer Reviewed
        UCLA Previously Published Works (2014)
        This is the archived dataset to accompany J. Manson et al.'s Subclinical Primary Psychopathy, but not Physical Formidability or Attractiveness, Predicts Conversational Dominance in a Zero-acquaintance Situation
        • 1 supplemental file
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UCLA Previously Published Works (2014)
        The determinants of conversational dominance are not well understood. We used videotaped triadic interactions among unacquainted same-sex American college students to test predictions drawn from the theoretical distinction between dominance and prestige as modes of human status competition. Specifically, we investigated the effects of physical formidability, facial attractiveness, social status, and self-reported subclinical psychopathy on quantitative (proportion of words produced), participatory (interruptions produced and sustained), and sequential (topic control) dominance. No measure of physical formidability or attractiveness was associated with any form of conversational dominance, suggesting that the characteristics of our study population or experimental frame may have moderated their role in dominance dynamics. Primary psychopathy was positively associated with quantitative dominance and (marginally) overall triad talkativeness, and negatively associated (in men) with affect word use, whereas secondary psychopathy was unrelated to conversational dominance. The two psychopathy factors had significant opposing effects on quantitative dominance in a multivariate model. These latter findings suggest that glibness in primary psychopathy may function to elicit exploitable information from others in a relationally mobile society.
          Cover page: Subclinical Primary Psychopathy, but Not Physical Formidability or Attractiveness, Predicts Conversational Dominance in a Zero-Acquaintance Situation
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC Merced Previously Published Works (2020)
            Cover page: Dynamics of behavior change in the COVID world
            • Article
            • Peer Reviewed
            UCLA Previously Published Works (2020)
            Long-lasting, romantic partnerships are a universal feature of human societies, but almost as ubiquitous is the risk of instability when one partner strays. Jealous response to the threat of infidelity is well studied, but most empirical work on the topic has focused on a proposed sex difference in the type of jealousy (sexual or emotional) that men and women find most upsetting, rather than on how jealous response varies1,2. This stems in part from the predominance of studies using student samples from industrialized populations, which represent a relatively homogenous group in terms of age, life history stage and social norms3,4. To better understand variation in jealous response, we conducted a 2-part study in 11 populations (1,048 individuals). In line with previous work, we find a robust sex difference in the classic forced-choice jealousy task. However, we also show substantial variation in jealous response across populations. Using parental investment theory, we derived several predictions about what might trigger such variation. We find that greater paternal investment and lower frequency of extramarital sex are associated with more severe jealous response. Thus, partner jealousy appears to be a facultative response, reflective of the variable risks and costs of men's investment across societies.
              Cover page: Patterns of paternal investment predict cross-cultural variation in jealous response
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              UC Davis Previously Published Works (2020)
              The intensifying pace of research based on cross-cultural studies in the social sciences necessitates a discussion of the unique challenges of multi-sited research. Given an increasing demand for social scientists to expand their data collection beyond WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) populations, there is an urgent need for transdisciplinary conversations on the logistical, scientific and ethical considerations inherent to this type of scholarship. As a group of social scientists engaged in cross-cultural research in psychology and anthropology, we hope to guide prospective cross-cultural researchers through some of the complex scientific and ethical challenges involved in such work: (a) study site selection, (b) community involvement and (c) culturally appropriate research methods. We aim to shed light on some of the difficult ethical quandaries of this type of research. Our recommendation emphasizes a community-centred approach, in which the desires of the community regarding research approach and methodology, community involvement, results communication and distribution, and data sharing are held in the highest regard by the researchers. We argue that such considerations are central to scientific rigour and the foundation of the study of human behaviour.
                Cover page: Navigating cross-cultural research: methodological and ethical considerations
                • Article
                • Peer Reviewed
                UC Merced Previously Published Works (2023)
                We develop a conceptual framework for studying collective adaptation in complex socio-cognitive systems, driven by dynamic interactions of social integration strategies, social environments and problem structures. Going beyond searching for 'intelligent' collectives, we integrate research from different disciplines and outline modelling approaches that can be used to begin answering questions such as why collectives sometimes fail to reach seemingly obvious solutions, how they change their strategies and network structures in response to different problems and how we can anticipate and perhaps change future harmful societal trajectories. We discuss the importance of considering path dependence, lack of optimization and collective myopia to understand the sometimes counterintuitive outcomes of collective adaptation. We call for a transdisciplinary, quantitative and societally useful social science that can help us to understand our rapidly changing and ever more complex societies, avoid collective disasters and reach the full potential of our ability to organize in adaptive collectives.
                  Cover page: Beyond collective intelligence: Collective adaptation
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