Behavioral and Brain Sciences最新文献

Sijilmassi et al. argue that myths serve to gain coalitional support by detailing shared histories of ancestry and cooperation. They overlook the emotional influences of stories, which include myths of human origin. We suggest that influential myths do not promote cooperation principally by signaling common ancestry, but by prompting human emotions of interdependence and connection.

Behavioural ecologies in themselves can create variation in fitness interdependencies among individuals, and hence modulate the functionality of invoking historical myths. We develop this possibility for the case where coalitions form to attack and exploit enemies, or to defend and protect against hostile out-groups. We propose that invoking historical myths are functional and observed especially when groups aggressively expand.

Sijilmassi et al. argue that myths around shared ancestry and history exploit an evolved psychology of interdependence. In contrast, we argue that psychological exploitation is not required. Rather, such myths may be one method, among many, to create a shared understanding of group boundaries, which can be "self-enforcing." We summarize the game-theoretic basis for this account and some supportive evidence.

Historical myths are indeed a mystery in need of explanation, and we elaborate on the present adaptationist account. However, the same analysis can also be applied to motivations to produce and consume history in general: That humans produce and consume history is also a mystery in need of psychological explanation. An adaptationist psychological science of history is needed.

Sijilmassi et al. offer a myth-based framework that is particularly useful in understanding the rising tide of Hindu nationalism in contemporary India. We propose that the success of these myths lies partly in drawing upon the evolved human capacity for prestige-based status to induce a sense of belonging and identification with high-prestige Hindu social groups.

Do people believe in historical myths because they are manipulated by coalitional recruiters, or because it is in their interests to do so? The target article gives somewhat conflicting explanations. We propose that the audiences of historical myths are socially rather than epistemically motivated - they believe and propagate historical myths as a way of signaling their coalitional commitments.

Myths about a remote shared past can certainly promote cooperation between distantly related people, seemingly via their impact on our social cognition, and ultimately facilitate the achievement of complex tasks in large-scale societies. Nonetheless, the creation and transmission of these complex narratives are not possible without the parallel development of sophisticated language(s), endowed with properties like displacement (enabling mental travels in space and time) and complex syntax (enabling the assembly and communication of complex thoughts).

The social identity approach offers a more parsimonious and more comprehensive explanation for historical myths' assumed coalition-building function than the target article's proposed mechanism based on fitness interdependence. Target article's assertion that social identity theory cannot explain certain characteristics of historical myths is based on a narrow interpretation of the social identity approach.

The explanatory model proposed by Sijilmassi et al. appeals to fitness interdependence, and is highly plausible for small-scale societies. We argue that it is less so in the context of the larger societies that much of their empirical evidence is drawn from, and that this is because fitness interdependence does not readily scale up in the way the model requires.

This commentary points out some theoretical lacuna in the argument and then evaluates, in a preliminary way, its main comparative empirical hypotheses. It finds very limited support for the observable implications of the evolutionary theory. By contrast, the historical remoteness of foundational myths is closely associated with how long a society has been ruled by a centralized state, pointing at the important role of political history.