Abstract:

It has been argued that ancestral human populations were egalitarian and without hierarchies of wealth or power. However, more recent archaeological and anthropological evidence has challenged this view, suggesting a much greater variety in social structures. Nonetheless, the question of the “typical” human social structure persists, and the answer remains unclear. Here we use a bottom-up, cultural evolutionary approach to identify the kinds of social structures favored by human cognition. First, we develop a theoretical model that links prestige-biased transmission to human social structures. We find a single parameter, the intensity of prestige sensitivity, can cause populations to be egalitarian, oligarchic or autocratic. Second, we use a large-scale, online experiment to measure this intensity in humans. We find that, far from being egalitarian, human prestige psychology generates strikingly unequal societies led by a small number of highly influential individuals. Further analyses suggest that these leaders are typically, but not always, skilled.

Speaker's social media: