United Kingdom

**Abstract:**

This project looks at whether cooperation and storytelling have co-evolved. Debates continue over the extent to which widespread cooperation in humans can be explained by the mechanisms that maintain it in other species, such as kin selection and reciprocity. Storytelling may help reinforce large-scale cooperation by transmitting prosocial norms and acting as a social ‘flight simulator’. Previous evidence from transmission chain experiments suggests a bias towards social information in narratives, but the co-evolution of storytelling and cooperation remains understudied.  

This project looked at how prosocial behaviours were viewed within folktales and if prosocial moral messages were more widespread in folktales. To determine this, 452 people read 300 Indo-European folktales and commented on the moral messaging and moral behaviours found within them. It was found that cooperative behaviours such as altruism, reciprocity, helping family were viewed significantly more positively while individualistic behaviours were found to be viewed significantly more negatively. Significantly more stories were rated as having a prosocial main moral message than an individualistic one. This project aims to undertake future projects using phylogenetic comparative methods and experimental research, investigating whether prosociality in stories affects transmission fidelity and cooperative behaviour itself.


**Speaker&#39;s social media:**

em_ilyjxx 
emilymljeffries.bsky.social

Cultural Evolution Society Conference 2024

The Moral of the Story - Investigating the co-evolution of storytelling and Human Cooperation via a survey of moral attitudes to Indo-European folktales

folktales

phylogenetics

cooperation

## Welcome!
"I am excited to welcome you to this year’s edition of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing! Importantly, it marks the 30th edition of EMNLP. With over 8,000 submissions, more than 3,000 accepted papers, and thousands of attendees, we have come a long way from that first
workshop, which had 14 accepted papers. As the field looks ahead, Suzhou is the fitting location for celebrating this milestone: rooted in a long literary tradition, yet modern and forward-looking, and home to a large share of the NLP community." 

*Message from the General Chair, Dirk Hovy*

EMNLP 2025

Celebrate 30 Years of EMNLP! 
EMNLP 2025 will be held in Suzhou, China from November 5th to November 9th, 2025.

**Abstract:**

This project looks at whether cooperation and storytelling have co-evolved. Debates continue over the extent to which widespread cooperation in humans can be explained by the mechanisms that maintain it in other species, such as kin selection and reciprocity. Storytelling may help reinforce large-scale cooperation by transmitting prosocial norms and acting as a social ‘flight simulator’. Previous evidence from transmission chain experiments suggests a bias towards social information in narratives, but the co-evolution of storytelling and cooperation remains understudied.  

This project looked at how prosocial behaviours were viewed within folktales and if prosocial moral messages were more widespread in folktales. To determine this, 452 people read 300 Indo-European folktales and commented on the moral messaging and moral behaviours found within them. It was found that cooperative behaviours such as altruism, reciprocity, helping family were viewed significantly more positively while individualistic behaviours were found to be viewed significantly more negatively. Significantly more stories were rated as having a prosocial main moral message than an individualistic one. This project aims to undertake future projects using phylogenetic comparative methods and experimental research, investigating whether prosociality in stories affects transmission fidelity and cooperative behaviour itself.


**Speaker's social media:**

em_ilyjxx 
emilymljeffries.bsky.social

poster

Welcome to the Cultural Evolution Society (CES) Conference 2024, which was a hybrid conference held at Durham University (UK). The conference was hosted in Durham by the Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre (DCERC) with administrative assistance from the CES Transformation Fund team.

**For more information about the CES Conference, please visit the [CES Website Home Page](https://ces2024.webspace.durham.ac.uk/).**

#### Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre (DCERC) 
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
**Interdisciplinary study of cultural change and diversity**

We are a highly interdisciplinary group of researchers using evolutionary models to study cultural change and diversity. We apply cultural evolutionary methods to a wide variety of topics including cognition, innovation, social learning, technology, art, music, narrative, religion, sociality, language and communication. We have a growing interest in applying cultural evolutionary theory to current societal challenges such as understanding the spread of prosocial health behaviours and health conspiracies. 
**[Discover More](https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/cultural-evolution/)**

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The field of cultural evolution is growing in size and scope; its theories, methods and applications - both academic and applied - are getting ever more robust. Do join us in what promises to be an exciting exchange of ideas and a celebration of our field.

**Abstract:**

We proceed on anthropological theories of cultural and behavioural transmission where culture can be transmitted vertically (between local generations), horizontally between current populations and incoming groups, and by reciprocal oblique transmission through multiple modes. We compare the two transmission theories in a cognitive explanation of the general perception of cultural traits in urban area. The theory of natural selection of culture is based on the evolutionary paradigm of biased selection of the most appropriate and promising solutions for oneself and the reference community. For this theory we chose a research sample of the local population in Kaunas city. Cultural attractors are theoretical propositions that capture the way in which certain ideational variants are more likely to be the outcome of transformations than others. This way of reasoning is characteristic when a person becomes acquainted with an unfamiliar and new place. For this theory we chose a research sample of visitors, tourists in Kaunas. Both of these theories are based on different perceptions of place and different priorities from a long-term perspective. Applying such findings will improve our ability to recognize how to keep a particular place vital and sustainable in the long term.

**Speaker's social media:**

https://www.heritageresearch-hub.eu/project/herindep/
https://herindep.ff.cuni.cz/

The cognitive frames modeling as an approach to analyze a place transformation from attractors and selectionist theory: Case Kaunas

**Abstract:**

Non-imitative social learning mechanisms seem to underlie tufted capuchin monkeys' tool use traditions (enabled by environmentally determined features like terrestriality, foraging and tool material availability). Equating non-imitative social learning outcomes to "species-typical" potential individual innovations, though, is misleading. What a given individual organism can or not learn by itself is not a simple, clear species trait, but rather a probabilistic outcome of its species' "innate" predispositions, individual variation and developmental trajectories, under particular ecological and social contexts… and chance. Therefore, it is problematic to conceive the limits of an animal's "Zone of Latent Solutions" (Tennie et al 2009) as a unique, clear - and unchanging - borderline, instead of a huge grey area. A "Zone of Proximal Acquisition" (Whiten 2023) conveys a more realistic model.  Furthermore, although conceptual categories of social learning aim to be clearly defined and mutually exclusive, behavioural repertoire changes tend to be complex events. Well-designed experiments may (hopefully) disentangle them, but real-life, naturalistically observed behavioural acquisition events potentially involve the combined - and hard to tell apart - effects of multiple learning mechanisms.  Under such circumstances, a simple and observable behaviour, "Peering" (Schuppli and van Schaik 2019) may enhance the evidence of social learning in tufted capuchins [FAPESP/CNPq].

**Speaker's social media:**



Socially biased learning concepts and tool use traditions in tufted capuchin monkeys

**Abstract:**

The whisper game is often used for studying culture transmission and how variation can arise from transmission. However, it has two drawbacks from the perspective of its computer mediation: it is analog, i.e. the message is the culture to transmit, and its variation comes from unfaithful transmission. First, computer-based transmission may be faithful. Second, culture is transmitted 'semantically': the message is first integrated within preexisting culture from which a message is generated for transmission.

We aim at showing that these integration/generation operations produce sufficient variation.

For that purpose, we introduce a game in which agents induce a card classification from the dispatch of randomly selected cards. They then generate from their classification the next dispatch of a random card sample. The two operations are implemented deterministically, but depending on the sample, the generalisation may be incomplete. The agents may know or suspect that and complete it. This brings variation back. Depending on the size of the sample with respect to that of the classification, more variation should be observed, inducing a degradation or preservation of faithfulness.

This setting can be played by human beings or through computer simulations and they can be compared.


**Speaker's social media:**

https://moex.inria.fr

Culture transmission through generalisation and example generation should produce variation

**Abstract:**

Robust capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.) are one of the few primates that customarily use tools in the wild. However, there is a broad variation across populations. While some use various tools, including different raw materials, to solve problems or enhance behaviours, others use few or no tools. The Serra da Capivara National Park bearded capuchin population is, so far, the most prolific population regarding tool use, followed by the monkeys of the newly described Ubajara National Park. In contrast, other Brazilian populations of the same species (S. libidinosus), such as the ones in Chapada dos Veadeiros and Fazenda Boa Vista, appear to have a smaller tool-use repertoire. Ecological factors appear to influence the kind of resources capuchins can explore, and the available material they can use as tools. However, social learning and cultural factors are needed to explain some observed differences. Even when the ecological factors have some influence, the cultural influence can be present. Genetic variance needs to be better investigated, but preliminary data shows that 250 ky separates the two most prolific tool-using populations, suggesting the genetic influence is low. Grants: National Geographic Society NGS‐64133R‐19, São Paulo Research Foundation 2018/01292-9.

**Speaker's social media:**

@tfalotico

Tool use cultures by wild capuchin monkeys in Brazil

**Abstract:**

Among the growing interest in the potential role that social learning processes play in the cultural evolution of prosocial traits, empirical evidence shows that intergroup competition can spread prosocial behaviors and beliefs across the group (e.g., Francois et al. 2018). Social learning based on payoff-biased imitation is another candidate mechanism of intergroup competition that can spread prosocial norms even when there is no conflict of interest between groups. However, research to date has not empirically examined the potential role of payoff-biased imitation.
We conducted two laboratory experiments in which two groups faced a collective action problem, and manipulated the opportunity for the less successful group to observe the other one. Thus, we examined whether even costly prosocial behaviors can be imitated and spread within an unsuccessful group. We showed that the opportunity to observe a successful group increases cooperation rate at the 1st round and initially boosts prosociality (i.e., reciprocity), but this effect gradually decreases during the within-group process, which results in no significant difference in the overall cooperation rate. Further research is necessary to understand the roles of another possible pathway for the spread of human-specific prosocial norms.

**Speaker's social media:**



Empirical evidence for the impact of payoff-biased imitation of other group members on the spread of cooperation

**Abstract:**

Current global emergencies like economic crises, pandemics, environmental perils, and armed conflicts have brought uncertainty to the forefront as a key concept for understanding human behavior. However, uncertainty is an inherent property of most environmental and social challenges the human species has faced in its evolution. Nevertheless, research conceptualizations of uncertainty vary greatly, and its complexity poses theoretical and methodological challenges. Several cultural-evolutionary approaches argue that the capacity of beliefs and behavioral patterns to saturate the needs arising from cognitive and emotional processing of uncertainty positively affects the social dissemination of these beliefs and behavioral patterns (e.g. religion, conspiracy theories, social conservatism). To address the inner complexity of such hypotheses, we argue that uncertainty must be theoretically and methodologically approached at various levels (as an epistemic situation, as a psychological state, and as a socio-cultural construct). Uncertainty must also be operationalized in interaction but independently from concepts of threat and costs. We will combine ethnographic research, surveys, interviews, and experiments across multiple sites to pursue these scientific goals. Finally, by mapping and analyzing coping strategies in different contexts, we seek to identify more vs. less successful coping mechanisms that may have practical applications.

**Speaker's social media:**

@Peter_Mano_
@BahnaVladimir
@Danija_Jerot

Dealing with uncertainty: strategies and contexts

**Abstract:**

Recent years have seen renewed interest in the role of religious systems as drivers of the evolution of cooperation in human societies. One suggestion is that cultural traditions of ancestor worship might have evolved as “descendant-leaving strategies” of ancestors by encouraging increased altruism particularly between distant kin. Specifically, ancestors might have been able to establish parental manipulation of kin recognition and perceived relatedness as a traditional behaviour via a mechanism of cultural transmission exploiting social learning biases, thereby maximising their long-term inclusive fitness. Here, a demographically explicit, mathematical model has been developed to quantify the resulting increase in altruism and concomitant “ancestor-descendant conflict”, and to determine the evolutionary feasibility of cultural norms promoting altruism among co-descendants. The analysis reveals that such norms could indeed drive an overall increase in altruism with potential for conflict and that they can be favoured by natural selection under a range of conditions, with the inclusive-fitness costs of enacting an inappropriately high level of altruism being offset by inclusive-fitness benefits derived from the facilitation of kin recognition. These findings reaffirm that cultural institutions can generate adaptive behaviours by providing extrasomatically stored, fitness relevant information and promote an increase in cooperation not expected via genetic selection.

**Speaker's social media:**



Kin selection favours religious traditions: Ancestor worship as a cultural descendant-leaving strategy

**Abstract:**

Context: Cultural evolution models have suggested that different ‘roles’ can emerge within populations that start with small differences in behaviour or abilities between groups. Human populations are commonly structured according to gender, which means that any processes that encourage gender stereotyping are likely to influence gender segregation and patterns of cultural transmission. Here, we consider the role of gender-based microaggressions in perpetuating and reinforcing gender stereotypes. Purpose: This study investigated the association between endorsement of gender stereotypes and women’s evaluations of microaggressions. Methods: Participants (N=280 women, aged 18-39 years, UK-based) were recruited online and completed i) the Sexist Microaggression Experience and Stress Scale (Sexist MESS), ii) Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI) and iii) Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21). Results: The frequency of experiencing microaggressions was negatively correlated with endorsement of gender stereotypes and mental wellbeing, including when controlling for financial instability (i.e., participants who reported experiencing higher frequencies of microaggressions scored lower on sexist attitudes). Implications: These findings provide insights into the psychological processes that underpin power dynamics and gender segregation. Gender stereotype endorsement is likely to impact an individual’s willingness to self-segregate into gendered groups. Our future research will investigate the relationship between gender stereotypes and gender-biased cultural transmission.

**Speaker's social media:**

Twitter: @jxinew
Bluesky: @jinwenxie

Cultural transmission and gender stereotypes: the relationship between sexist attitudes and perceived experiences of microaggressions in women

**Abstract:**

Despite the acknowledged prevalence of culture within non-human primate societies, research has predominantly focused on material or social traditions, neglecting the potential cultural shaping of individual interactions and its implications for group-level social dynamics (Kaufhold & van Leeuwen, 2019; van de Waal, 2019). While some studies have identified intraspecific variation in group-level social structure (e.g. van Leeuwen et al., 2018; Kerjean et al., 2023), limitations in sample size and comparability have hindered conclusive understanding. Addressing this gap, we investigated the sociality of eight groups of captive rhesus macaques with comparable demographics and housing conditions. Employing behavioral observations and experimental measures, including cofeeding tolerance plots, we assessed their group-level sociality with social network analysis. Our findings reveal group-specific patterns in affiliative and agonistic interactions, social network structures, and cofeeding tolerance, indicating a cultural influence on these behaviors. We propose that commonplace interactions such as grooming are, at least partially, culturally shaped among macaques, giving rise to distinct "social cultures" within groups. This study underscores the pervasive role of culture across behavioral domains in non-human primates.

**Speaker's social media:**

Twitter: @eythancousin

Cultural influences on social behavior in captive rhesus macaques: a comparative study

**Abstract:**

The ManyManys is an unprecedented mega-network of multi-disciplinary and international researchers that aims to overcome challenges in comparative cognition by collaboratively developing and applying innovative methods to measure and compare behaviour across animal taxa. It was created to tackle the growing concerns across disciplines about the detrimental effects of conducting studies in siloed laboratories, with small sample sizes, and underpowered designs, on the reproducibility, replicability, and robustness of research findings. In comparative cognition, the ramifications of these effects are particularly pronounced because, in addition to the above-mentioned problems, this field relies heavily on generalizing research findings across taxa, which usually is based on limited species coverage. The ManyManys network provides the framework and the collaborative platform for conducting large-scale high-impact research projects. Its overarching objective is to increase sample size and diversity, enhance task design and striking a balance between cross-species standardization and species-fair design, further theoretical advances, and improve welfare and conservation efforts, as well as foster best research practices advancing the standards of the big team science (Alessandroni et al., 2024).

**Speaker's social media:**

@TheManyManys

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The cognitive frames modeling as an approach to analyze a place transformation from attractors and selectionist theory: Case Kaunas

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