Abstract
Humans have developed the capacity to approve or disapprove of the behavior of their children and of unrelated individuals. The ability to approve or disapprove transformed social learning into a system of cumulative cultural inheritance, because it increased the reliability of cultural transmission. Moreover, people can transmit their behavioral experiences (regarding what can and cannot be done) to their offspring, thereby avoiding the costs of a laborious, and sometimes dangerous, evaluation of different cultural alternatives. Our thesis is that, during ontogeny, the evaluative communication (approval/disapproval) between parents and offspring is substituted by other evaluative communications among peers, like individuals of the same generation. Each person belongs to a reference social group with individuals that interact more intensively. Humans have developed psychological mechanisms that enable cultural transmission by being receptive to parental advice as well as their reference social group. The selective pressure that promoted these new evaluative interactions arose to facilitate the establishment of efficient cooperative relationships. In short, the social control of behavior is essential to understand human cultural transmission.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Baum WB (1994) Understanding behaviorism: science, behavior, and culture. Harper Collins, New York
Boyd R, Richerson PJ (1985) Culture and the evolutionary process. The Chicago University Press, Chicago
Boyd R, Richerson PJ (1995) Why does culture increase human adaptability? Ethol Sociobiol 16:125–143
Boyd R, Richerson PJ (1996) Why culture is common but cultural evolution is rare? Proc Br Acad 88:77–93
Castro L, Toro MA (1995) Human evolution and the capacity to categorise. J Soc Evol Syst 18:55–66
Castro L, Toro MA (1998) The long and winding road to the ethical capacity. Hist Philos Life Sci 20:77–92
Castro L, Toro MA (2002) Cultural transmission and the capacity to approve or disapprove of offspring’s behaviour. Jom-emit 6 (http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/2002/vol6/castro_l&toro_ma.html)
Castro L, Toro MA (2004) The evolution of culture: from primate social learning to human culture. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 101:10235–10240
Castro L, Toro MA (2007) Mutual benefit cooperation and ethnic cultural diversity. Theor Popul Biol 79:392–399
Castro L, Serrano JM, Toro MA (1998) Conceptual capacity to categorize and the evolution of altruism. J Theor Biol 192:561–565
Castro L, Medina A, Toro MA (2004) Hominid cultural transmission and the evolution of language. Biol Philos 19:721–737
Castro L, Castro-Nogueira L, Castro-Nogueira MA (2008) ¿Quién teme a la naturaleza humana? Homo suadens y el bienestar en la cultura: biología evolutiva. metafísica y ciencias sociales, Tecnos, Madrid
Castro-Nogueira L (2009) Bubbles, globes, wrappings, and plektopoi: minimal notes to rethink metaphysics from the standpoint of the social sciences. Environ Plan D Soc Space 27:87–104
Cosmides L, Tooby J (1992) The psychological foundations of culture. In: Barkow J, Cosmides L, Tooby J (eds) The adapted mind. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 19–136
Durkheim E (1962) The rules of the sociological method. Free Press, Glencoe, IL
Fehr E, Fischbacher U (2003) The nature of human altruism. Nature 425:785–791
Fehr E, Fischbacher U (2004) Social norms and human cooperation. Trends Cogn Sci 8:185–190
Geertz C (1973) The interpretation of cultures. Basic Books, New York
Gurven M, Kaplan H, Gutierrez M (2006) How long does it take to become a proficient hunter? Implications for the evolution of extended development and long life span. J Hum Evol 51:454–470
Henrich J, Boyd R (1998) The evolution of conformist transmission and the emergence of between group-differences. Evol Hum Behav 19:215–241
Henrich J, McElreath R (2003) The evolution of cultural evolution. Evol Anthropol 12:123–135
Hume D (2000) A treatise of human nature. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Inoue-Nakamura N, Matsuzawa T (1997) Development of stone tool use by wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). J Comp Psychol 111(2):159–173
Kroeber A (1917) The superorganic. Am Anthropol 19:163–213
Lumsden C, Wilson EO (1981) Genes, mind and culture. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
McElreath R, Boyd R, Richerson P (2003) Shared norms can lead the evolution of ethnic markers. Curr Anthropol 44:122–129
Nakahashi W (2007) The evolution of conformist transmission in social learning when the environment changes periodically. Theor Popul Biol 72:52–66
Nisbett R, Cohen D (1996) Culture of honor. Westview Press, Denver, CO
Premack D (2004) Psychology. Is language the key to human intelligence? Science 303:318–320
Richerson PJ, Boyd R (2001) Culture is part of human biology: why the superorganic concept serves the human sciences badly. In: Maasen S, Winterhager M (eds) Science studies: probing the dynamics of scientific knowledge. Verlag, Bielefeld
Richerson PJ, Boyd R (2005) Not by genes alone. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Rogers AR (1988) Does biology constrain culture? Am Anthropol 90:819–831
Simon H (1990) A mechanism for social selection and successful altruism. Science 250:1665–1668
Smith A (1976) The theory of moral sentiments. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Stevens JR, Hauser MD (2004) Why be nice? Psychological constraints on the evolution of cooperation. Trends Cogn Sci 8:60–65
Tomasello M, Call J (1997) Primate cognition. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Tooby J, Cosmides L (2005) Conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology. In: Buss David M (ed) The handbook of evolutionary psychology. Wiley, Hoboken
Wakano JY, Aoki K (2007) Do social learning and conformist bias coevolve? Henrich and Boyd revisited. Theor Popul Biol 72:504–512
Walker R, Hill K, Kaplan H, McMillan G (2002) Age-dependency in hunting ability among the Ache of Eastern Paraguay. J Hum Evol 42:639–657
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Morris Villarroel for his helpful assistance.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Castro, L., Castro-Nogueira, L., Castro-Nogueira, M.A. et al. Cultural transmission and social control of human behavior. Biol Philos 25, 347–360 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-010-9201-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-010-9201-y