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Michael Alvard [7]Michael S. Alvard [3]
  1. “Economic man” in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies.Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis, Richard McElreath, Michael Alvard, Abigail Barr, Jean Ensminger, Natalie Smith Henrich, Kim Hill, Francisco Gil-White, Michael Gurven, Frank W. Marlowe & John Q. Patton - 2005 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (6):795-815.
    Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of (...)
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  2.  48
    Kinship, lineage, and an evolutionary perspective on cooperative hunting groups in Indonesia.Michael S. Alvard - 2003 - Human Nature 14 (2):129-163.
    Work was conducted among traditional, subsistence whale hunters in Lamalera, Indonesia, in order to test if strict biological kinship or lineage membership is more important for explaining the organization of cooperative hunting parties ranging in size from 8 to 14 men. Crew identifications were collected for all 853 hunts that occurred between May 3 and August 5, 1999. Lineage identity and genetic relatedness were determined for a sample of 189 hunters. Results of matrix regression show that genetic kinship explains little (...)
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  3.  58
    Kinship and Cooperation.Michael Alvard - 2009 - Human Nature 20 (4):394-416.
    Chagnon’s analysis of a well-known axe fight in the Yanomamö village of Mishimishiböwei-teri (Chagnon and Bugos 1979) is among the earliest empirical tests of kin selection theory for explaining cooperation in humans. Kin selection theory describes how cooperation can be organized around genetic kinship and is a fundamental tool for understanding cooperation within family groups. Previous analysis on groups of cooperative Lamaleran whale hunters suggests that the role of genetic kinship as a principle for organizing cooperative human groups could be (...)
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  4. Models of decision-making and the coevolution of social preferences.Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis, Richard McElreath, Michael Alvard, Abigail Barr, Jean Ensminger, Natalie Smith Henrich, Kim Hill, Francisco Gil-White, Michael Gurven, Frank W. Marlowe, John Q. Patton & David Tracer - 2005 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (6):838-855.
    We would like to thank the commentators for their generous comments, valuable insights and helpful suggestions. We begin this response by discussing the selfishness axiom and the importance of the preferences, beliefs, and constraints framework as a way of modeling some of the proximate influences on human behavior. Next, we broaden the discussion to ultimate-level (that is evolutionary) explanations, where we review and clarify gene-culture coevolutionary theory, and then tackle the possibility that evolutionary approaches that exclude culture might be sufficient (...)
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  5.  41
    Genetic and Cultural Kinship among the Lamaleran Whale Hunters.Michael Alvard - 2011 - Human Nature 22 (1-2):89-107.
    The human ability to form large, coordinated groups is among our most impressive social adaptations. Larger groups facilitate synergistic economies of scale for cooperative breeding, such economic tasks as group hunting, and success in conflict with other groups. In many organisms, genetic relationships provide the structure for sociality to evolve via the process of kin selection, and this is the case, to a certain extent, for humans. But assortment by genetic affiliation is not the only mechanism that can bring people (...)
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  6.  42
    Conservation by native peoples.Michael S. Alvard - 1994 - Human Nature 5 (2):127-154.
    Native peoples have often been portrayed as natural conservationists, living a “balanced” existence with nature. It is argued that this perspective is a result of an imprecise operational definition of conservation. Conservation is defined here in contrast to the predictions of foraging theory, which assumes that foragers will behave to maximize their short-term harvesting rate. A behavior is deemed conservation when a short-term cost is paid by the resource harvester in exchange for long-term benefits in the form of sustainable harvests. (...)
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  7.  16
    A Naturalistic Study of Norm Conformity, Punishment, and the Veneration of the Dead at Texas A&M University, USA.Michael Alvard & Katherine Daiy - 2021 - Human Nature 32 (3):652-675.
    Culturally inherited institutional norms structure much of human social life. Successfully replicating institutions train their current members to behave in the generally adaptive ways that served past members. Ancestor veneration is a well-known manifestation of this phenomenon whereby deference is conferred to prestigious past members who are used as cultural models. Such norms of respect may be maintained by punishment based on evidence from theory and laboratory experiments, but there is little observational evidence to show that punishment is commonly used. (...)
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  8.  39
    Cooperation, evolution, and culture.Michael Alvard - 2003 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (2):153-154.
    Rejecting evolutionary principles is a mistake, because evolutionary processes produced the irrational human minds for which Colman argues. An evolved cultural ability to acquire information socially and infer other's mental states (mind-reading) evokes Stackelberg reasoning. Much of game theory, however, assumes away information transfer and excludes the very solution that natural selection likely created to solve the problem of cooperation.
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  9.  56
    Good hunters keep smaller shares of larger pies.Michael Alvard - 2004 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (4):560-561.
    High producers are motivated to hunt in spite of high levels of sharing because the transfers come from absolutely larger amounts of resource. In the context of a generalized cooperative subsistence strategy, stinginess could provoke the withdrawal of cooperative partners and result in a loss of income. Good producers could have more to lose by not sharing than poor producers would.
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  10.  46
    Partner selection, coordination games, and group selection.Michael S. Alvard - 2013 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (1):80-81.
    The process of partner selection reflects ethnographic realities where cooperative rewards obtain that would otherwise be lost to loners. Baumard et al. neglect frequency-dependent processes exemplified by games of coordination. Such games can produce multiple equilibria that may or may not include fair outcomes. Additional, group-selection processes are required to produce the outcomes predicted by the models.
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