Cultural Innovations and Demographic Change (2009)
Peter J. Richerson, Robert Boyd, Robert L. Bettinger
Human Biology - Volume 81, Numbers 2-3, April-June 2009
Robert Boyd, Roger S. Fouts, Morris Goodman, Lawrence I. Grossman, Deborah L. Gumucio, Mary Lee, ...
ISBN#: 0-87724-032-9 These essays are the result of an interdisciplinary study program organized by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and supported by the National Science Foundation under...
Brian Paciotti, Peter J. Richerson, Robert Boyd
Cultural Evolutionary Theory 2 Cultural evolutionary theory, like other evolutionary theories, links individual-level and population or society-level phenomena. It provides numerous bridges between...
Darwinian Evolution Across the Disciplines. (2008)
Peter J. Richerson, Robert Boyd
Darwin believed that his theory of evolution would stand or fall on its ability to account for human behavior. No species could be an exception to his theory without imperiling the whole edifice. The...
Running Headline: Rapid Spread of Group Beneficial Norms (2008)
Robert Boyd, Peter J. Richerson
Group beneficial norms are common in human societies. The persistence of such norms is consistent with evolutionary game theory, but existing models do not provide a plausible explanation for why...
Culture, Adaptation, and Innateness (2008)
Robert Boyd, Peter J. Richerson
It is almost 30 years since the sociobiology controversy burst into full bloom. The modern theory of the evolution of animal behavior was born in the mid 1960’s with Bill Hamilton’s seminal...
Individual decision making and the evolutionary roots of institutions (2008)
McElreath, Richard, Boyd, Robert, Gigerenzer, Gerd, Glöckner, Andreas, Hammerstein, Peter, Kurzban, Robert, ...
Memes: Universal Acid or a Better Mouse Trap? (2007)
Robert Boyd, Peter J. Richerson
this paper we want to convince you that population thinking, not natural selection, is the key to conceptualizing culture in terms of material causes. This argument is based on three well-established...
Norms and Bounded Rationality (2007)
Robert Boyd, Robert Boyd, Peter J. Richerson, Peter J. Richerson
Anthropologists believe that human behavior is governed by culturally transmitted norms, and that such norms contain accumulated wisdom that allows people to behave sensibly even though they do not...
Cordes, Christian, Richerson, Peter J., McElreath, Richard, Strimling, Pontus
One reason why firms exist, this paper argues, is because they are suitable organizations within which cooperative production systems based on human social predispositions can evolve. In addition, we...
How Does Opportunistic Behavior Influence Firm Size? (2006)
Cordes, Christian, Richerson, Peter J., McElreath, Richard, Strimling, Pontus
This paper relates firm size and opportunism by showing that, given certain behavioral dispositions of humans, the size of a profit-maximizing firm can be determined by cognitive aspects underlying...
The Evolution of Human Ultra-sociality (1997)
Peter J. Richerson, Robert Boyd
Introduction 1.1 Human sociality in comparative perspective E.O. Wilson (1975) described humans as one of the four pinnacles of social evolution. The other pinnacles are the colonial invertebrates,...
Neale, Patrick J., Richerson, Peter J.
Diurnal series of fluorescence and photosynthesis assays were conducted in high altitude (3803 m), tropical (16°), Lake Titicaca (Peru/Bolivia). Near-surface diurnal thermoclines formed on...
Summer dynamics of the deep chlorophyll maximum in Lake Tahoe (1987)
Coon, Thomas G., Lopez, Matilde M., Richerson, Peter J., Powell, Thomas M., Goldman, Charles R.
Vertical profiles of chlorophyll and phytoplankton biomass were measured in Lake Tahoe from July 1976 through April 1977. A deep chlorophyll maximum (DCM) persisted during summer and early autumn...
Abbott, Mark R., Powell, Thomas M., Richerson, Peter J.
Horizontal transects measuring phytoplankton biomass and temperature were made in Lake Tahoe in the nearshore epilimnion in 1976 and 1977, near the deep chlorophyll maximum in midlake in 1977, and in...
Butzer, Karl W., Brace, C. Loring, Richerson, Peter J., Shanklin, Eugenia, Newman, James L., Kellman, Martin
Peer Reviewed
Community ecology of the Lake Tahoe plankton. (1969)
Thesis--University of California, Davis.
The evolution of altruistic punishment
Boyd, Robert, Gintis, Herbert, Bowles, Samuel, Richerson, Peter J.
Both laboratory and field data suggest that people punish noncooperators even in one-shot interactions. Although such “altruistic punishment” may explain the high levels of cooperation in human...
Effect of phenotypic variation on kin selection
Boyd, Robert, Richerson, Peter J.
An expression for the equilibrium of the mean phenotypic value of a quantitative character is derived for a model in which the fitness of an individual depends on its own phenotype and the mean...
The evolution of altruistic punishment
Boyd, Robert, Gintis, Herbert, Bowles, Samuel, Richerson, Peter J.
Both laboratory and field data suggest that people punish noncooperators even in one-shot interactions. Although such “altruistic punishment” may explain the high levels of cooperation in human...
Effect of phenotypic variation on kin selection
Boyd, Robert, Richerson, Peter J.
An expression for the equilibrium of the mean phenotypic value of a quantitative character is derived for a model in which the fitness of an individual depends on its own phenotype and the mean...
How Does Opportunistic Behavior Influence Firm Size?
Christian Cordes, Peter J. Richerson, Richard McElreath, Pontus Strimling
This paper relates firm size and opportunism by showing that, given certain behavioral dispositions of humans, the size of a profit-maximizing firm can be determined by cognitive aspects underlying...
A naturalistic approach to the theory of the firm: The role of cooperation and cultural evolution
Cordes, Christian, Richerson, Peter J., McElreath, Richard, Strimling, Pontus
Why Do People Become Modern? A Darwinian Explanation
Lesley Newson, Peter J. Richerson
A procession of cultural changes, often referred to as "modernization," is initiated as a society undergoes economic development. But cultural change continues to be rapid in societies that...
McElreath, Richard, Bell, Adrian V, Efferson, Charles, Lubell, Mark, Richerson, Peter J, Waring, Timothy
The existence of social learning has been confirmed in diverse taxa, from apes to guppies. In order to advance our understanding of the consequences of social transmission and evolution of behaviour,...