Nicolas Claidière
Biographic Data
| ID | 184570 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nicolas Claidière |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nicolas |
| FAMILY NAME | Claidière |
| SIGNATURE | CLAIDIÈRE N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4472-6597 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 46 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
No Evidence for Agent−Patient Role Attribution in Human Infants, Human Adults, and Guinea Baboons ( Papio papio)
Languages describe “who is doing what to whom” by distinguishing the event roles of agent (doer) and patient (undergoer), but it is debated whether they result from nonlinguistic representations that may already exist in preverbal infants and nonhuman animals. The phenomenon of causal perception, where the subsequent movements of two objects A and B evoke the impression of A launching B, is a simple depiction of an agent−patient relation. The sem…
The Role of Explanation in the Evolution of Technology
One way to pass on our own causal understanding about how a physical system works is to provide a verbal explanation about it, raising the question of the role of explanations in the transmission and evolution of technology. Here we address this question by conducting new analyses on the data collected in 3 previously published microsociety studies, in which participants organized into transmission chains had to improve a technology. In 3 of the …
Human and animal dominance hierarchies show a pyramidal structure guiding adult and infant social inferences
Impact of technical reasoning and theory of mind on cumulative technological culture: Insights from a model of micro-societies
Our technologies have never ceased to evolve, allowing our lineage to expand its habitat all over the Earth, and even to explore space. This phenomenon, called cumulative technological culture (CTC), has been studied extensively, notably using mathematical and computational models. However, the cognitive capacities needed for the emergence and maintenance of CTC remain largely unknown. In the literature, the focus is put on the distinctive abilit…
Does discussion make crowds any wiser
Baboons (Papio anubis) living in larger social groups have bigger brains
Being Easy to Communicate Might Make Verdicts Based on Confessions More Legitimate
In many judicial systems, confessions are a requirement for criminal conviction. Even if confessions are intrinsically convincing, this might not entirely explain why they play such a paramount role. In addition, it has been suggested that confessions owe their importance to their legitimizing role, explaining why they could be required even when other evidence has convinced a judge. But why would confessions be particularly suited to justify ver…
Do guide dogs have culture? The case of indirect social learning
In the study of animal behaviour, culture is often seen as the result of direct social transmission from a model to a conspecific. In this essay, we show that unrecognised cultural phenomena are sustained by a special form of indirect social learning (ISL). ISL occurs when an individual B learns a behaviour from an individual A through something produced by A. A’s behavioural products can be chemicals, artefacts, but also, we argue, behaviours of…
It happened to a friend of a friend: Inaccurate Source Reporting in Rumour Diffusion
e.g. when told by a friend that 'a friend told me ...' they shared the rumour as coming from 'a friend' instead of 'a friend of friend'. Source shortening and reliance on credible sources boosted rumour propagation by increasing the rumours' perceived plausibility and participants' willingness to share them. Models show that, in linear transmission chains, the generic friend attribution dominates, but that allowing each individual to be exposed t…
Obstacles to the spread of unintuitive beliefs
Many socially significant beliefs are unintuitive, from the harmlessness of GMOs to the efficacy of vaccination, and they are acquired via deference toward individuals who are more confident, more competent or a majority. In the two-step flow model of communication, a first group of individuals acquires some beliefs through deference and then spreads these beliefs more broadly. Ideally, these individuals should be able to explain why they deferre…
The baboon: A model for the study of language evolution
Convergent transformation and selection in cultural evolution
Comment articuler les sciences de la vie et les sciences sociales à propos des relations humains / animaux ? Un modèle interactionniste et évolutionniste
Le modèle développé dans cet article vise à éclairer les relations interspécifiques en articulant les vues proposées dans la sociologie interactionniste, d'une part, et l'éthologie - et plus largement les sciences du comportement -, d'autre part. Ce modèle est centré sur l'interaction sociale et ses effets. Il repose sur l'idée selon laquelle la condition minimale de l'existence de faits sociaux et culturels n'est pas une identité partagée - de r…
Universal cognitive mechanisms explain the cultural success of bloodletting
How Darwinian is cultural evolution?
Darwin-inspired population thinking suggests approaching culture as a population of items of different types, whose relative frequencies may change over time. Three nested subtypes of populational models can be distinguished: evolutionary, selectional and replicative. Substantial progress has been made in the study of cultural evolution by modelling it within the selectional frame. This progress has involved idealizing away from phenomena that ma…
Network Analysis of Social Changes in a Captive Chimpanzee Community Following the Successful Integration of Two Adult Groups
Chimpanzees are highly territorial and have the potential to be extremely aggressive toward unfamiliar individuals. In the wild, transfer between groups is almost exclusively completed by nulliparous females, yet in captivity there is often a need to introduce and integrate a range of individuals, including adult males. We describe the process of successfully integrating two groups of chimpanzees, each containing 11 individuals, in the Budongo Tr…
Integrating the study of conformity and culture in humans and nonhuman animals
Conformity--defined here by the fact that an individual displays a particular behavior because it is the most frequent the individual witnessed in others--has long been recognized by social psychologists as one of the main categories of social influence. Surprisingly, it is only recently that conformity has become an active topic in animal and comparative biology. As in any new and rapidly growing field, however, definitions, hypotheses, and prot…
A Colour Sorting Task Reveals the Limits of the Universalist/Relativist Dichotomy: Colour Categories Can Be Both Language Specific and Perceptual
We designed a new protocol requiring French adult participants to group a large number of Munsell colour chips into three or four groups. On one, relativist, view, participants would be expected to rely on their colour lexicon in such a task. In this framework, the resulting groups should be more similar to French colour categories than to other languages categories. On another, universalist, view, participants would be expected to rely on univer…
The role of attraction in cultural evolution
Henrich and Boyd (2002) were the first to propose a formal model of the role of attraction in cultural evolution. They came to the surprising conclusion that, when both attraction and selection are at work, final outcomes are determined by selection alone. This result is based on a determistic view of cultural attraction, different from the probabilistic view introduced in Sperber (1996). We defend this probabilistic view, show how to model it, a…
The role of attraction in cultural evolution
Henrich and Boyd (2002) were the first to propose a formal model of the role of attraction in cultural evolution. They came to the surprising conclusion that, when both attraction and selection are at work, final outcomes are determined by selection alone. This result is based on a determistic view of cultural attraction, different from the probabilistic view introduced in Sperber (1996). We defend this probabilistic view, show how to model it, a…
Integrating the study of conformity and culture in humans and nonhuman animals
Conformity--defined here by the fact that an individual displays a particular behavior because it is the most frequent the individual witnessed in others--has long been recognized by social psychologists as one of the main categories of social influence. Surprisingly, it is only recently that conformity has become an active topic in animal and comparative biology. As in any new and rapidly growing field, however, definitions, hypotheses, and prot…
It happened to a friend of a friend: Inaccurate Source Reporting in Rumour Diffusion
e.g. when told by a friend that 'a friend told me ...' they shared the rumour as coming from 'a friend' instead of 'a friend of friend'. Source shortening and reliance on credible sources boosted rumour propagation by increasing the rumours' perceived plausibility and participants' willingness to share them. Models show that, in linear transmission chains, the generic friend attribution dominates, but that allowing each individual to be exposed t…
Obstacles to the spread of unintuitive beliefs
Many socially significant beliefs are unintuitive, from the harmlessness of GMOs to the efficacy of vaccination, and they are acquired via deference toward individuals who are more confident, more competent or a majority. In the two-step flow model of communication, a first group of individuals acquires some beliefs through deference and then spreads these beliefs more broadly. Ideally, these individuals should be able to explain why they deferre…
The baboon: A model for the study of language evolution
A Colour Sorting Task Reveals the Limits of the Universalist/Relativist Dichotomy: Colour Categories Can Be Both Language Specific and Perceptual
We designed a new protocol requiring French adult participants to group a large number of Munsell colour chips into three or four groups. On one, relativist, view, participants would be expected to rely on their colour lexicon in such a task. In this framework, the resulting groups should be more similar to French colour categories than to other languages categories. On another, universalist, view, participants would be expected to rely on univer…
Human and animal dominance hierarchies show a pyramidal structure guiding adult and infant social inferences
Comment articuler les sciences de la vie et les sciences sociales à propos des relations humains / animaux ? Un modèle interactionniste et évolutionniste
Le modèle développé dans cet article vise à éclairer les relations interspécifiques en articulant les vues proposées dans la sociologie interactionniste, d'une part, et l'éthologie - et plus largement les sciences du comportement -, d'autre part. Ce modèle est centré sur l'interaction sociale et ses effets. Il repose sur l'idée selon laquelle la condition minimale de l'existence de faits sociaux et culturels n'est pas une identité partagée - de r…
The role of attraction in cultural evolution
Henrich and Boyd (2002) were the first to propose a formal model of the role of attraction in cultural evolution. They came to the surprising conclusion that, when both attraction and selection are at work, final outcomes are determined by selection alone. This result is based on a determistic view of cultural attraction, different from the probabilistic view introduced in Sperber (1996). We defend this probabilistic view, show how to model it, a…
A Colour Sorting Task Reveals the Limits of the Universalist/Relativist Dichotomy: Colour Categories Can Be Both Language Specific and Perceptual
We designed a new protocol requiring French adult participants to group a large number of Munsell colour chips into three or four groups. On one, relativist, view, participants would be expected to rely on their colour lexicon in such a task. In this framework, the resulting groups should be more similar to French colour categories than to other languages categories. On another, universalist, view, participants would be expected to rely on univer…
Integrating the study of conformity and culture in humans and nonhuman animals
Conformity--defined here by the fact that an individual displays a particular behavior because it is the most frequent the individual witnessed in others--has long been recognized by social psychologists as one of the main categories of social influence. Surprisingly, it is only recently that conformity has become an active topic in animal and comparative biology. As in any new and rapidly growing field, however, definitions, hypotheses, and prot…
Network Analysis of Social Changes in a Captive Chimpanzee Community Following the Successful Integration of Two Adult Groups
Chimpanzees are highly territorial and have the potential to be extremely aggressive toward unfamiliar individuals. In the wild, transfer between groups is almost exclusively completed by nulliparous females, yet in captivity there is often a need to introduce and integrate a range of individuals, including adult males. We describe the process of successfully integrating two groups of chimpanzees, each containing 11 individuals, in the Budongo Tr…
How Darwinian is cultural evolution?
Darwin-inspired population thinking suggests approaching culture as a population of items of different types, whose relative frequencies may change over time. Three nested subtypes of populational models can be distinguished: evolutionary, selectional and replicative. Substantial progress has been made in the study of cultural evolution by modelling it within the selectional frame. This progress has involved idealizing away from phenomena that ma…
Universal cognitive mechanisms explain the cultural success of bloodletting
Comment articuler les sciences de la vie et les sciences sociales à propos des relations humains / animaux ? Un modèle interactionniste et évolutionniste
Le modèle développé dans cet article vise à éclairer les relations interspécifiques en articulant les vues proposées dans la sociologie interactionniste, d'une part, et l'éthologie - et plus largement les sciences du comportement -, d'autre part. Ce modèle est centré sur l'interaction sociale et ses effets. Il repose sur l'idée selon laquelle la condition minimale de l'existence de faits sociaux et culturels n'est pas une identité partagée - de r…
Convergent transformation and selection in cultural evolution
Obstacles to the spread of unintuitive beliefs
Many socially significant beliefs are unintuitive, from the harmlessness of GMOs to the efficacy of vaccination, and they are acquired via deference toward individuals who are more confident, more competent or a majority. In the two-step flow model of communication, a first group of individuals acquires some beliefs through deference and then spreads these beliefs more broadly. Ideally, these individuals should be able to explain why they deferre…
The baboon: A model for the study of language evolution
Do guide dogs have culture? The case of indirect social learning
In the study of animal behaviour, culture is often seen as the result of direct social transmission from a model to a conspecific. In this essay, we show that unrecognised cultural phenomena are sustained by a special form of indirect social learning (ISL). ISL occurs when an individual B learns a behaviour from an individual A through something produced by A. A’s behavioural products can be chemicals, artefacts, but also, we argue, behaviours of…
It happened to a friend of a friend: Inaccurate Source Reporting in Rumour Diffusion
e.g. when told by a friend that 'a friend told me ...' they shared the rumour as coming from 'a friend' instead of 'a friend of friend'. Source shortening and reliance on credible sources boosted rumour propagation by increasing the rumours' perceived plausibility and participants' willingness to share them. Models show that, in linear transmission chains, the generic friend attribution dominates, but that allowing each individual to be exposed t…
Baboons (Papio anubis) living in larger social groups have bigger brains
Being Easy to Communicate Might Make Verdicts Based on Confessions More Legitimate
In many judicial systems, confessions are a requirement for criminal conviction. Even if confessions are intrinsically convincing, this might not entirely explain why they play such a paramount role. In addition, it has been suggested that confessions owe their importance to their legitimizing role, explaining why they could be required even when other evidence has convinced a judge. But why would confessions be particularly suited to justify ver…
Impact of technical reasoning and theory of mind on cumulative technological culture: Insights from a model of micro-societies
Our technologies have never ceased to evolve, allowing our lineage to expand its habitat all over the Earth, and even to explore space. This phenomenon, called cumulative technological culture (CTC), has been studied extensively, notably using mathematical and computational models. However, the cognitive capacities needed for the emergence and maintenance of CTC remain largely unknown. In the literature, the focus is put on the distinctive abilit…
Does discussion make crowds any wiser
Human and animal dominance hierarchies show a pyramidal structure guiding adult and infant social inferences
The Role of Explanation in the Evolution of Technology
One way to pass on our own causal understanding about how a physical system works is to provide a verbal explanation about it, raising the question of the role of explanations in the transmission and evolution of technology. Here we address this question by conducting new analyses on the data collected in 3 previously published microsociety studies, in which participants organized into transmission chains had to improve a technology. In 3 of the …
No Evidence for Agent−Patient Role Attribution in Human Infants, Human Adults, and Guinea Baboons ( Papio papio)
Languages describe “who is doing what to whom” by distinguishing the event roles of agent (doer) and patient (undergoer), but it is debated whether they result from nonlinguistic representations that may already exist in preverbal infants and nonhuman animals. The phenomenon of causal perception, where the subsequent movements of two objects A and B evoke the impression of A launching B, is a simple depiction of an agent−patient relation. The sem…
Psychology (13 works) · Language and cultural evolution (9 works) · Biology (8 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Cognitive psychology (5 works)