J B André
Biographic Data
| ID | 674324 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J B André |
| GIVEN NAMES | J B |
| FAMILY NAME | André |
| SIGNATURE | ANDRÉ J B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9069-447X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Changing models in cultural evolution: From (quasi-)Darwinian to ecological mechanisms: A commentary on ‘Quasi-Darwinian mechanisms: ecological inheritance and cumulative culture’ by Kim Sterelny
Kim Sterelny’s analysis of cultural learning moves cultural evolution theory away from Darwinian models toward cognition, ecological scaffolding and incentives. We argue his insights warrant a more radical conclusion: cultural evolution needs no Darwinian vocabulary, even in its ‘quasi-Darwinian’ form. Cultural stability and change are better understood as repeated phenotypic constructions triggered by the passive ecological legacies left by prev…
Evolved psychology, eco-phenotypic feedbacks and the social construction of culture
The ecological approach to culture
Household Wealth is Associated With Perceived Trustworthiness in a Diverse Set of Countries
Interpersonal trust impacts societal and individual outcomes, affecting economic growth, democracy, and well-being. Trust levels vary both within and across countries, raising the question of what factors influence interpersonal trust. Existing research indicates that an individual’s socioeconomic status influences their level of trust, with wealthier individuals tending to be more trusting. This article examines a further effect of wealth on int…
The Effect of Income and Wealth on Behavioral Strategies, Personality Traits, and Preferences
Individuals living in either harsh or favorable environments display well-documented psychological and behavioral differences. For example, people in favorable environments tend to be more future-oriented, trust strangers more, and have more explorative preferences. To account for such differences, psychologists have turned to evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology, in particular, the literature on life-history theory and pace-of-life syndro…
Reciprocal contracts—not competitive acquisition—explain the moral psychology of ownership
We applaud Boyer's attempt to ground the psychology of ownership partly in a cooperative logic. In this commentary, we propose to go further and ground the psychology of ownership solely in a cooperative logic. The predictions of bargaining theory, we argue, completely contradict the actual features of ownership intuitions. Ownership is only about the calculation of mutually beneficial, reciprocal contracts
Adaptive parsimony as an evolutionary solution to the equilibrium selection problem
Many games, especially repeated games, have multiple Nash equilibria. This multiplicity limits the predictive power of game theory for understanding animal behavior, and plays an important role in evolutionary anthropology as a seemingly irrefutable argument that cultural group selection is necessary for human cooperation. In this article, I propose a solution to this problem inspired by the notion of convergence stability from adaptive dynamics.…
Perceptions of income shape interpersonal trust in a set of diverse countries
People make many inferences based on cues of wealth. These inferences regarding the character and behavior of others have real-life consequences, for example, social distancing from individuals at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. In this cross-cultural study, we investigate the association between perceived wealth and perceived trustworthiness. In studies 1 and 2, we first investigated people’s ability to detect wealth from pictures …
The puritanical moral contract: Purity, cooperation, and the architecture of the moral mind
Commentators raise fundamental questions about the notion of purity (sect. R1), the architecture of moral cognition (sect. R2), the functional relationship between morality and cooperation (sect. R3), the role of folk-theories of self-control in moral judgement (sect. R4), and the cultural variation of morality (sect. R5). In our response, we address all these issues by clarifying our theory of puritanism, responding to counter-arguments, and inc…
Prosocial religions as folk-technologies of mutual policing
Why do humans believe in moralizing gods? Leading accounts argue that these beliefs evolved because they help societies grow and promote group cooperation. Yet recent evidence suggests that beliefs in moralizing gods are not limited to large societies and might not have strong effects on cooperation. Here, we propose that prosocial religions, including beliefs in moralizing gods, develop because individuals shape supernatural beliefs to achieve t…
The gene’s-eye view of culture: Vehicles, not replicators
The social leverage effect: Institutions transform weak reputation effects into strong incentives for cooperation
Institutions allow cooperation to persist when reciprocity and reputation provide insufficient incentives. Yet how they do so remains unclear, especially given that institutions are themselves a form of cooperation. To solve this puzzle, we develop a mathematical model of reputation-based cooperation in which two social dilemmas are nested within one another. The first dilemma, characterized by high individual costs or insufficient monitoring, ca…
From supernatural punishment to big gods to puritanical religions: Clarifying explanatory targets in the rise of moralizing religions
International audience
Cultural evolution from the producers' standpoint
Standard approaches to cultural evolution focus on the recipients or consumers. This does not take into account the fitness costs incurred in producing the behaviours or artefacts that become cultural, i.e. widespread in a social group. We argue that cultural evolution models should focus on these fitness costs and benefits of cultural production, particularly in the domain of 'symbolic' culture. In this approach, cultural products can be conside…
Keywords in Economics and Evolutionary Biology: Twenty Five Concepts
Optimal resource allocation and its consequences on behavioral strategies, personality traits and preferences
Life history theory is increasingly invoked in psychology as a framework for understanding differences in individual preferences. In particular, evolutionary human scientists tend to assume that, along with reproductive strategies, several behavioral traits such as cooperation and risk-taking and, in its broadest version, a range of psychological and personality traits also cluster into ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ life histories. However, the inclusion of …
Harmless bodily pleasures are moralized because they are perceived as reducing self-control and cooperativeness
Why do many people moralize harmless bodily pleasures, such as gluttony, masturbation, and drinking alcohol? In three pre-registered experiments (N > 1,600), we investigated whether this is because they perceive bodily pleasures as indirectly facilitating antisocial behaviors by altering self-control. In Study 1 and 2, participants judged that targets who increased (vs. decreased) their indulgence harmless sex, food, alcohol, and laziness had bec…
An evolutionary contractualist theory of morality
Our goal in this paper is to use an evolutionary approach to explain the existence and design features of human moral cognition. Our premise is that humans are under selection to be good cooperative investments. Hence, they face a trade-off between maximizing the immediate gains of each social interaction and maximizing its long-term reputational effects. In a 2-player game, we show, under simplifying assumptions, that this trade- off leads indiv…
From Evolutionary Biology to Economics and Back: Parallels and Crossings between Economics and Evolution
L’origine des fictions: L’hypothèse des fonctions évolutionnaires sociales
Nous présentons l’hypothèse des fonctions évolutionnaires sociales de la fiction. Après avoir présenté le cadre théorique dans lequel nous nous inscrivons, et la littérature existante sur cette question, nous décrivons les activités de produire et de consommer des fictions comme des activités intrinsèquement sociales. Les fictions exploitent très finement nos mécanismes cognitifs et les préférences sélectionnées au cours de l’évolution de notre e…
The intertwined cultural evolution of ascetic spiritualities and puritanical religions as technologies of self-discipline
Why do, across ascetic spiritual traditions (e.g. Ancient Greek spiritualities, Stoicism, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, Confucianism), a moralizing side restricting bodily pleasures, and a joyful side celebrating self-control derived well-being develop in concert? Why are these two intertwined cultural traits a recent development in human history, characteristic of economically developed, socially complex societies of the "Axial" tra…
Cooperation as a signal of time preferences
Many evolutionary models explain why we cooperate with non kin, but few explain why cooperative behavior and trust vary. Here, we introduce a model of cooperation as a signal of time preferences, which addresses this variability. At equilibrium in our model, (i) future-oriented individuals are more motivated to cooperate, (ii) future-oriented populations have access to a wider range of cooperative opportunities, and (iii) spontaneous and inconspi…
Time is money. Waiting costs explain why selection favors steeper time discounting in deprived environments
Moral disciplining: The cognitive and evolutionary foundations of puritanical morality
Why do many societies moralize apparently harmless pleasures, such as lust, gluttony, alcohol, drugs, and even music and dance? Why do they erect temperance, asceticism, sobriety, modesty, and piety as cardinal moral virtues? According to existing theories, this puritanical morality cannot be reduced to concerns for harm and fairness: it must emerge from cognitive systems that did not evolve for cooperation (e.g., disgust-based “Purity” concerns)…
Risk-seeking or impatient? Disentangling variance and time in hazardous behaviors
The ecological approach to culture
Cultural evolution from the producers' standpoint
Standard approaches to cultural evolution focus on the recipients or consumers. This does not take into account the fitness costs incurred in producing the behaviours or artefacts that become cultural, i.e. widespread in a social group. We argue that cultural evolution models should focus on these fitness costs and benefits of cultural production, particularly in the domain of 'symbolic' culture. In this approach, cultural products can be conside…
Cultural evolution by capital accumulation
In this article, we model cultural knowledge as a capital in which individuals invest at a cost. To this end, following other models of cultural evolution, we explicitly consider the investments made by individuals in culture as life history decisions. Our aim is to understand what then determines the dynamics of cultural accumulation. We show that culture can accumulate provided it improves the efficiency of people's lives in such a way as to in…
Models of the evolution of fairness in the ultimatum game: A review and classification
Convergent transformation and selection in cultural evolution
Risk-seeking or impatient? Disentangling variance and time in hazardous behaviors
Individual observations of risky behaviors present a paradox: individuals who take the most risks in terms of hazards (smoking, speeding, risky sexual behaviors) are also less likely to take risks when it comes to innovation, financial risks or entrepreneurship. Existing theories of risk-preferences do not explain these patterns. From a simple model, we argue that many decisions involving risk have a temporal dimension, and that this dimension is…
Does extrinsic mortality accelerate the pace of life? A bare-bones approach
Cultural evolution by capital accumulation
In this article, we model cultural knowledge as a capital in which individuals invest at a cost. To this end, following other models of cultural evolution, we explicitly consider the investments made by individuals in culture as life history decisions. Our aim is to understand what then determines the dynamics of cultural accumulation. We show that culture can accumulate provided it improves the efficiency of people's lives in such a way as to in…
L’origine des fictions: L’hypothèse des fonctions évolutionnaires sociales
Nous présentons l’hypothèse des fonctions évolutionnaires sociales de la fiction. Après avoir présenté le cadre théorique dans lequel nous nous inscrivons, et la littérature existante sur cette question, nous décrivons les activités de produire et de consommer des fictions comme des activités intrinsèquement sociales. Les fictions exploitent très finement nos mécanismes cognitifs et les préférences sélectionnées au cours de l’évolution de notre e…
The intertwined cultural evolution of ascetic spiritualities and puritanical religions as technologies of self-discipline
Why do, across ascetic spiritual traditions (e.g. Ancient Greek spiritualities, Stoicism, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, Confucianism), a moralizing side restricting bodily pleasures, and a joyful side celebrating self-control derived well-being develop in concert? Why are these two intertwined cultural traits a recent development in human history, characteristic of economically developed, socially complex societies of the "Axial" tra…
Cooperation as a signal of time preferences
Many evolutionary models explain why we cooperate with non kin, but few explain why cooperative behavior and trust vary. Here, we introduce a model of cooperation as a signal of time preferences, which addresses this variability. At equilibrium in our model, (i) future-oriented individuals are more motivated to cooperate, (ii) future-oriented populations have access to a wider range of cooperative opportunities, and (iii) spontaneous and inconspi…
Time is money. Waiting costs explain why selection favors steeper time discounting in deprived environments
Moral disciplining: The cognitive and evolutionary foundations of puritanical morality
Why do many societies moralize apparently harmless pleasures, such as lust, gluttony, alcohol, drugs, and even music and dance? Why do they erect temperance, asceticism, sobriety, modesty, and piety as cardinal moral virtues? According to existing theories, this puritanical morality cannot be reduced to concerns for harm and fairness: it must emerge from cognitive systems that did not evolve for cooperation (e.g., disgust-based “Purity” concerns)…
Risk-seeking or impatient? Disentangling variance and time in hazardous behaviors
Are there really so many moral emotions? Carving morality at its functional joints
In recent decades, a large body of work has highlighted the importance of emotional processes in moral cognition. Since then, a heterogeneous bundle of emotions as varied as anger, guilt, shame, contempt, empathy, gratitude, and disgust have been proposed to play an essential role in moral psychology. However, the inclusion of these emotions in the moral domain often lacks a clear functional rationale, generating conflations between merely social…
The intertwined cultural evolution of ascetic spiritualities and puritanical religions as technologies of self-discipline
International audience
Keywords in Economics and Evolutionary Biology: Twenty Five Concepts
Optimal resource allocation and its consequences on behavioral strategies, personality traits and preferences
Life history theory is increasingly invoked in psychology as a framework for understanding differences in individual preferences. In particular, evolutionary human scientists tend to assume that, along with reproductive strategies, several behavioral traits such as cooperation and risk-taking and, in its broadest version, a range of psychological and personality traits also cluster into ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ life histories. However, the inclusion of …
Harmless bodily pleasures are moralized because they are perceived as reducing self-control and cooperativeness
Why do many people moralize harmless bodily pleasures, such as gluttony, masturbation, and drinking alcohol? In three pre-registered experiments (N > 1,600), we investigated whether this is because they perceive bodily pleasures as indirectly facilitating antisocial behaviors by altering self-control. In Study 1 and 2, participants judged that targets who increased (vs. decreased) their indulgence harmless sex, food, alcohol, and laziness had bec…
An evolutionary contractualist theory of morality
Our goal in this paper is to use an evolutionary approach to explain the existence and design features of human moral cognition. Our premise is that humans are under selection to be good cooperative investments. Hence, they face a trade-off between maximizing the immediate gains of each social interaction and maximizing its long-term reputational effects. In a 2-player game, we show, under simplifying assumptions, that this trade- off leads indiv…
From Evolutionary Biology to Economics and Back: Parallels and Crossings between Economics and Evolution
Reciprocal contracts—not competitive acquisition—explain the moral psychology of ownership
We applaud Boyer's attempt to ground the psychology of ownership partly in a cooperative logic. In this commentary, we propose to go further and ground the psychology of ownership solely in a cooperative logic. The predictions of bargaining theory, we argue, completely contradict the actual features of ownership intuitions. Ownership is only about the calculation of mutually beneficial, reciprocal contracts
Adaptive parsimony as an evolutionary solution to the equilibrium selection problem
Many games, especially repeated games, have multiple Nash equilibria. This multiplicity limits the predictive power of game theory for understanding animal behavior, and plays an important role in evolutionary anthropology as a seemingly irrefutable argument that cultural group selection is necessary for human cooperation. In this article, I propose a solution to this problem inspired by the notion of convergence stability from adaptive dynamics.…
Perceptions of income shape interpersonal trust in a set of diverse countries
People make many inferences based on cues of wealth. These inferences regarding the character and behavior of others have real-life consequences, for example, social distancing from individuals at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. In this cross-cultural study, we investigate the association between perceived wealth and perceived trustworthiness. In studies 1 and 2, we first investigated people’s ability to detect wealth from pictures …
The puritanical moral contract: Purity, cooperation, and the architecture of the moral mind
Commentators raise fundamental questions about the notion of purity (sect. R1), the architecture of moral cognition (sect. R2), the functional relationship between morality and cooperation (sect. R3), the role of folk-theories of self-control in moral judgement (sect. R4), and the cultural variation of morality (sect. R5). In our response, we address all these issues by clarifying our theory of puritanism, responding to counter-arguments, and inc…
Prosocial religions as folk-technologies of mutual policing
Why do humans believe in moralizing gods? Leading accounts argue that these beliefs evolved because they help societies grow and promote group cooperation. Yet recent evidence suggests that beliefs in moralizing gods are not limited to large societies and might not have strong effects on cooperation. Here, we propose that prosocial religions, including beliefs in moralizing gods, develop because individuals shape supernatural beliefs to achieve t…
The gene’s-eye view of culture: Vehicles, not replicators
The social leverage effect: Institutions transform weak reputation effects into strong incentives for cooperation
Institutions allow cooperation to persist when reciprocity and reputation provide insufficient incentives. Yet how they do so remains unclear, especially given that institutions are themselves a form of cooperation. To solve this puzzle, we develop a mathematical model of reputation-based cooperation in which two social dilemmas are nested within one another. The first dilemma, characterized by high individual costs or insufficient monitoring, ca…
Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (20 works) · Psychology (20 works) · Economics (17 works) · Social Psychology (16 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (11 works) · Microeconomics (11 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Biology (8 works)