Olivier Morin
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 648871 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Olivier Morin |
| PRENOMES | Olivier |
| SOBRENOME | Morin |
| ASSINATURA | MORIN O |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6216-1307 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 48 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 24 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 47 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1991 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 3 |
Who knows what? Bayesian competence inference guides knowledge attribution and information search
Short words are more likely to refer to multiple meanings across 192 language families
This study tested, for the first time on a diverse cross-linguistic dataset, the existence of a negative correlation between a word’s length and its semantic ambiguity. This correlation can be predicted on various grounds: as a way to make communication more efficient, as a mechanical consequence of the greater availability of short wordforms, or as a corollary of Zipf’s laws of abbreviation and meaning, which state that frequent words are shorte…
Le rôle du débat dans l’appropriation de la complexité par des élèves de classes élémentaires dans le cadre d'une éducation à l'environnement et à la pensée critique
Cette étude explore comment un débat sur une Question Socialement Vive (QSV), au sujet de l’industrie textile, permet aux élèves de CE2/CM1 (grades 3 et 4) d’appréhender la complexité. Après une analyse de documents aux sources et perspectives variées, leurs échanges ont été enregistrés, retranscrits et étudiés à l’aide d’indicateurs issus de la littérature. Les résultats montrent qu’ils commencent à mobiliser des compétences telles que la pensée…
The phonology of letter shapes
The visual shapes of letters, contrary to the phonemes of spoken languages, lack a unified description. • With a gamified approach, we crowdsourced thousands of letter descriptions. • 43 scripts’ letters can be completely described as sets of binary features. • Compared to phonemes, letters require more such features for a complete description. • These features are also less informative in letters than in phonemes. Differentiating letter shapes a…
Did Teddy Bears Culturally Evolve to Be Cuter? A Preregistered Replication
This pre-registered replication study explores the impact of perceived cuteness on the evolution of cultural artifacts, testing whether neotenic traits – eye size, forehead height, and head roundness – have increased in teddy bears over time. In previous research, Hinde & Barden (1980) found an increase in teddy bear neoteny while Gould (1985) found that Mickey Mouse’s features became more neotenic with time. However, both studies lacked statisti…
The Cognitive Foundations of Fictional Stories
Why is there so much diversity in fictional plots? Why are some fictional stories more popular in certain countries or during specific historical periods? In this paper, we propose an evolutionary psychological framework to address these questions. Fictional stories trigger a range of evolved psychological mechanisms—such as finding mates (romance fiction), exploring the world (adventure fiction), or avoiding threats (horror fiction). While these…
Zipf’s Law of Abbreviation holds for individual characters across a broad range of writing systems
Zipf's Law of Abbreviation - the idea that more frequent symbols in a code are simpler than less frequent ones - has been shown to hold at the level of words in many languages. We tested whether it holds at the level of individual written characters. Character complexity is similar to word length in that it requires more cognitive and motor effort for producing and processing more complex symbols. We built a dataset of character complexity and fr…
Expectations of Processing Ease, Informativeness, and Accuracy Guide Toddlers’ Processing of Novel Communicative Cues
Discovering the meaning of novel communicative cues is challenging and amounts to navigating an unbounded hypothesis space. Several theories posit that this problem can be simplified by relying on positive expectations about the cognitive utility of communicated information. These theories imply that learners should assume that novel communicative cues tend to have low processing costs and high cognitive benefits. We tested this hypothesis in thr…
Negativity bias in the spread of voter fraud conspiracy theory tweets during the 2020 US election
During the 2020 US presidential election, conspiracy theories about large-scale voter fraud were widely circulated on social media platforms. Given their scale, persistence, and impact, it is critically important to understand the mechanisms that caused these theories to spread. The aim of this preregistered study was to investigate whether retweet frequencies among proponents of voter fraud conspiracy theories on Twitter during the 2020 US elect…
Statistical signals of copying are robust to time- and space-averaging
Cattle brands (ownership marks left on animals) are subject to forces influencing other graphic codes: the copying of constituent parts, pressure for distinctiveness and pressure for complexity. The historical record of cattle brands in some US states is complete owing to legal registration, providing a unique opportunity to assess how sampling processes leading to time- and space-averaging influence our ability to make inferences from limited da…
Why Monsters Are Dangerous
Monsters and other imaginary animals have been conjured up by a wide range of cultures. Can their popularity be explained, and can their properties be predicted? These were long-standing questions for structuralist or cognitive anthropology, as well as literary studies and cultural evolution. The task is to solve the puzzle raised by the popularity of extraordinary imaginary animals, and to explain some cross-cultural regularities that such anima…
Signals of copying in the cultural evolution of cattle brands are robust to time- and space-averaging
Cattle brands (ownership marks left on animals) are subject to forces influencing other graphic codes: the copying of constituent parts, pressure for distinctiveness, and pressure for complexity. The historical record of cattle brands in some US states is complete due to legal registration, providing a unique opportunity to assess how sampling processes leading to time- and space-averaging influence our ability to make inferences from limited dat…
Cultural conservatism
Trying to preserve cultural forms as faithfully as possible is a key motivation for cultural transmission. This chapter reviews two possible accounts of it. One, evolutionary conservatism, is premised on the superiority of accumulated cultural knowledge compared to individual judgement—a theme that runs strongly through both the cultural evolution literature and conservative political philosophy. I argue for a clear distinction between evolutiona…
Cultural Evolution of Precise and Agreed‐Upon Semantic Conventions in a Multiplayer Gaming App
The amount of information conveyed by linguistic conventions depends on their precision, yet the codes that humans and other animals use to communicate are quite ambiguous: they may map several vague meanings to the same symbol. How does semantic precision evolve, and what are the constraints that limit it? We address this question using a multiplayer gaming app, where individuals communicate with one another in a scaled-up referential game. Here…
Cultural Conservatism
Trying to preserve cultural forms as faithfully as possible is a key motivation for cultural transmission. This paper reviews two possible accounts of it. One, evolutionary conservatism, is premised on the superiority of accumulated cultural knowledge compared to individual judgement – a theme that runs strongly through both the cultural evolution literature and conservative political philosophy. I argue for a clear distinction between evolutiona…
Graphic complexity in writing systems
A writing system is a graphic code, i.e., a system of standardized pairings between symbols and meanings in which symbols take the form of images that can endure. The visual character of writing implies that written characters have to fit constraints of the human visual system. One aspect of this optimization lays in the graphic complexity of the characters used by scripts. Scripts are sets of graphic characters used for the written form of one l…
Colour terms
Artificial language games give researchers the opportunity to investigate the emergence and evolution of semantic structure, i.e. the organisation of meaning spaces into discrete categories. A possible issue with this approach is that categories mightcarry over from participants’ native languages, a potential bias that has mostly been ignored. In a referential communication game, we compare colour terms from three different languages to those of …
Negativity bias in the spread of voter fraud conspiracy theory tweets during the 2020 US election
During the 2020 US presidential election, conspiracy theories about large-scale voter fraud were widely circulated on social media platforms. Given their scale, persistence, and impact, it is critically important to understand the mechanisms that caused these theories to spread. The aim of this study was to investigate whether retweet frequencies among proponents of voter fraud conspiracy theories on Twitter during the 2020 US election are consis…
Standards and quantification of coin iconography
The use of digital technologies and big data in the humanities and social sciences provided many opportunities for cultural heritage management and research, enabling data sharing and interdisciplinary collaborations. These developments increased the need for standardized data formats. General and domain-specific standards for describing and classifying cultural data, based on linked data principles, are developed to support increasingly numerous…
The shortlist effect
Detecting the forces behind the success or failure of cultural products, such as books or films, remains a challenge. Three such forces are drift, context-biased selection and selection based on content – when things succeed because of their intrinsic appeal. We propose a tool to study content-biased selection in sets of cultural collections – e.g. libraries or movie collections – based on the ‘shortlist effect’: the fact that smaller collections…
The Predictable Evolution of Letter Shapes
A familiar story about the evolution of alphabets is that individual letters originated in iconic representations of real things. Over time, these naturalistic pictures became simplified into abstract forms. Thus, the iconic ox's head 𓃾 of Egyptian hieroglyphics transformed into the Phoenician 𐤀 and eventually the Roman letter A. In this vein, attempts to theorize the evolution of writing have tended to propose variations on a model of unilinea…
Color terms
Artificial language games give researchers the opportunity to investigate the emergence and evolution of semantic structure, i.e. the organization of meaning spaces into discrete categories. A possible issue for this approach is that categories might simply carry over from participants’ native languages, a potential bias that has mostly been ignored. We investigate this in a referential communication game by comparing color terms from three diffe…
La Tunisie, une démocratie insaisissable
À une forte majorité, les élections présidentielles tunisiennes ont porté au pouvoir Kaïs Saïed, un conservateur se présentant comme « antisystème ». Mais le pays est plus divisé qu'il n'y paraît. La campagne a fait émerger des thèmes nouveaux. L'échec de la validation du nouveau cabinet ministériel montre que les islamo-conservateurs n'ont plus la domination absolue
Majority rules
Ancient coin designs encoded increasing amounts of economic information over centuries
Coinage, the practice of minting small bits of metal with distinctive marks, appearing in the second half of the 7th century BCE, had a transformative impact upon ancient economies and societies. Controversies endure concerning the original function of ancient coinage, in particular the respective role of states and markets in its emergence. Applying information-theoretic measures to a corpus of 6859 distinct coin types from the Ancient Mediterra…
Majority rules
The Predictable Evolution of Letter Shapes
A familiar story about the evolution of alphabets is that individual letters originated in iconic representations of real things. Over time, these naturalistic pictures became simplified into abstract forms. Thus, the iconic ox's head 𓃾 of Egyptian hieroglyphics transformed into the Phoenician 𐤀 and eventually the Roman letter A. In this vein, attempts to theorize the evolution of writing have tended to propose variations on a model of unilinea…
Pourquoi les enfants ont-ils des traditions
Les traditions durables que l'on trouve dans les cultures enfantines ont suscité l'étonnement des anthropologues au moins depuis Edward B. Tylor. Cet article résume les preuves de l'existence de traditions pluriséculaires transmises pour l'essentiel d'enfant à enfant. Les populations enfantines subissant un renouvellement rapide, une tradition que l'on se transmet à l'intérieur d'un groupe d'enfants doit être transmise suffisamment fréquemment po…
Ancient coin designs encoded increasing amounts of economic information over centuries
Coinage, the practice of minting small bits of metal with distinctive marks, appearing in the second half of the 7th century BCE, had a transformative impact upon ancient economies and societies. Controversies endure concerning the original function of ancient coinage, in particular the respective role of states and markets in its emergence. Applying information-theoretic measures to a corpus of 6859 distinct coin types from the Ancient Mediterra…
Statistical signals of copying are robust to time- and space-averaging
Cattle brands (ownership marks left on animals) are subject to forces influencing other graphic codes: the copying of constituent parts, pressure for distinctiveness and pressure for complexity. The historical record of cattle brands in some US states is complete owing to legal registration, providing a unique opportunity to assess how sampling processes leading to time- and space-averaging influence our ability to make inferences from limited da…
Introduction
Ce numéro de Terrain envisage l'expression du rire dans toute la variété de ses dimensions - cognitive, sociale, politique. Cette introduction tente de mettre en lumière un aspect du rire (et de ce qui le provoque) qui semble apparaître sous chacun de ces angles : l'ambiguïté. Les théories à l'heure actuelle les plus abouties du mécanisme cognitif du rire (qui reprennent un modèle philosophique bien plus ancien) en font une réaction sophistiquée …
The Peacock’s Tale
Author(s): Blumstein, Daniel T.; Atran, Scott; Field, Scott; Hochberg, Michael; Johnson, Dominic; Sagarin, Raphael; Sosis, Richard; Thayer, Bradley; Fearon, James; Morin, Olivier; Sear, Rebecca; Geller, Armando | Abstract: This is a Focus Article with Commentaries that was published on the Social Evolution Forum
If You Love, Then Have Compassion
treatment before the law in accordance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.The government held its nose when 13,000 Poles used the opportunity of the self-exiled class provisions (before that class was eliminated) to enter Canada as refugees When Poland was no longer, and had not been for some time, a refugee producing country
La confusion des sensations
Pour montrer comment certaines particularités dans notre sens du toucher peuvent avoir des effets culturels massifs, l'article prend l'exemple des vidéos pornographiques. La plupart des analyses du genre se concentrent sur ses effets visuels, symboliques, moraux ou politiques. Selon la théorie présentée ici, les films pornographiques du genre hard core doivent leur propagation à ce qu'ils produisent ou accentuent chez le spectateur des perception…
Y a-t-il des règles constitutives
En philosophie des sciences sociales, il est fréquent de lire qu’il n’existe pas d’institution qui ne soit basée sur une règle constitutive au moins. Par opposition aux règles qui se contentent d’organiser des comportements déjà existants, les règles constitutives, dit-on, rendent possibles des pratiques qui n’existent pas indépendamment de la règle qui les institue. On dit ainsi qu’il est absurde de se prêter à soi-même de l’argent, puisqu’il es…
Pourquoi les enfants ont-ils des traditions
Les traditions durables que l'on trouve dans les cultures enfantines ont suscité l'étonnement des anthropologues au moins depuis Edward B. Tylor. Cet article résume les preuves de l'existence de traditions pluriséculaires transmises pour l'essentiel d'enfant à enfant. Les populations enfantines subissant un renouvellement rapide, une tradition que l'on se transmet à l'intérieur d'un groupe d'enfants doit être transmise suffisamment fréquemment po…
Comment les traditions naissent et meurent
Célébrer les différences, renforcer la conformité
El cóndor pasa La Convention pour la sauvegarde du patrimoine culturel immatériel s’est longtemps fait attendre : trois décennies de négociations, a-t-on coutume de dire à l’Unesco. Le début de l’intérêt des Nations unies pour ce problème est souvent daté du 4 avril 1973. Ce jour-là, le ministre des Affaires étrangères et de la Religion de la République de Bolivie adressait une lettre au directeur général de l’Unesco. Elle commençait ainsi : « Mo…
L'éveil du mensonge
Dès leur troisième année, les tout jeunes enfants manifestent des capacités cognitives qui devraient leur permettre de savoir mentir. Ils se représentent les croyances d'autrui, ils savent ce qu'est une représentation fausse de la réalité, et ils sont capables de manipuler autrui à l'aide de messages erronés. Malgré cela, il semble qu'ils soient avant tout des menteurs d'occasion, qui se saisissent des possibilités de tromper surtout lorsqu'ils y…
The Peacock’s Tale
Author(s): Blumstein, Daniel T.; Atran, Scott; Field, Scott; Hochberg, Michael; Johnson, Dominic; Sagarin, Raphael; Sosis, Richard; Thayer, Bradley; Fearon, James; Morin, Olivier; Sear, Rebecca; Geller, Armando | Abstract: This is a Focus Article with Commentaries that was published on the Social Evolution Forum
Trade of the tricks
Tunisie
Qu'est-ce que le naturalisme
Cet article répond aux critiques récemment adressées aux tenants du « naturalisme social » dans les pages de la revue SociologieS. Il le fait en défendant un naturalisme minimal, bâti sur trois idées : l’interdisciplinarité est permise ; la pensée est un processus causal qui a lieu dans un monde matériel ; l’humanité est une espèce animale. Ces idées pourront sembler triviales ; le débat auquel nous assistons montre qu’il n’en est rien. Je passer…
How portraits turned their eyes upon us
What does communication contribute to cultural transmission
Cultures enfantines—Universalité et diversité [Children's Culture—Universality and Diversity]
Reply to Carlo Severi
Introduction
Ce numéro de Terrain envisage l'expression du rire dans toute la variété de ses dimensions - cognitive, sociale, politique. Cette introduction tente de mettre en lumière un aspect du rire (et de ce qui le provoque) qui semble apparaître sous chacun de ces angles : l'ambiguïté. Les théories à l'heure actuelle les plus abouties du mécanisme cognitif du rire (qui reprennent un modèle philosophique bien plus ancien) en font une réaction sophistiquée …
Inventer l'écriture
Optimistic expectations about communication explain children's difficulties in hiding, lying, and mistrusting liars
We suggest that preschoolers’ frequent obliviousness to the risks and opportunities of deception comes from a trusting stance supporting verbal communication. Three studies ( N = 125) confirm this hypothesis. Three-year-olds can hide information from others (Study 1) and they can lie (Study 2) in simple settings. Yet when one introduces the possibility of informing others in the very same settings, three-year-olds tend to be honest (Studies 1 and…
Detecting wholesale copying in cultural evolution
Cultural Transmission
The question of how cultural competence passes from one mind to another is at the heart of any anthropological theory that seeks to accommodate human psychology. Various currents of cognitive or psychological anthropology—the main focus of this entry—have dealt with cultural transmission in their own way. The field's early emphasis on parenting and attachment, coming from psychoanalysis and popularized by the “culture and personality” movement, h…
La forme de l'écrit
Historiens et épigraphistes observent la forme des lettres pour identifier des manuscrits ou pour comprendre la trajectoire d'un système d'écriture. On peut aussi scruter lettres et caractères pour faire émerger une histoire plus ancienne : celle du cerveau humain et de son évolution. C'est à l'intersection de ces deux histoires que s'est intéressé Olivier Morin dans un article paru l'an dernier dans la revue Cognitive Science. Fabien Roché, grap…
The shape of writing
Historians and epigraphists examine the shape of letters to identify manuscripts or understand the development of a writing system. Analyzing letters and characters can also help bring an older story to light: that of the human brain and its evolution. It is at the intersection of these two stories that Olivier Morin became interested in an article published last year in the journal Cognitive Science. Fabien Roché, graphic designer and cartoonist…
Écritures recyclées
En mêlant ethnographie, archéologie, sciences cognitives et histoire, ce numéro entend montrer la fertilité actuelle de l'anthropologie de l'écriture. Ses auteurs se tiennent à distance des grands récits qui font de l'écriture l'accoucheuse de la Raison ou encore un outil coercitif entre les mains de l'État. Ils préfèrent montrer comment l'écrit ne cesse de changer de fonctions, par un processus de constant recyclage. Des codes graphiques qui n'é…
Majority rules
Ancient coin designs encoded increasing amounts of economic information over centuries
Coinage, the practice of minting small bits of metal with distinctive marks, appearing in the second half of the 7th century BCE, had a transformative impact upon ancient economies and societies. Controversies endure concerning the original function of ancient coinage, in particular the respective role of states and markets in its emergence. Applying information-theoretic measures to a corpus of 6859 distinct coin types from the Ancient Mediterra…
Psychology (20 obras) · Computer Science (16 obras) · Philosophy (15 obras) · Political science (13 obras) · Humanities (12 obras) · Art (11 obras) · Language and cultural evolution (10 obras) · Mathematics (10 obras) · Social Psychology (10 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (8 obras)