Coalitional Value Theory: an Evolutionary Approach to Understanding Culture
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THEORETICAL ARTICLE
Coalitional Value Theory: an Evolutionary Approach to Understanding Culture Bo Winegard 1 & Amanda Kirsch 2 & Andrew Vonasch 3 & Ben Winegard 4 & David C. Geary 5 Received: 23 October 2019 / Revised: 10 February 2020 / Accepted: 12 February 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract In the following article, we forward the coalitional value theory (CVT) and apply it to several puzzles about human behavior. The CVT contends that humans evolved unique mental mechanisms for assessing each other’s marginal value to a coalition (i.e., each other’s coalitional value). They defer to those with higher coalitional value, and they assert themselves over those with lower. We discuss how this mechanism likely evolved. We note that it helps explains how human groups can expand into large, complicated, and specialized coalitions (chiefdoms and even nation states). And we combine this with strong evidence that suggests that status striving is a fundamental human motive to explain partially (1) anti-gay bias, (2) cultural signaling, (3) cultural conceptions of god, and (4) ideological conflict. Keywords Signaling . Coalitional psychology . Cultural evolution . Fundamental motives
In 1775, George Washington was commissioned commanderin-chief of the Continental Army, an incipient, poorly trained, and poorly equipped military established to fight the British from whom America would shortly declare independence (Fischer 2006). Improbably, Washington commanded his forces to victory in a protracted war, becoming a national hero. Soon thereafter, he was elected the independent nation’s first president, serving admirably for 8 years before stepping down to return to his farm (Chernow 2011). Even in his lifetime, Washington was apotheosized and inspired fervid devotion and deference. After his death, he was immortalized in a number of paintings, books, and sculptures, and today, his granite visage adorns the side of Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. Although the reverence Washington commands is taken for * Ben Winegard [email protected] Bo Winegard [email protected] 1
Marietta, USA
2
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA
3
University of Canterbury, Upper Riccarton, Christchurch 8041, New Zealand
4
Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI, USA
5
University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA
granted by most, it is a rather striking and puzzling feature of human social life. Why do humans voluntarily defer to and sometimes even make heroes out of other humans? Why do they lavish those people with praise and resources? Put in more academic and biological terms, why do humans voluntarily and energetically promote the genetic fitness of nonkin (think, for example, of the resources many today would heap upon LeBron James, Denzel Washington, or Ellen DeGeneres), often at a cost to their own fitness? In the following article, we will argue that humans (especially men) evolved in the context of competing coalitions and were shaped by the crucible of coalitional conflict. Because of this, they ar
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