The causal chains of culture Members of a human group are bound with one another by multiple flows of information. (Here we use “information ” in a broad sense that includes not only the content of people’s knowledge, but also that of their beliefs, assumptions, fictions, rules, norms, skills, maps, images, and so on.) This information is materially realized in the mental representations of the people, and in their public productions, that is, their cognitively guided behaviors and the enduring material traces of these behaviors. Mentally represented information is transmitted from individuals to individuals through public productions. Public representations such as speech, gestures, writing, or pictures are a special type of public productions, the function of which is to communicate a content. Public representations play a major role in information transmission. Much information, however, is communicated implicitly, that is, without being publicly represented. Information can also be transmitted without being properly speaking communicated, not even implicitly, as when one individual acquires a skill by observing and imitating the behavior of others. Most information transmitted among humans is about local and transient circumstances, and is not transmitted beyond these. Some information of more general relevance, however, is repeatedly transmitted, and propagates throughout the group. Talk of “culture ” (whatever the preferred definition or theory of culture) is about this widely distributed information and about its material realizations inside people’s mind and in their common environment (see Sperber 1996). One can study cultural phenomena in two main ways. One can interpret them, that is, try and make their contents intelligible to people of

commitment, conscientiousness, costly signaling theory, equilibrium selection, emotion, empathy, ethics, evolutionary psychology, fitness indicators, genetic correlations, good genes, good parents, good partners, human courtship, kin selection, kindness, individual differences, intelligence, mate choice, mental health, moral virtues, mutation load, mutual choice, person perception, personality, reciprocal altruism, sexual fidelity, sexual selection, social cognition, virtue ethics “Human good turns out to be the activity of the soul exhibiting excellence.” Aristotle (350 BC) Moral evolution theories have emphasized kinship, reciprocity, group selection, and equilibrium selection. Yet, moral virtues are also sexually attractive. Darwin suggested that sexual attractiveness may explain many aspects of human morality. This paper updates his argument by integrating recent research on mate choice, person perception, individual differences, costly signaling, and virtue ethics. Many human virtues may have evolved in both sexes through mutual mate choice to advertise good genetic quality, parenting abilities, and/or partner traits. Such virtues may include kindness, fidelity, magnanimity, and heroism, as well as quasi-moral traits like conscientiousness, agreeableness, mental health, and intelligence. This theory leads to many testable predictions about the phenotypic features, genetic bases, and social-cognitive responses to human moral virtues. A

Cultural psychology, and other social sciences (e.g. cultural anthropology, sociology), seek to document cultural variation, yet have difficulty providing strong empirical tests of explanations for that variation. It is argued here that an effective means of testing hypotheses regarding the origin of, and persistence and change in, cultural variation is by simulating cultural transmission in the lab using certain methods from experimental social psychology. Three experimental methods are reviewed: the transmission chain method, the replacement method, and the constant-group method. Although very few studies have explicitly simulated specific cross-cultural patterns, much potential exists for future investigations. This integration of small-scale experimental simulations and largescale observational or historical data is facilitated by an evolutionary framework for the study of culture, and has a precedent in the biological sciences, where experiments are used to simulate and explain the processes of biological evolution.

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Adherence to ingroup ideology increases after exposure to death-related stimuli, a reaction that proponents of terror management theory (TMT) explain as a psychological defense against the uniquely human existential fear of death. We argue that existential concerns are not the relevant issue; rather, such concepts can be subsumed under a larger category of adaptive challenges that prime coalitional thinking. We suggest that increases in adherence to ingroup ideology in response to adaptive challenges are manifestations of normative mental representations emanating from psychological systems designed to enhance coordination and membership in social groups. In providing an alternative to TMT, we (1) explain why the theory is inconsistent with contemporary evolutionary biology, (2) demonstrate that mortality-salience does not have the unique evocative powers ascribed to it by TMT advocates, and (3) discuss our approach to coalitional psychology, a framework consistent with modern evolutionary theory and informed by a broad understanding of cultural variation, can be employed to help account for both the corpus of results in TMT research and the growing body of findings inconsistent with TMT’s predictions.

This paper considers religion in relation to four recurrent traits: belief systems incorporating supernatural agents and counterintuitive concepts, communal ritual, separation of the sacred and the profane, and adolescence as a preferred developmental period for religious transmission. These co-occurring traits are viewed as an adaptive complex that offers clues to the evolution of religion from its non-human ritual roots. We consider the critical element differentiating symbols. We propose neurophysiological mechanisms underlying such associations and argue that the brain plasticity of human adolescence constitutes an “experience expectant” developmental period for ritual conditioning of sacred symbols. We suggest that such symbols evolved to solve an ecological problem by extending communication and coordination of social relations across time and space.

Abstract: Humor is a complex cognitive function which often leads to laughter. Contemporary humor theorists have begun to formulate hypotheses outlining the possible innate cognitive structures underlying humor. Humor’s conspicuous presence in the behavioral repertoire of humankind invites adaptive explanations. This article explores the possible adaptive features of humor and ponders its evolutionary path through hominid history. Current humor theories and previous evolutionary ideas on humor are reviewed. In addition, scientific fields germane to the evolutionary study of humor are examined: animal models, genetics, children’s humor, humor in pathological conditions, neurobiology, humor in traditional societies and cognitive archeology. Candidate selection pressures and associated evolutionary mechanisms are considered. The authors conclude that several evolutionary-related topics such as the origins of language, cognition underlying spiritual feelings, hominid group size, and primate teasing could have special relevance to the origins of humor.

The idea that “religion ” may have evolved through Darwinian selection has seen an explosion of interest recently, giving rise to numerous journal articles, dedicated conferences and books (for reviews, see Bulbulia et al., 2008; McNamara, 2006; Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008; Wilson, 2008). The field offers a treasure trove for scholars of human evolution because it spans so many topics of interest to us. First of all, there are important theoretical and empirical questions at each of Tinbergen's four levels of analysis: What is its evolutionary function? What are the proximate mechanisms? What are its developmental features? What is its phylogeny in the human lineage? It also confronts other areas of importance, including the evolution of cooperation, maladaptive behavior in modern life, levels of selection (individual vs. group selection) and

www.elsevier.com/locate/COGNIT Children’s understanding of death as the cessation of agency: a test using sleep versus death

In a recent article, Barrett (2008) argued that a collection of five representational content features can explain both why people believe in God and why people do not believe in Santa Claus or Mickey Mouse. In this model—and within the cognitive science of religion as a whole—it is argued that representational content biases are central to belief. In the present paper, we challenge the notion that representational content biases can explain the epidemiology of belief. Instead, we propose that representational content biases might explain why some concepts become widespread, but that context biases in cultural transmission are necessary to explain why people come to believe in some counterintuitive agents rather than others. Many supernatural agents, including those worshipped by other cultural groups, meet Barret’s criteria. Nevertheless, people do not come to believe in the gods of their neighbors. This raises a new challenge for the cognitive science of religion: the Zeus Problem. Zeus contains all of the features of successful gods, and was once a target for widespread belief, worship, and commitment. But Zeus is no longer a target for widespread belief and commitment, despite having the requisite content to fulfill Barret’s criteria. We analyze Santa Claus, God, and Zeus with both content and context biases, finding that context—not content—explains belief. We argue that a successful cognitive science of religious belief needs to move beyond simplistic notions of cultural evolution that only include representational content biases.