Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together

Contrary to linguist Noam Chomsky’s long-dominant theory that language evolved recently and discontinuously in a massive mutation, these findings about handedness (among other discoveries) now place it far deeper in the human cultural past.

it’s less important to make the right choice than to make the choice right. Optimization is less important than implementation, including coordination.

We tested that cues work by activating [61]peer codes associated with different identities, not through altering peer codes.

Though science is increasingly adopting this dynamic paradigm, the practical world still tends to construe cultural patterns as unchanging (and unchangeable).

By coordinating—melding minds and meshing actions—erectus groups foraged more efficiently, fed themselves, and forged the solidarity that comes from working in concert. Its evolutionary breakthrough was not walking upright (as its name forever implies) but working as a team. Its great innovation was not the hand axe (which all the textbooks trumpet

The results consistently show that [66]people feel pride or shame for actions that their society values or devalues, respectively.

Across the world, societies were evolving as globalized generations developed new lifestyles through selective retention of their parents’ ways and heightened borrowing from other traditions.

A culture evolves as some elements are learned and others are overlooked as the rising generation re-creates the society. Close studies implicate particular biases in social learning. Conformity bias means that widespread customs are more likely to be learned than rare customs. Prestige bias means that those associated with success and status are m

these policies in terms of efficiency, but they also transformed the cultural cues surrounding players.