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Scars for survival: high cost male initiation rites are strongly associated with desert habitat in Pama-Nyungan Australia (2024)
Journal Article
Learmouth, D., Layton, R., & Tehrani, J. (2024). Scars for survival: high cost male initiation rites are strongly associated with desert habitat in Pama-Nyungan Australia. Evolution and Human Behavior, 45(2), 193-202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2024.02.003

Costly ritual behaviours have frequently been of interest to evolutionary researchers seeking to understand whether they have an adaptive benefit. Here we examine the costliness of initiation rituals across a large group of hunter-gather societies in... Read More about Scars for survival: high cost male initiation rites are strongly associated with desert habitat in Pama-Nyungan Australia.

Cinderella’s Family Tree. A Phylomemetic Case Study of ATU 510/511 (2023)
Journal Article
Sakamoto Martini, G., Kendal, J., & Tehrani, J. J. (2023). Cinderella’s Family Tree. A Phylomemetic Case Study of ATU 510/511. Fabula: Journal of Folktale Studies, 64(1-2), 7-30. https://doi.org/10.1515/fabula-2023-0002

This case study contributes to recent attempts to apply “phylomemetic” methods derived from computational biology to oral traditions, where the aim is to trace the mutation and diversification of folk narratives as they get passed on from generation... Read More about Cinderella’s Family Tree. A Phylomemetic Case Study of ATU 510/511.

The Cultural Transmission and Evolution of Folk Narratives (2023)
Book Chapter
Tehrani, J. (2023). The Cultural Transmission and Evolution of Folk Narratives. In J. Tehrani, J. Kendal, & R. Kendal (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution (C39S1-C39P96). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198869252.013.39

Folk narratives—such as fairy tales, legends, and fables—are products of tradition, rather than individual authors. As they get passed on from person to person and from generation to generation new variants evolve, some of which catch on and generate... Read More about The Cultural Transmission and Evolution of Folk Narratives.

Does Group Contact Shape Styles of Pictorial Representation? A Case Study of Australian Rock Art (2022)
Journal Article
Granito, C., Tehrani, J., Kendal, J., & Scott-Phillips, T. (2022). Does Group Contact Shape Styles of Pictorial Representation? A Case Study of Australian Rock Art. Human Nature, 33(3), 237-260. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-022-09430-2

Image-making is a nearly universal human behavior, yet the visual strategies and conventions to represent things in pictures vary greatly over time and space. In particular, pictorial styles can differ in their degree of figurativeness, varying from... Read More about Does Group Contact Shape Styles of Pictorial Representation? A Case Study of Australian Rock Art.

Belief correlations with parental vaccine hesitancy: results from a national survey (2022)
Journal Article
Matthews, L., Nowak, S., Gidengil, C., Chen, C., Stubbersfield, J., Tehrani, J., & Parker, A. (2022). Belief correlations with parental vaccine hesitancy: results from a national survey. American Anthropologist, 124(2), 291-306. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13714

We conducted a nationally representative survey of parents’ beliefs and self-reported behaviors regarding childhood vaccinations. Using Bayesian selection among multivariate models, we found that beliefs, even those without any vaccine or health cont... Read More about Belief correlations with parental vaccine hesitancy: results from a national survey.

Humanity’s Best Friend: A Dog-Centric Approach to Addressing Global Challenges (2020)
Journal Article
Sykes, N., Beirne, P., Horowitz, A., Jones, I., Kalof, L., Karlsson, E., …Larson, G. (2020). Humanity’s Best Friend: A Dog-Centric Approach to Addressing Global Challenges. Animals, 10(3), Article 502. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10030502

No other animal has a closer mutualistic relationship with humans than the dog (Canis familiaris). Domesticated from the Eurasian grey wolf (Canis lupus), dogs have evolved alongside humans over millennia in a relationship that has transformed dogs a... Read More about Humanity’s Best Friend: A Dog-Centric Approach to Addressing Global Challenges.

No Evidence that Omission and Confirmation Biases Affect the Perception and Recall of Vaccine-related Information (2020)
Journal Article
Jiménez, Á. V., Mesoudi, A., & Tehrani, J. J. (2020). No Evidence that Omission and Confirmation Biases Affect the Perception and Recall of Vaccine-related Information. PLoS ONE, 15(3), Article e0228898. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228898

Despite the spectacular success of vaccines in preventing infectious diseases, fears about their safety and other anti-vaccination claims are widespread. To better understand how such fears and claims persist and spread, we must understand how they a... Read More about No Evidence that Omission and Confirmation Biases Affect the Perception and Recall of Vaccine-related Information.

Unknotting the interactive effects of learning processes on cultural evolutionary dynamics (2019)
Journal Article
Scanlon, L., Lobb, A., Tehrani, J. J., & Kendal, J. R. (2019). Unknotting the interactive effects of learning processes on cultural evolutionary dynamics. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 1, Article e17. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2019.17

Forms of non-random copying error provide sources of inherited variation yet their effects on cultural evolutionary dynamics are poorly understood. Focusing on variation in granny and reef knot forms, we present a mathematical model that specifies ho... Read More about Unknotting the interactive effects of learning processes on cultural evolutionary dynamics.

Style of pictorial representation is shaped by intergroup contact (2019)
Journal Article
Granito, C., Tehrani, J., Kendal, J., & Scott-Phillips, T. (2019). Style of pictorial representation is shaped by intergroup contact. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 1, Article e8. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2019.8

Pictorial representation is a key human behaviour. Cultures around the world have made images to convey information about living kinds, objects and ideas for at least 75,000 years, in forms as diverse as cave paintings, religious icons and emojis. Ho... Read More about Style of pictorial representation is shaped by intergroup contact.

Faking the News: Intentional Guided Variation Reflects Cognitive Biases in Transmission Chains Without Recall (2018)
Journal Article
Stubbersfield, J., Tehrani, J., & Flynn, E. (2018). Faking the News: Intentional Guided Variation Reflects Cognitive Biases in Transmission Chains Without Recall. Cultural Science Journal, 10(1), 54-65. https://doi.org/10.5334/csci.109

Two potential forms of mutation in cultural evolution have been identified: ‘copying error’, where learners make random modifications to a behaviour and ‘guided variation’ where learners makes non-random modifications. While copying error is directly... Read More about Faking the News: Intentional Guided Variation Reflects Cognitive Biases in Transmission Chains Without Recall.

An experimental investigation into the transmission of antivax attitudes using a fictional health controversy (2018)
Journal Article
Jiménez, Á. V., Stubbersfield, J. M., & Tehrani, J. J. (2018). An experimental investigation into the transmission of antivax attitudes using a fictional health controversy. Social Science & Medicine, 215, 23-27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.08.032

Rationale: Although vaccines are an invaluable weapon in combatting diseases, they are often surrounded by controversy. Vaccine controversies usually arise with the claims of some parents or doctors who link vaccines to harmful outcomes. These contro... Read More about An experimental investigation into the transmission of antivax attitudes using a fictional health controversy.

Did Einstein Really Say that? Testing Content Versus Context in the Cultural Selection of Quotations (2018)
Journal Article
Acerbi, A., & Tehrani, J. (2018). Did Einstein Really Say that? Testing Content Versus Context in the Cultural Selection of Quotations. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 18(3-4), 293-311. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340032

We experimentally investigated the influence of context-based biases, such as prestige and popularity, on the preferences for quotations. Participants were presented with random quotes associated to famous or unknown authors (experiment one), or with... Read More about Did Einstein Really Say that? Testing Content Versus Context in the Cultural Selection of Quotations.

Inferring patterns of folktale diffusion using genomic data (2017)
Journal Article
Bortolini, E., Pagani, L., Crema, E. R., Sarno, S., Barbieri, C., Boattini, A., …Tehrani, J. J. (2017). Inferring patterns of folktale diffusion using genomic data. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(34), 9140-9145. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1614395114

Observable patterns of cultural variation are consistently intertwined with demic movements, cultural diffusion, and adaptation to different ecological contexts [Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (1981) Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Ap... Read More about Inferring patterns of folktale diffusion using genomic data.

Cognitive Evolution and the Transmission of Popular Narratives: A Literature Review and Application to Urban Legends (2017)
Journal Article
Stubbersfield, J., Flynn, E., & Tehrani, J. (2017). Cognitive Evolution and the Transmission of Popular Narratives: A Literature Review and Application to Urban Legends. Evolutionary studies in imaginative culture, 1(1), 121-136. https://doi.org/10.26613/esic.1.1.20

Recent research into cultural transmission suggests that humans are disposed to learn, remember, and transmit certain types of information more easily than others, and that any information that is passed between people will be subjected to cognitive... Read More about Cognitive Evolution and the Transmission of Popular Narratives: A Literature Review and Application to Urban Legends.

Cultural complexity and demography: The case of folktales (2017)
Journal Article
Acerbi, A., Kendal, J., & Tehrani, J. (2017). Cultural complexity and demography: The case of folktales. Evolution and Human Behavior, 38(4), 474-480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.03.005

We investigate the relationship between cultural complexity and population size in a non-technological cultural domain for which we have suitable quantitative records: folktales. We define three levels of complexity for folk narratives: the number of... Read More about Cultural complexity and demography: The case of folktales.

Chicken tumours and fishy revenge: Evidence for emotional content bias in the cumulative recall of urban legends (2017)
Journal Article
Stubbersfield, J., Tehrani, J., & Flynn, E. (2017). Chicken tumours and fishy revenge: Evidence for emotional content bias in the cumulative recall of urban legends. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 17(1-2), 12-26. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12342189

This study used urban legends to examine the effects of a cognitive bias for content which evokes higher levels of emotion on cumulative recall. As with previous research into content biases, a linear transmission chain design was used. One-hundred a... Read More about Chicken tumours and fishy revenge: Evidence for emotional content bias in the cumulative recall of urban legends.

Phylogenetics meets folklore: bioinformatics approaches to the study of international folktales (2016)
Book Chapter
Tehrani, J., & d'Huy, J. (2017). Phylogenetics meets folklore: bioinformatics approaches to the study of international folktales. In R. Kenna, M. McCarron, & P. McCarron (Eds.), Maths meets myths : quantitative approaches to ancient narratives (91-114). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39445-9_6

Traditional narratives, like genes, mutate as they are transmitted from generation to generation. Elements of a myth, legend or folktale may be added, substituted or forgotten, generating new variants that catch on and flourish, or vanish into extinc... Read More about Phylogenetics meets folklore: bioinformatics approaches to the study of international folktales.

Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales (2016)
Journal Article
Graça da Silva, S., & Tehrani, J. (2016). Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales. Royal Society Open Science, 3(1), Article 150645. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150645

Ancient population expansions and dispersals often leave enduring signatures in the cultural traditions of their descendants, as well as in their genes and languages. The international folktale record has long been regarded as a rich context in which... Read More about Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales.

Oral Fairy Tale or Literary Fake? Investigating the Origins of Little Red Riding Hood Using Phylogenetic Network Analysis (2015)
Journal Article
Tehrani, J., Nguyen, Q., & Roos, T. (2016). Oral Fairy Tale or Literary Fake? Investigating the Origins of Little Red Riding Hood Using Phylogenetic Network Analysis. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 31(3), 611-636. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqv016

The evolution of fairy tales often involves complex interactions between oral and literary traditions, which can be difficult to tease apart when investigating their origins. Here, we show how computer-assisted stemmatology can be productively applie... Read More about Oral Fairy Tale or Literary Fake? Investigating the Origins of Little Red Riding Hood Using Phylogenetic Network Analysis.

Serial killers, spiders and cybersex : social and survival information bias in the transmission of urban legends (2014)
Journal Article
Stubbersfield, J., Tehrani, J., & Flynn, E. (2015). Serial killers, spiders and cybersex : social and survival information bias in the transmission of urban legends. British Journal of Psychology, 106(2), 288-307. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12073

This study uses urban legends to examine the effects of the social information bias and survival information bias on cultural transmission across three phases of transmission: the choose-to-receive phase, the encode-and-retrieve phase, and the choose... Read More about Serial killers, spiders and cybersex : social and survival information bias in the transmission of urban legends.

The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood (2013)
Journal Article
Tehrani, J. (2013). The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood. PLoS ONE, 8(11), Article e78871. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0078871

Researchers have long been fascinated by the strong continuities evident in the oral traditions associated with different cultures. According to the ‘historic-geographic’ school, it is possible to classify similar tales into “international types” and... Read More about The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood.

Exapting exaptation (2013)
Journal Article
Larson, G., Stephens, P., Tehrani, J., & Layton, R. (2013). Exapting exaptation. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 28(9), 497-498. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2013.05.018

The term exaptation was introduced to encourage biologists to consider alternatives to adaptation to explain the origins of traits. Here, we discuss why exaptation has proved more successful in technological than biological contexts, and propose a re... Read More about Exapting exaptation.

Do Transmission Isolating Mechanisms (TRIMS) influence cultural evolution? Evidence from patterns of textile diversity within and between Iranian tribal groups (2013)
Book Chapter
Tehrani, J., & Collard, M. (2013). Do Transmission Isolating Mechanisms (TRIMS) influence cultural evolution? Evidence from patterns of textile diversity within and between Iranian tribal groups. In R. Ellen, S. Lycett, & S. Johns (Eds.), Understanding cultural transmission in anthropology : a critical synthesis (148-164). Berghahn Books

Expect the Unexpected? Testing for Minimally Counterintuitive (MCI) Bias in the Transmission of Contemporary Legends: A Computational Phylogenetic Approach (2013)
Journal Article
Stubbersfield, J., & Tehrani, J. (2013). Expect the Unexpected? Testing for Minimally Counterintuitive (MCI) Bias in the Transmission of Contemporary Legends: A Computational Phylogenetic Approach. Social Science Computer Review, 31(1), 90-102. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439312453567

In this study, we use computational methods for analyzing cultural transmission to examine the role of cognitive selection pressures on the evolution of narratives, the first use of computational phylogenetic analysis in the study of contemporary leg... Read More about Expect the Unexpected? Testing for Minimally Counterintuitive (MCI) Bias in the Transmission of Contemporary Legends: A Computational Phylogenetic Approach.

Patterns of evolution in Iranian tribal textiles. (2011)
Journal Article
Tehrani, J. (2011). Patterns of evolution in Iranian tribal textiles. Evolution: Education and Outreach, 4(3), 390-396. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12052-011-0345-2

Ever since the publication of The Origin of Species, anthropologists and archaeologists have been in turns enchanted and repulsed by the idea that cultural diversity can be explained by a Darwinian model of descent with modification. Over the last de... Read More about Patterns of evolution in Iranian tribal textiles..

Missing links: species, artefacts and the cladistic reconstruction of prehistory (2011)
Book Chapter
Tehrani, J. (2011). Missing links: species, artefacts and the cladistic reconstruction of prehistory. In E. Cochrane, & A. Gardner (Eds.), Evolutionary and interpretive archaeologies : a dialogue (245-263). Left Coast Press

Early anthropologists and archaeologists believed that a direct analogy could be made between processes of cultural and biological evolution. Thus, like species, artefact assemblages and languages were seen as products of ‘descent with modification’,... Read More about Missing links: species, artefacts and the cladistic reconstruction of prehistory.

Testing for divergent transmission histories among cultural characters: a study using Bayesian phylogenetic methods and Iranian tribal textile data (2011)
Journal Article
Matthews, L., Tehrani, J., Jordan, F., Collard, M., & Nunn, C. (2011). Testing for divergent transmission histories among cultural characters: a study using Bayesian phylogenetic methods and Iranian tribal textile data. PLoS ONE, 6(4), Article e14810. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0014810

Background Archaeologists and anthropologists have long recognized that different cultural complexes may have distinct descent histories, but they have lacked analytical techniques capable of easily identifying such incongruence. Here, we show how Ba... Read More about Testing for divergent transmission histories among cultural characters: a study using Bayesian phylogenetic methods and Iranian tribal textile data.

Human Niche Construction in Interdisciplinary Focus (2011)
Journal Article
Kendal, J., Tehrani, J., & Odling-Smee, J. (2011). Human Niche Construction in Interdisciplinary Focus. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366(1566), 785-792. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0306

Niche construction is an endogenous causal process in evolution, reciprocal to the causal process of natural selection. It works by adding ecological inheritance, comprising the inheritance of natural selection pressures previously modified by niche... Read More about Human Niche Construction in Interdisciplinary Focus.

The cophylogeny of populations and cultures: reconstructing the evolution of Iranian tribal craft traditions using trees and jungles (2010)
Journal Article
Tehrani, J., Collard, M., & Shennan, S. (2010). The cophylogeny of populations and cultures: reconstructing the evolution of Iranian tribal craft traditions using trees and jungles. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 365(1559), 3865-3874. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0020

Phylogenetic approaches to culture have shed new light on the role played by population dispersals in the spread and diversification of cultural traditions. However, the fact that cultural inheritance is based on separate mechanisms from genetic inhe... Read More about The cophylogeny of populations and cultures: reconstructing the evolution of Iranian tribal craft traditions using trees and jungles.

The past and future of the evolutionary taxonomy of cultures (2010)
Journal Article
Tehrani, J. (2010). The past and future of the evolutionary taxonomy of cultures. Journal of cultural and evolutionary psychology, 8(2), 169-182. https://doi.org/10.1556/jep.8.2010.2.6

Anthropology was originally conceived as a bridge between the natural and social sciences. Its remit was to fill in the gaps in knowledge about human history between the emergence of our species and the appearance of the first civilizations in writte... Read More about The past and future of the evolutionary taxonomy of cultures.

Genes versus culture. (2009)
Book Chapter
Tehrani, J., & Layton, R. (2009). Genes versus culture. In A. Amin, & M. O'Neill (Eds.), Thinking About Almost Everything (54 - 57). (New ed.). Profile Books

On the relationship between interindividual cultural transmission and population-level cultural diversity: a case study of weaving in Iranian tribal populations (2009)
Journal Article
Tehrani, J., & Collard, M. (2009). On the relationship between interindividual cultural transmission and population-level cultural diversity: a case study of weaving in Iranian tribal populations. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30(4), 286-300. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.03.002

It is often assumed that parent-to-child cultural transmission leads to similarities and differences among groups evolving through descent with modification ("phylogenesis"). Similarly, cultural transmission between peers, and between adults and chil... Read More about On the relationship between interindividual cultural transmission and population-level cultural diversity: a case study of weaving in Iranian tribal populations.

Kinship, marriage, and the genetics of past human dispersals. (2009)
Journal Article
Bentley, R., Layton, R., & Tehrani, J. (2009). Kinship, marriage, and the genetics of past human dispersals. Human Biology: The Official Publication of the American Association of Anthropological Genetics, 81(2-3), 159-179. https://doi.org/10.3378/027.081.0304

The extent to which colonizing farmer populations have overwhelmed or “replaced” indigenous forager populations, as opposed to having intermarried with them, has been widely debated. Indigenous-colonist “admixture” is often represented in genetic mod... Read More about Kinship, marriage, and the genetics of past human dispersals..

Towards an archaeology of pedagogy: learning, teaching and the generation of material culture traditions (2008)
Journal Article
Tehrani, J., & Riede, F. (2008). Towards an archaeology of pedagogy: learning, teaching and the generation of material culture traditions. World Archaeology, 40(3), 316-331. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438240802261267

In this article we seek to build on efforts to apply the insights of social learning theory to interpret patterns of continuity and change in the archaeological record. This literature suggests that stable and often highly arbitrary material culture... Read More about Towards an archaeology of pedagogy: learning, teaching and the generation of material culture traditions.

Branching, blending, and the evolution of cultural similarities and differences among human populations (2006)
Journal Article
Collard, M., Shennan, S., & Tehrani, J. (2006). Branching, blending, and the evolution of cultural similarities and differences among human populations. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27(3), 169-184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2005.07.003

It has been claimed that blending processes such as trade and exchange have always been more important in the evolution of cultural similarities and differences among human populations than the branching process of population fissioning. In this pape... Read More about Branching, blending, and the evolution of cultural similarities and differences among human populations.

Investigating cultural evolution through biological phylogenetic analyses of Turkmen textiles (2002)
Journal Article
Tehrani, J., & Collard, M. (2002). Investigating cultural evolution through biological phylogenetic analyses of Turkmen textiles. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 21(4), 443-463. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0278-4165%2802%2900002-8

The debate on the evolution of culture has focused on two processes in particular, phylogenesis and ethnogenesis. Recently, it has been suggested that the latter has probably always been more significant than the former. This proposal was assessed by... Read More about Investigating cultural evolution through biological phylogenetic analyses of Turkmen textiles.