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Outputs (48)

The evolution of cultural diversity in Pama-Nyungan Australia (2024)
Journal Article
Learmouth, D., Layton, R. H., & Tehrani, J. J. (2024). The evolution of cultural diversity in Pama-Nyungan Australia. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11(1), Article 945. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03386-7

Explaining the processes that produce cultural diversity has long been a focus of anthropological study. Whilst linguistic diversity has frequently been shown to be associated with population splitting during migrations, much less is known about the... Read More about The evolution of cultural diversity in Pama-Nyungan Australia.

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., King, T., Litwak, H., McDonald, R. A., Murphy, L. J., Pemberton, N., Promislow, D., Rowan, A., Stahl, P. W., Tehrani, J., Tourigny, E., Wynne, C. D., Strauss, 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.