Papers by Francisco Gil-White
How Conformism Creates Ethnicity Creates Conformism (and Why this Matters to Lots of Things)
Monist, 2005
Paradigm Rent Seeking in the Scientific Prestige Market: The Neglected Problem of Science and Pseudoscience
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
The Personality-Test Paradox: Why Are Businesses Spending a Fortune on Personality Tests That Fail?
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
Ultimatum Game with an Ethnicity Manipulation
Foundations of Human Sociality, 2004
As a result of a spate of studies geared to investigating Brazilian racial categories, it is now ... more As a result of a spate of studies geared to investigating Brazilian racial categories, it is now believed by many that Brazilians reason about race in a manner quite different to that of Americans. This paper will argue that this conclusion is premature, as the studies in question have not, in fact, investigated Brazilian categories. What they have done is
Ultimatum Game with ethnicity manipulation
An ethnographic analysis of two neighboring ethnic groups, their differences, and their mutual pe... more An ethnographic analysis of two neighboring ethnic groups, their differences, and their mutual perceptions gives an existence proof that: (1) neighboring communities with an almost identical way of life nevertheless develop quite different interactional norms; (2) these entail significant costs for inter-ethnic interaction; (3) the norms of the 'other' are commonly perceived as moral failures (ethnocentrism). Ethnocentrism may serve an
Common misunderstandings of memes (and genes)
Abstract:‘Memetics’ suffers from conceptual confusion and not enough,empirical work. This paper a... more Abstract:‘Memetics’ suffers from conceptual confusion and not enough,empirical work. This paper attempts to attenuate the former problem by resolving the conceptual controversies, which requires that we not speculate about cultural transmission without being informed about the cognitive mechanismsresponsible for sociallearning. I criticize the overly literal insistence—by both criticsand advocates—on the genetic analogy, which asks us to think about memes as
Cooperation and Conflict, Large-Scale Human
Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, 2006
L''evolution culturelle a-t-elle des r猫gles
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012
We agree with the comments by van Hoorn (1) on our critique (2): testing causal hypotheses about ... more We agree with the comments by van Hoorn (1) on our critique (2): testing causal hypotheses about human behavior is a challenge (1, 3). Making progress requires specifying alternative hypotheses and then testing these hypotheses using diverse and converging lines of evidence. We have defended the hypothesis that social norms, which culturally coevolved with the institutions of large-scale societies including markets, influence economic decision-making. This hypothesis emerged from a larger set that we developed both at the outset of our project and as we went along. Our interdisciplinary team's initial list of hypotheses included the idea that experimental games might spark an innate reciprocity module that would yield little variation across populations. We also considered the hypothesis that group-level differences might result from individual differences in wealth or income. Nevertheless, what emerged in the data in our first project was (i) substantial variation among 15 populations, (ii) a strong correlation with market integration, and (iii) little relation to individual-level economic or demographic variables. Not satisfied with our first effort, we sampled 10 new populations, replicated these findings with improved protocols (developed based on critiques of the Phase I), and then extended them to two additional experimental games. Along the way, we have explored alternative hypotheses using measures of genetic relatedness, social network position, anonymity manipulations, and framing tools. To our knowledge, no other existing hypotheses can better account for the observed patterns of variation.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012
Lamba and Mace's critique (1) of our research (2-4) is based on incorrect claims about our experi... more Lamba and Mace's critique (1) of our research (2-4) is based on incorrect claims about our experiments and several misunderstandings of the theory underpinning our efforts. Their findings are consistent with our previous work and lead to no unique conclusions.
Sorting is not Categorization: A Critique of the Claim that Brazilians Have Fuzzy Racial Categories
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2001
Page 1. Sorting is not Categorization: A Critique of the Claim that Brazilians Have Fuzzy Racial ... more Page 1. Sorting is not Categorization: A Critique of the Claim that Brazilians Have Fuzzy Racial Categories FRANCISCO J. GIL-WHITE* ABSTRACT As a result of a spate of studies geared to investigating Brazilian racial categories ...
Journal of Bioeconomics, 2005
It has been difficult to make progress in the study of ethnicity and nationalism because of the m... more It has been difficult to make progress in the study of ethnicity and nationalism because of the multiple confusions of analytic and lay terms, and the sheer lack of terminological standardization (often even within the same article). This makes a conceptual cleaning-up unavoidable, and it is especially salutary to attempt it now that more economists are becoming interested in the effects of identity on behavior, so that they may begin with the best conceptual tools possible. My approach to these questions has been informed by anthropological and evolutionary-psychological questions. I will focus primarily on the terms 'ethnic group', 'nation', and 'nationalism', and I will make the following points:
Field Methods, 2002
Reports a series of studies conducted in the field with methodology approximating lab experimenta... more Reports a series of studies conducted in the field with methodology approximating lab experimental methods to the degree possible. The studies were designed to investigate how human actors process and think about ethnic categories. The motivating hypothesis is that humans essentialize ethnic groups because these resemble 'species' in several of their salient properties, most importantly a tendency towards category-based endogamy, and descent-based membership. In order, the studies reported here tested (1) whether ethnic membership is a matter of enculturation or descent; (2) whether ethnic categories are essentialized, with associated behavioral expectations; (3) whether physical differences between the two local groups drive the essentialism, or whether essentializing the categories in the first place drives this perception of physical differences. It was found that membership is held to be a matter of blood, that a majority of respondents essentialize the ethnic groups, and that the distribution of phenotypes may not justify the extent to which respondents intuit that the contrast ethnic groups differ physically (which suggests that categorization drives perception).
Evolution and Human Behavior, 2001
This paper advances an``information goods'' theory that explains prestige processes as an emergen... more This paper advances an``information goods'' theory that explains prestige processes as an emergent product of psychological adaptations that evolved to improve the quality of information acquired via cultural transmission. Natural selection favored social learners who could evaluate potential models and copy the most successful among them. In order to improve the fidelity and comprehensiveness of such ranked-biased copying, social learners further evolved dispositions to sycophantically ingratiate themselves with their chosen models, so as to gain close proximity to, and prolonged interaction with, these models. Once common, these dispositions created, at the group level, distributions of deference that new entrants may adaptively exploit to decide who to begin copying. This generated a preference for models who seem generally``popular.'' Building on social exchange theories, we argue that a wider range of phenomena associated with prestige processes can more plausibly be explained by this simple theory than by others, and we test its predictions with data from throughout the social sciences. In addition, we distinguish carefully between dominance (force or force threat) and prestige (freely conferred deference). D
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1999
An investigation of the cognitive models underlying ethnic actors' own ideas concerning the acqui... more An investigation of the cognitive models underlying ethnic actors' own ideas concerning the acquisition/transmission of an ethnic status is necessary in order to resolve the outstanding differences between "primordial" and "circumstantial" models of ethnicity. This article presents such data from a multiethnic area in Mongolia that found ethnic actors to be heavily primordialist, and uses these data to stimulate a more cogent model of ethnicity that puts the intuitions of both primordialists and circumstantialists on a more secure foundation. Although many points made by the circumstantialists can be accommodated in this framework, the model argues that ethnic cognition is at core primordialist, and ethnic actors' instrumental considerationsand by implication their behavioursare conditioned and constrained by this primordialist core. The implications of this model of ethnicity for ethnic processes are examined, and data from other parts of the world are revisite d for their relevance to its claims.
Are Ethnic Groups Biological “Species” to the Human Brain? Essentialism in Our Cognition of Some Social Categories
Current Anthropology, 2001
Page 1. 515 Current Anthropology Volume 42, Number 4, AugustOctober 2001 2001 by The Wenner-Gren... more Page 1. 515 Current Anthropology Volume 42, Number 4, AugustOctober 2001 2001 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/2001/ 4204-0003$3.00 Are Ethnic Groups Biological Species to the Human Brain? ...
Uploads
Papers by Francisco Gil-White