IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v16y2025i1d10.1038_s41467-025-58764-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Teaching is associated with the transmission of opaque culture and leadership across 23 egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies

Author

Listed:
  • Zachary H. Garfield

    (University Mohammed VI Polytechnic)

  • Sheina Lew-Levy

    (Durham University)

Abstract

Despite extensive work on the evolution of cooperation, the roles of teaching and leadership in transmitting opaque cultural norms—foundations of cooperative behaviors—are underexplored. Similarly, while teaching is well-studied in the evolution of instrumental culture, little attention is given to its role in transmitting opaque culture, such as social values and norms. Transmitting opaque culture often requires teaching, and group leaders are well-positioned to facilitate this process. Using comparative ethnographic data, we explore teaching, leadership, and instrumental versus opaque culture by examining whether opaque culture is primarily transmitted via teaching, which age groups tend to learn these norms, and whether leaders are disproportionately involved in teaching. Drawing on ethnographic data from 23 egalitarian foraging societies, we find teaching is more strongly associated with transmitting cultural values and kinship knowledge than subsistence skills and is closely linked to opaque culture and leadership. Leader-directed teaching may drive cooperation, suggesting new research avenues.

Suggested Citation

  • Zachary H. Garfield & Sheina Lew-Levy, 2025. "Teaching is associated with the transmission of opaque culture and leadership across 23 egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-14, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-58764-9
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-58764-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58764-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-025-58764-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Axelrod, Robert, 1986. "An Evolutionary Approach to Norms," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 80(4), pages 1095-1111, December.
    2. Bailey R. House & Patricia Kanngiesser & H. Clark Barrett & Tanya Broesch & Senay Cebioglu & Alyssa N. Crittenden & Alejandro Erut & Sheina Lew-Levy & Carla Sebastian-Enesco & Andrew Marcus Smith & Sü, 2020. "Universal norm psychology leads to societal diversity in prosocial behaviour and development," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(1), pages 36-44, January.
    3. Ángel V. Jiménez & Alex Mesoudi, 2019. "Prestige-biased social learning: current evidence and outstanding questions," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-12, December.
    4. Marini, Matteo, 2004. "Cultural evolution and economic growth: a theoretical hypothesis with some empirical evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 765-784, December.
    5. Friedman, Jerome H. & Hastie, Trevor & Tibshirani, Rob, 2010. "Regularization Paths for Generalized Linear Models via Coordinate Descent," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 33(i01).
    6. Hui Zou & Trevor Hastie, 2005. "Addendum: Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 67(5), pages 768-768, November.
    7. Zachary Garfield & Kristen Syme & Edward H. Hagen, 2020. "Universal and variable leadership dimensions across human societies," Post-Print hal-03162384, HAL.
    8. Hui Zou & Trevor Hastie, 2005. "Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 67(2), pages 301-320, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tutz, Gerhard & Pößnecker, Wolfgang & Uhlmann, Lorenz, 2015. "Variable selection in general multinomial logit models," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 207-222.
    2. Mkhadri, Abdallah & Ouhourane, Mohamed, 2013. "An extended variable inclusion and shrinkage algorithm for correlated variables," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 631-644.
    3. Chuliá, Helena & Garrón, Ignacio & Uribe, Jorge M., 2024. "Daily growth at risk: Financial or real drivers? The answer is not always the same," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 762-776.
    4. Christopher J Greenwood & George J Youssef & Primrose Letcher & Jacqui A Macdonald & Lauryn J Hagg & Ann Sanson & Jenn Mcintosh & Delyse M Hutchinson & John W Toumbourou & Matthew Fuller-Tyszkiewicz &, 2020. "A comparison of penalised regression methods for informing the selection of predictive markers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-14, November.
    5. Gustavo A. Alonso-Silverio & Víctor Francisco-García & Iris P. Guzmán-Guzmán & Elías Ventura-Molina & Antonio Alarcón-Paredes, 2021. "Toward Non-Invasive Estimation of Blood Glucose Concentration: A Comparative Performance," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(20), pages 1-13, October.
    6. Christopher Kath & Florian Ziel, 2018. "The value of forecasts: Quantifying the economic gains of accurate quarter-hourly electricity price forecasts," Papers 1811.08604, arXiv.org.
    7. Gurgul Henryk & Machno Artur, 2017. "Trade Pattern on Warsaw Stock Exchange and Prediction of Number of Trades," Statistics in Transition New Series, Statistics Poland, vol. 18(1), pages 91-114, March.
    8. Michael Funke & Kadri Männasoo & Helery Tasane, 2023. "Regional Economic Impacts of the Øresund Cross-Border Fixed Link: Cui Bono?," CESifo Working Paper Series 10557, CESifo.
    9. Zichen Zhang & Ye Eun Bae & Jonathan R. Bradley & Lang Wu & Chong Wu, 2022. "SUMMIT: An integrative approach for better transcriptomic data imputation improves causal gene identification," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-12, December.
    10. Štefan Lyócsa & Petra Vašaničová & Branka Hadji Misheva & Marko Dávid Vateha, 2022. "Default or profit scoring credit systems? Evidence from European and US peer-to-peer lending markets," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 8(1), pages 1-21, December.
    11. Peter Bühlmann & Jacopo Mandozzi, 2014. "High-dimensional variable screening and bias in subsequent inference, with an empirical comparison," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 407-430, June.
    12. Capanu, Marinela & Giurcanu, Mihai & Begg, Colin B. & Gönen, Mithat, 2023. "Subsampling based variable selection for generalized linear models," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    13. Abhinav Kaushik & Diane Dunham & Xiaorui Han & Evan Do & Sandra Andorf & Sheena Gupta & Andrea Fernandes & Laurie Elizabeth Kost & Sayantani B. Sindher & Wong Yu & Mindy Tsai & Robert Tibshirani & Sco, 2022. "CD8+ T cell differentiation status correlates with the feasibility of sustained unresponsiveness following oral immunotherapy," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-12, December.
    14. Tomáš Plíhal, 2021. "Scheduled macroeconomic news announcements and Forex volatility forecasting," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(8), pages 1379-1397, December.
    15. Michele Lalla & Patrizio Frederic, 2020. "Tertiary education decisions of immigrants and non-immigrants in Italy: an empirical approach," Department of Economics 0168, University of Modena and Reggio E., Faculty of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    16. Loann David Denis Desboulets, 2018. "A Review on Variable Selection in Regression Analysis," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-27, November.
    17. Foutzopoulos, Giorgos & Pandis, Nikolaos & Tsagris, Michail, 2024. "Predicting full retirement attainment of NBA players," MPRA Paper 121540, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2013-037 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Zeyu Bian & Erica E. M. Moodie & Susan M. Shortreed & Sahir Bhatnagar, 2023. "Variable selection in regression‐based estimation of dynamic treatment regimes," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 79(2), pages 988-999, June.
    20. Alexis Comber & Paul Harris, 2018. "Geographically weighted elastic net logistic regression," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 317-341, October.
    21. Hansen, Stephen & McMahon, Michael & Tong, Matthew, 2019. "The long-run information effect of central bank communication," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 185-202.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-58764-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.