The Moral of the Story: Investigating the co-evolution of storytelling and prosociality using comparative analysis and game theory experiments

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This project will address two problems in the evolution of human sociality and culture. The first is "the puzzle of human cooperation", the quality and scale of which far exceeds other species. The second problem is "the riddle of fiction": how and why did our species develop a capacity to conceive and share imaginary events, characters and environments? Recent theories suggest that the answers to these two problems may in fact be connected. They propose that storytelling co-evolved with large-scale cooperation, arguing that it plays a critical role in the transmission and internalisation of prosocial norms on which human sociality depends. However, there is currently little empirical evidence to support these claims. To address this gap, I will carry out three interrelated studies. First, I will analyse whether stories with prosocial content are more widely and stably transmitted than other types of stories using data on the international folktale record, which provides an outstanding natural laboratory for studying the evolution of storytelling across cultures. Second, I will carry out a series of experiments to explore the cognitive mechanisms involved in the transmission of these stories, focusing especially on the roles of motivation and memory. Third, I will examine whether stories actually influence cooperative behaviours using game theory experiments. By synthesising these three perspectives - cross-cultural, cognitive and behavioural - I hope to shed new light on two of the defining and most curious characteristics of our species: ultra-prosociality and fictional narrative.