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

这个项目将解决人类社会和文化演变中的两个问题。第一个是“人类合作之谜”，其质量和规模远远超过其他物种。第二个问题是“虚构之谜”：人类是如何以及为什么发展出构思和分享虚构事件、人物和环境的能力的？最近的理论表明，这两个问题的答案实际上可能是有联系的。他们提出，讲故事与大规模合作共同进化，认为它在人类社会所依赖的亲社会规范的传播和内化中起着关键作用。然而，目前几乎没有经验证据支持这些说法。为了弥补这一差距，我将进行三项相互关联的研究。首先，我将利用国际民间故事记录的数据，分析具有亲社会内容的故事是否比其他类型的故事传播得更广泛、更稳定，这为研究跨文化讲故事的演变提供了一个优秀的天然实验室。其次，我将进行一系列的实验来探索这些故事的传播所涉及的认知机制，特别关注动机和记忆的作用。第三，我将通过博弈论实验来检验故事是否真的影响合作行为。通过综合这三种观点——跨文化的、认知的和行为的——我希望对人类两个最具决定性和最奇怪的特征——超亲社会性和虚构叙事——有新的认识。

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.