Cultural complexity and demography: The case of folktakes

Evolution and Human Behavior Vol/Iss. 38(2017) Elsevier Published In Pages: 474-480
By Acerbi, Alberto, Kendal, Jeremy, Tehrani, Jamshid J.

Hypothesis

Population size will have an influence on cultural complexity as measured by the number of traits in "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The tale of the kind and the unkind girls"

Note

No consistent relationship was found between population size and traits (number of characters, events, etc.) of the two international tale types. 5.5% and 94.5% quantiles of the posterior probability of "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The tale of the kind and the unkind girls" were (-0.07, 0.06) and (-0.05, 0.12), respectively. (model using nineteenth century estimates of population size showed similar results)

Test

Test NameSupportSignificanceCoefficientTail
Bayesian multilevel model with Poisson likelihoodNot Supportedn.a.Beta=0.0 (Little Red Riding Hood), 0.04 (The tale of the kind and the unkind girls)UNKNOWN