Free rider recognition - A missing link in the Baldwinian model of music evolution
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Date
2022
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SAGE Publishers
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Abstract
The interactions between species-specific predispositions and cultural plasticity in the development
of human musical behavior have recently become the rationale for a possible Baldwinian origin of
human musicality. In the previously suggested Baldwinian scenarios of music origin, social bonding
has been indicated as the crucial adaptive value that became the main cause of the co-evolutionary
process that led to our musicality. However, the adaptive value of social bonding does not explain
the cultural variability of musical expressions that enabled the Baldwinian evolution of musicality.
The main aim of this article is to show that free rider recognition, along with social bonding and
signaling commitment, could have been a possible adaptive function of hominin musical rituals. In
the proposed scenario, free rider recognition became a “flywheel” of the arms race between deception
and cooperation. As a result, the interplay between the canalization and plasticity of musical learning
became a part of music evolution. This process created a cultural niche in which hominin vocal
learning was specialized in the imitation of discrete pitch and rhythm.
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This research was funded in whole by, National Science Centre, Poland” [grant
number 2021/41/B/HS1/00541].
Keywords
origin of music, Baldwin effect, free riding, vocal learning, evolution, functions of music
Citation
Psychology of Music 2022, [pp. 1-17].