Overview
I've worked on a lot of topics because, yes, I have broad intellectual interests. There it is, I admitted it. Each of us, however, can be an expert in a few things only, so you'll find that nearly all my research involves modelling how inherited information moves among organisms and creates emergent evolutionary properties. While there are many differences in the data and statistics for studying various inheritance systems (e.g. genes, monkey culture, religion), my work and the work of many others is supporting that there are substantial commonalities to be generalized across them. This is particularly the case now that we have much more robust social network and phylogenetic models that can make powerful predictions about behavior, genes, and culture. Please feel free to contact me about my research via email: ljm244 (at) gmail.com
Fiction
Matthews, L. J. and J. J. Tehrani. 2019. The Many Lives of Little Red Riding Hood.
Summary: This is an interactive fiction book that retells the legend of Little Red Riding Hood from across the globe. As you choose paths through the story, you read traditional variants of the tale from its 2500 year cultural evolution. We based this retelling on Jamie Tehrani's published research into this story, which was covered nicely by National Geographic.
Summary: This is an interactive fiction book that retells the legend of Little Red Riding Hood from across the globe. As you choose paths through the story, you read traditional variants of the tale from its 2500 year cultural evolution. We based this retelling on Jamie Tehrani's published research into this story, which was covered nicely by National Geographic.
Commentaries
Matthews, L. J. 2020. The meta-lessons from COVID-19. The Pacific Council Magazine. Nov 2.
Summary: COVID-19 suggests lessons for society that go far beyond pandemic response.
Matthews, L. J. 2019. A moonshot for extraterrestrial communication. Anthropology News website, July 12.
Summary: There has been very little formal social science conducted on Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI). I argue we actually can know some things about social dynamics relevant to SETI and METI, and that this social science knowledge should inform SETI/METI policy. At present there basically is no SETI/METI policy instituted by our governmental structures.
Press coverage related to this article
Matthews, L. J. 2017. Book Review of Understanding Cultural Traits: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on Cultural Diversity. Journal of Cognitive Historiography. Volume 4.
Summary: I provide a book review of an edited volume that very nicely balances qualitative critical theory perspectives on culture with more scientific/positivist approaches. I came away from it thinking that more work on character definition and coding would be a fruitful common ground for advancing both these approaches to culture. The phylogenetics and thematic coding communities currently work the most in this zone of overlap.
Matthews, L. J. 2017. Criteria for good Hilbert problems or other potentially fruitful research directions. Religion, Brain, & Behavior. Commentary of special issue on Hilbert problems for the scientific study of religion.
Summary: Applied questions may be among the most analytically challenging and fruitful for advancing the scientific study of religion. Many existing evolutionary explanations for religion do not explain religiousness specifically through adaptive reasoning.
Matthews, L. J. 2016. Mutualistic cooperation – why religion is common but saints are rare. Religion, Brain, & Behavior. Commentary on target article by C. Wood, “Ritual well-being: toward a social signaling model of religion and mental health.”
Summary: Wood provides an novel and useful linkage of how evolutionary signaling theory applied to religion may intersect with more proximate research on religion and wellness. The paper also demonstrates the tendency of evolutionary religious studies to incorrectly assume all or most religious cooperation is altruistic and all or most religious signals are costly.
Summary: COVID-19 suggests lessons for society that go far beyond pandemic response.
Matthews, L. J. 2019. A moonshot for extraterrestrial communication. Anthropology News website, July 12.
Summary: There has been very little formal social science conducted on Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI). I argue we actually can know some things about social dynamics relevant to SETI and METI, and that this social science knowledge should inform SETI/METI policy. At present there basically is no SETI/METI policy instituted by our governmental structures.
Press coverage related to this article
Matthews, L. J. 2017. Book Review of Understanding Cultural Traits: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on Cultural Diversity. Journal of Cognitive Historiography. Volume 4.
Summary: I provide a book review of an edited volume that very nicely balances qualitative critical theory perspectives on culture with more scientific/positivist approaches. I came away from it thinking that more work on character definition and coding would be a fruitful common ground for advancing both these approaches to culture. The phylogenetics and thematic coding communities currently work the most in this zone of overlap.
Matthews, L. J. 2017. Criteria for good Hilbert problems or other potentially fruitful research directions. Religion, Brain, & Behavior. Commentary of special issue on Hilbert problems for the scientific study of religion.
Summary: Applied questions may be among the most analytically challenging and fruitful for advancing the scientific study of religion. Many existing evolutionary explanations for religion do not explain religiousness specifically through adaptive reasoning.
Matthews, L. J. 2016. Mutualistic cooperation – why religion is common but saints are rare. Religion, Brain, & Behavior. Commentary on target article by C. Wood, “Ritual well-being: toward a social signaling model of religion and mental health.”
Summary: Wood provides an novel and useful linkage of how evolutionary signaling theory applied to religion may intersect with more proximate research on religion and wellness. The paper also demonstrates the tendency of evolutionary religious studies to incorrectly assume all or most religious cooperation is altruistic and all or most religious signals are costly.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Nowak, S. A., C. Chen, A. M. Parker, C. A. Gidengil, and L. J. Matthews. 2020. Comparing covariation among vaccine hesitancy and broader beliefs within Twitter and survey data. PLoS ONE. e0239826.
Summary: Anti-vaccine beliefs are part of a broad component of covarying beliefs that include various anti-establishment ideas like health and political conspiracies, beliefs in side effects, and misunderstandings of biological science. After removing bots and propaganda trolls, beliefs covary similarly on both Twitter and in a nationally representative survey. The results suggest the misinformation problem is not just a matter of various bad actors or an artifact of social media, but rather reflects grass-roots misunderstandings and anti-establishment thinking patterns by substantial portions of the population.
Stockly, K., S. Arel, M. K. DeFranza, D. Ruck, L. Matthews, W. Wildman. 2020. Women-centered rituals and levels of domestic violence: a cross-cultural examination of ritual as a signaling and solidarity-building strategy. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture. 14(1):95-123.
Summary: A variety of religious rituals centered on women appear to reduce levels of domestic violence. Some rituals likely function by building social cohesion among women, while others function by reducing male suspicions of cuckoldry. These rituals are socially learned and largely passed from one generation to a next, so it's not surprising we also find the patterns of covariation among variables are associated with language family.
Ruck, D., L. J. Matthews, T. Kyritsis, Q. D. Atkinson, R. Alexander Bentley. 2019. The cultural foundations of modern democracies. Nature Human Behaviour.
Summary: Changes in democratic and autocratic governance are predicted by changes decades earlier in cultural values, but governance changes almost never induce cultural value changes. The most important values for predicting future governance state is openness to diversity (ethnic, racial, sexual, etc.) rather than generalized trust or support for democracy itself. We also find that low confidence by a populace in their government's institutions predicts switch to the opposite governance system (i.e. democracy to autocracy and autocracy to democracy) about three decades later.
Press coverage related to this article
Gidengil, C., C. Chen, A. M. Parker, S. Nowak, and L. J. Matthews. 2019. Beliefs around childhood vaccines in the United States: A systematic review. Vaccine. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2019.08.068
Summary: Less research has asked parents open-ended questions about childhood vaccines than has asked closed agree/disagree type questions. Within the studies that used open-ended questions, parents often expressed a range of concerns about vaccine that included health conspiracies, but that also included many ideas that were not inherently conspiratorial. These included concerns about actual or, more often, spurious vaccine side effects.
Matthews, L.J. 2019. Dealing with culture as inherited information. In: Social-Behavioral Modeling for Complex Systems. Eds. P.K. Davis, A. O’Mahony, and J. Pfautz. pp 163-185. Hoboken NJ: Wiley & Sons Inc.
Summary: I discuss the history of Galton's problem in the context of network and phylogenetic analysis. I also present simulations that show classic phylogenetic corrections for Galton's problem work fine if cultural diffusion happens on a tree-like network, but that none of the main published methods work correctly for diffusion on a not tree-like network. Another forthcoming paper will show that advanced forms of matrix regression do correct for networky-diffusion, as annoying an inelegant as they are they are the only solution I've found. Here's the book, and note you can download the code for the simulations and statistical methods without buying the book, which is well-worth the price I will add.
Karimov, R. and L. J. Matthews. 2017. A simulation assessment of methods to infer cultural transmission on dark networks. Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation: Applications, Methodology, Technology. 14:7-16.
Summary: Three main techniques are available for determining which of several networks most governs the diffusion of a cultural trait. These techniques include autoregression, matrix permutations, and dyadic regression with random effects. Across a broad range of conditions simulated with agent based models, dyadic regression with random effects generally performed quite well for this task, while autoregression performed poorly. We discuss applications of the method for disrupting dark networks.
Matthews, L. J., S. Passmore, P. M. Richard, R. D. Gray, and Q. D. Atkinson. 2016. Shared cultural history as a predictor of political and economic changes among nation states. PLoS ONE. 11:e0152979. open access
Summary: Historical divergence time between languages predicts simultaneous changes among national governments in autocracy-democracy and to a more limited degree sovereign defaults, likely because language relatedness is a good proxy measure for many otherwise difficult to operationalize inherited cultural norms.
Matthews, L. J., P. Dewan, and E. Y. Rula. 2013. Methods for inferring health-related social networks among coworkers from online communication patterns. PLoS ONE. 8:e55234. open access
Matthews, L. J., J. Edmonds, W. Wildman, and C. L. Nunn. 2013. Cultural inheritance or cultural diffusion of religious violence? A quantitative case study of the Radical Reformation. Religion, Brain, & Behavior. 3:3-15. open access
Summary: Religious violence among 16th century Anabaptists was inherited along congregational lineages, while other theological and liturgical traits spread across the network of congregation leaders.
Matthews, L. J. 2012. The recognition signal hypothesis for the adaptive evolution of religion: a phylogenetic test with Christian denominations. Human Nature. 23:218-249.
Summary: Proposes that religious beliefs, rituals, and moral prohibitions serve as recognition signals to coordinate cooperation in major world religions. The hypothesis is supported by multiple quantitative tests across major Christian denominations.
Matthews, L. J. 2012. Variations in sexual behavior among capuchin monkeys function for conspecific mate recognition: a phylogenetic analysis and a new hypothesis for female proceptivity in tufted capuchins. American Journal of Primatology. 74:287-298.
Summary: Courtship behaviors in capuchin monkeys likely function as species recognition signals to reduce hybrid offspring. This predicts punctuated evolution of changes in courtship, which is strongly supported.
Alfaro, J. W., L. Matthews, A. H. Boyette, S. J. Macfarlan, K. A. Phillips, T. Falótico, E. Ottoni, M. Verderane, P. Izar, M. Schulte, A. Melin, L. Fedigan, C. Janson, and M. E. Alfaro. 2012. Anointing variation across wild capuchin populations: a review of material preferences, bout frequency and anointing sociality in Cebus and Sapujus. American Journal of Primatology. 74:299-314.
Summary: Capuchins anoint themselves with noxious compounds in a great variety of ways, but the frequency and materials used in anointing pattern logically on the phylogeny of these monkeys.
Diogo, R., L. J. Matthews, and B. Wood. 2012. A major reason to study muscle anatomy: myology as a tool for evolutionary, developmental, and systematic biology. Biological Systems. 1:1.
Griffin, R. H., L. J. Matthews, and C. L. Nunn. 2012. Evolutionary disequilibrium and activity period in primates: a Bayesian phylogenetic approach. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 147:409-416.
Summary: A Bayesian reconstruction of ancestral lemur activity pattens supports that cathemerality (activity in the day and night) is ancient and not a recent nonequilibrium state.
MacLean, E.L., L. J. Matthews, B. A. Hare, C. L. Nunn, R. C. Anderson, F. Aureli, E. M. Brannon, J. Call, C. M. Drea, N. J. Emery, D. B. M. Haun, E. Herrmann, L. F. Jacobs, M. L. Platt, A. G. Rosati, A. A. Sandel, K. K. Schroepfer, A. M. Seed, J. Tan, C. P. van Schaik, V. Wobber. 2012. How does cognition evolve? Phylogenetic comparative psychology. Animal Cognition. 15:223-238.
Summary: Comparative psychology has been anything but comparative from a phylogenetic perspective. Herein, MacLean et al. explain the rewards to be gained from psychology making greater use of phylogeny, and they provide a primer in how to do it.
Toussaint, G., L. Matthews, M. Campbell, and N. Brown. 2012. Measuring musical rhythm similarity: Transformation versus feature-based methods. Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies. 6:23-53. open access
Matthews, L. J., C. Arnold, Z. Machanda, and C. L. Nunn. 2011. Primate extinction risk and historical patterns of speciation and extinction in relation to body mass. Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B. 278:1256-1263.
Summary: We provide stronger statistical support that larger body mass is associated with increased extinction risk status in extant primates. We also test, but find no support for greater extinction rates historically among primates of larger body mass.
Matthews, L. J., P. M. Butler. 2011. Novelty-seeking DRD4 polymorphisms are associated with human migration distance out-of-Africa after controlling for neutral population gene structure. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 145: 382-389.
Summary: The human migration out of Africa from which we derive most of our genomes selected for increased frequencies of 'novelty seeking' alleles surrounding a dopamine receptor gene. This article included novel and much better statistical controls for human population genetic structure. This article receive press coverage in New Scientist, The Washington Post, The Toronto Star, and other venues.
Matthews, L. J., F. Jordan, M. Collard, C. L. Nunn, and J. J. Tehrani. 2011. Testing for divergent transmission histories among cultural characters: a study using Bayesian phylogenetic methods and Iranian tribal textile data. PLoSONE. 6: e14810. open access
Summary: We develop and apply a new Bayesian method to test whether potentially distinct components of a people's culture exhibit different histories of cultural inheritance.
Matthews, L. J., A. Paukner, and S. J. Suomi. 2010. Can traditions emerge from the interaction of stimulus enhancement and reinforcement learning? An experimental model. American Anthropologist. 112:257-269.
Summary: A graphical model is developed and tested for how simple enhancement learning can produce cultural traditions just by interacting with reinforcement learning and without any imitation or teaching. The model is tested through experiments with captive capuchin monkeys.
Arnold, C., L. J. Matthews, and C. L. Nunn. 2010. The 10kTrees website: a new online resource for primate phylogeny. Evolutionary Anthropology. 19:114-118.
Summary: We describe a new comprehensive resource for the comparative study of primates (now expanded to other taxa!).
Franz, M. and L. J. Matthews. 2010. Social enhancement can create adaptive, arbitrary and maladaptive cultural traditions. Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B. 277:3363-3372.
Summary: An agent based model explicitly articulates how enhancement learning interacting with reinforcement learning can produce adaptive, neutral, and maladaptive cultural traditions. We argue that imitation and learning are not required to create robust cultural traditions.
Nunn, C. L., C. Arnold, L. J. Matthews, and M. Borgerhoff Mulder. 2010. Simulating Trait Evolution for Cross-Cultural Comparison. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 365:3807-3819.
Summary: A simulation study of vertical inheritance and horizontal (network) transmission of culture supports that common rules of thumb for inferring vertical inheritance are statistically valid, though perhaps not very powerful to find inheritance when it is happening.
Matthews, L. J. 2009. Activity patterns, home range size, and intergroup encounters in Cebus albifrons support existing models of capuchin socioecology. International Journal of Primatology. 30:709-728.
Matthews, L. J. 2009. Intragroup behavioral variation in white-fronted capuchin monkeys (Cebus albifrons): mixed evidence for social learning from new and established analytical methods. Behaviour. 146:295-324.
Summary: A novel cluster analysis method based on social networks is developed and applied to infer cultural inheritance of foraging behaviors among capuchin monkeys.
Hodgson, J. A., K. N. Sterner, L. J. Matthews, A. S. Burrell, R. L. Raaum, C. B. Stewart, and T. R. Disotell. 2009. Successive radiations, not stasis, in the South American primate fauna. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 106:5534-5539.
Matthews, L. J. and A. L. Rosenberger. 2008. Taxon combinations, parsimony analysis (PAUP*), and the taxonomy of the yellow-tailed woolly monkey, Lagothrix flavicauda. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 137:245-255.
Rosenberger, A. L. and L. J. Matthews. 2008. Oreonax – not a genus. Neotropical Primates. 1:8-12.
Summary: Anti-vaccine beliefs are part of a broad component of covarying beliefs that include various anti-establishment ideas like health and political conspiracies, beliefs in side effects, and misunderstandings of biological science. After removing bots and propaganda trolls, beliefs covary similarly on both Twitter and in a nationally representative survey. The results suggest the misinformation problem is not just a matter of various bad actors or an artifact of social media, but rather reflects grass-roots misunderstandings and anti-establishment thinking patterns by substantial portions of the population.
Stockly, K., S. Arel, M. K. DeFranza, D. Ruck, L. Matthews, W. Wildman. 2020. Women-centered rituals and levels of domestic violence: a cross-cultural examination of ritual as a signaling and solidarity-building strategy. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture. 14(1):95-123.
Summary: A variety of religious rituals centered on women appear to reduce levels of domestic violence. Some rituals likely function by building social cohesion among women, while others function by reducing male suspicions of cuckoldry. These rituals are socially learned and largely passed from one generation to a next, so it's not surprising we also find the patterns of covariation among variables are associated with language family.
Ruck, D., L. J. Matthews, T. Kyritsis, Q. D. Atkinson, R. Alexander Bentley. 2019. The cultural foundations of modern democracies. Nature Human Behaviour.
Summary: Changes in democratic and autocratic governance are predicted by changes decades earlier in cultural values, but governance changes almost never induce cultural value changes. The most important values for predicting future governance state is openness to diversity (ethnic, racial, sexual, etc.) rather than generalized trust or support for democracy itself. We also find that low confidence by a populace in their government's institutions predicts switch to the opposite governance system (i.e. democracy to autocracy and autocracy to democracy) about three decades later.
Press coverage related to this article
Gidengil, C., C. Chen, A. M. Parker, S. Nowak, and L. J. Matthews. 2019. Beliefs around childhood vaccines in the United States: A systematic review. Vaccine. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2019.08.068
Summary: Less research has asked parents open-ended questions about childhood vaccines than has asked closed agree/disagree type questions. Within the studies that used open-ended questions, parents often expressed a range of concerns about vaccine that included health conspiracies, but that also included many ideas that were not inherently conspiratorial. These included concerns about actual or, more often, spurious vaccine side effects.
Matthews, L.J. 2019. Dealing with culture as inherited information. In: Social-Behavioral Modeling for Complex Systems. Eds. P.K. Davis, A. O’Mahony, and J. Pfautz. pp 163-185. Hoboken NJ: Wiley & Sons Inc.
Summary: I discuss the history of Galton's problem in the context of network and phylogenetic analysis. I also present simulations that show classic phylogenetic corrections for Galton's problem work fine if cultural diffusion happens on a tree-like network, but that none of the main published methods work correctly for diffusion on a not tree-like network. Another forthcoming paper will show that advanced forms of matrix regression do correct for networky-diffusion, as annoying an inelegant as they are they are the only solution I've found. Here's the book, and note you can download the code for the simulations and statistical methods without buying the book, which is well-worth the price I will add.
Karimov, R. and L. J. Matthews. 2017. A simulation assessment of methods to infer cultural transmission on dark networks. Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation: Applications, Methodology, Technology. 14:7-16.
Summary: Three main techniques are available for determining which of several networks most governs the diffusion of a cultural trait. These techniques include autoregression, matrix permutations, and dyadic regression with random effects. Across a broad range of conditions simulated with agent based models, dyadic regression with random effects generally performed quite well for this task, while autoregression performed poorly. We discuss applications of the method for disrupting dark networks.
Matthews, L. J., S. Passmore, P. M. Richard, R. D. Gray, and Q. D. Atkinson. 2016. Shared cultural history as a predictor of political and economic changes among nation states. PLoS ONE. 11:e0152979. open access
Summary: Historical divergence time between languages predicts simultaneous changes among national governments in autocracy-democracy and to a more limited degree sovereign defaults, likely because language relatedness is a good proxy measure for many otherwise difficult to operationalize inherited cultural norms.
Matthews, L. J., P. Dewan, and E. Y. Rula. 2013. Methods for inferring health-related social networks among coworkers from online communication patterns. PLoS ONE. 8:e55234. open access
Matthews, L. J., J. Edmonds, W. Wildman, and C. L. Nunn. 2013. Cultural inheritance or cultural diffusion of religious violence? A quantitative case study of the Radical Reformation. Religion, Brain, & Behavior. 3:3-15. open access
Summary: Religious violence among 16th century Anabaptists was inherited along congregational lineages, while other theological and liturgical traits spread across the network of congregation leaders.
Matthews, L. J. 2012. The recognition signal hypothesis for the adaptive evolution of religion: a phylogenetic test with Christian denominations. Human Nature. 23:218-249.
Summary: Proposes that religious beliefs, rituals, and moral prohibitions serve as recognition signals to coordinate cooperation in major world religions. The hypothesis is supported by multiple quantitative tests across major Christian denominations.
Matthews, L. J. 2012. Variations in sexual behavior among capuchin monkeys function for conspecific mate recognition: a phylogenetic analysis and a new hypothesis for female proceptivity in tufted capuchins. American Journal of Primatology. 74:287-298.
Summary: Courtship behaviors in capuchin monkeys likely function as species recognition signals to reduce hybrid offspring. This predicts punctuated evolution of changes in courtship, which is strongly supported.
Alfaro, J. W., L. Matthews, A. H. Boyette, S. J. Macfarlan, K. A. Phillips, T. Falótico, E. Ottoni, M. Verderane, P. Izar, M. Schulte, A. Melin, L. Fedigan, C. Janson, and M. E. Alfaro. 2012. Anointing variation across wild capuchin populations: a review of material preferences, bout frequency and anointing sociality in Cebus and Sapujus. American Journal of Primatology. 74:299-314.
Summary: Capuchins anoint themselves with noxious compounds in a great variety of ways, but the frequency and materials used in anointing pattern logically on the phylogeny of these monkeys.
Diogo, R., L. J. Matthews, and B. Wood. 2012. A major reason to study muscle anatomy: myology as a tool for evolutionary, developmental, and systematic biology. Biological Systems. 1:1.
Griffin, R. H., L. J. Matthews, and C. L. Nunn. 2012. Evolutionary disequilibrium and activity period in primates: a Bayesian phylogenetic approach. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 147:409-416.
Summary: A Bayesian reconstruction of ancestral lemur activity pattens supports that cathemerality (activity in the day and night) is ancient and not a recent nonequilibrium state.
MacLean, E.L., L. J. Matthews, B. A. Hare, C. L. Nunn, R. C. Anderson, F. Aureli, E. M. Brannon, J. Call, C. M. Drea, N. J. Emery, D. B. M. Haun, E. Herrmann, L. F. Jacobs, M. L. Platt, A. G. Rosati, A. A. Sandel, K. K. Schroepfer, A. M. Seed, J. Tan, C. P. van Schaik, V. Wobber. 2012. How does cognition evolve? Phylogenetic comparative psychology. Animal Cognition. 15:223-238.
Summary: Comparative psychology has been anything but comparative from a phylogenetic perspective. Herein, MacLean et al. explain the rewards to be gained from psychology making greater use of phylogeny, and they provide a primer in how to do it.
Toussaint, G., L. Matthews, M. Campbell, and N. Brown. 2012. Measuring musical rhythm similarity: Transformation versus feature-based methods. Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies. 6:23-53. open access
Matthews, L. J., C. Arnold, Z. Machanda, and C. L. Nunn. 2011. Primate extinction risk and historical patterns of speciation and extinction in relation to body mass. Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B. 278:1256-1263.
Summary: We provide stronger statistical support that larger body mass is associated with increased extinction risk status in extant primates. We also test, but find no support for greater extinction rates historically among primates of larger body mass.
Matthews, L. J., P. M. Butler. 2011. Novelty-seeking DRD4 polymorphisms are associated with human migration distance out-of-Africa after controlling for neutral population gene structure. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 145: 382-389.
Summary: The human migration out of Africa from which we derive most of our genomes selected for increased frequencies of 'novelty seeking' alleles surrounding a dopamine receptor gene. This article included novel and much better statistical controls for human population genetic structure. This article receive press coverage in New Scientist, The Washington Post, The Toronto Star, and other venues.
Matthews, L. J., F. Jordan, M. Collard, C. L. Nunn, and J. J. Tehrani. 2011. Testing for divergent transmission histories among cultural characters: a study using Bayesian phylogenetic methods and Iranian tribal textile data. PLoSONE. 6: e14810. open access
Summary: We develop and apply a new Bayesian method to test whether potentially distinct components of a people's culture exhibit different histories of cultural inheritance.
Matthews, L. J., A. Paukner, and S. J. Suomi. 2010. Can traditions emerge from the interaction of stimulus enhancement and reinforcement learning? An experimental model. American Anthropologist. 112:257-269.
Summary: A graphical model is developed and tested for how simple enhancement learning can produce cultural traditions just by interacting with reinforcement learning and without any imitation or teaching. The model is tested through experiments with captive capuchin monkeys.
Arnold, C., L. J. Matthews, and C. L. Nunn. 2010. The 10kTrees website: a new online resource for primate phylogeny. Evolutionary Anthropology. 19:114-118.
Summary: We describe a new comprehensive resource for the comparative study of primates (now expanded to other taxa!).
Franz, M. and L. J. Matthews. 2010. Social enhancement can create adaptive, arbitrary and maladaptive cultural traditions. Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B. 277:3363-3372.
Summary: An agent based model explicitly articulates how enhancement learning interacting with reinforcement learning can produce adaptive, neutral, and maladaptive cultural traditions. We argue that imitation and learning are not required to create robust cultural traditions.
Nunn, C. L., C. Arnold, L. J. Matthews, and M. Borgerhoff Mulder. 2010. Simulating Trait Evolution for Cross-Cultural Comparison. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 365:3807-3819.
Summary: A simulation study of vertical inheritance and horizontal (network) transmission of culture supports that common rules of thumb for inferring vertical inheritance are statistically valid, though perhaps not very powerful to find inheritance when it is happening.
Matthews, L. J. 2009. Activity patterns, home range size, and intergroup encounters in Cebus albifrons support existing models of capuchin socioecology. International Journal of Primatology. 30:709-728.
Matthews, L. J. 2009. Intragroup behavioral variation in white-fronted capuchin monkeys (Cebus albifrons): mixed evidence for social learning from new and established analytical methods. Behaviour. 146:295-324.
Summary: A novel cluster analysis method based on social networks is developed and applied to infer cultural inheritance of foraging behaviors among capuchin monkeys.
Hodgson, J. A., K. N. Sterner, L. J. Matthews, A. S. Burrell, R. L. Raaum, C. B. Stewart, and T. R. Disotell. 2009. Successive radiations, not stasis, in the South American primate fauna. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 106:5534-5539.
Matthews, L. J. and A. L. Rosenberger. 2008. Taxon combinations, parsimony analysis (PAUP*), and the taxonomy of the yellow-tailed woolly monkey, Lagothrix flavicauda. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 137:245-255.
Rosenberger, A. L. and L. J. Matthews. 2008. Oreonax – not a genus. Neotropical Primates. 1:8-12.
RAND Publications
Matthews, L. J., A. M. Parker, M. Martineau, C. Gidengil, C. Chen, and J. S. Ringel. 2021. Messaging Strategies for Mitigating COVID-19 Through Vaccination and Nonpharmaceutical Interventions. PE-A1270-1.
Chari, R., M. S. Blumenthal, L. J. Matthews. 2019. Community Citizen Science: From Promise to Action. RAND Corporation. RR2763.
Matthews, L. J., R. A. Brown, and D. P. Kennedy. 2018. A Manual for Cultural Analysis. RAND Corporation. TL275.
Moore, M., L. J. Faherty, S. H. Fischer, et al. 2018. Evaluation of Two Programs Supporting Global Family Planning Data Needs: Assessing Achievements, Informing Future Directions. RAND Corporation. RR2112.
Chari, R., L. J. Matthews, M. S. Blumenthal, A. F. Edelman, and T. Jones. 2017. The Promise of Community Citizen Science. RAND Corporation. PE-256-RC
Nowak, S. A., L. J. Matthews, and A. M. Parker. 2017. A General Agent-Based Model of Social Learning. RAND Corporation. RR1768.
Hussey, P (lead report author) Chapter 6 authors, S Ahluwalia, J Broyles, P Ginsburg, T Gulden, S Hirshman, S MacCarthy, L Matthews, and K Watkins. 2015. Resources and Capabilities of the Department of Veterans Affairs to Provide Timely and Accessible Care to Veterans. RAND Corporation. RR-1165/2-VA
Gonzalez, G.C., L. Matthews, M. Posard, P. Roshan, and S. Ross. 2015. Evaluation of the Military Spouse Employment Partnership: Progress Report on First Stage of Analysis. RAND Corporation. RR-1349-OSD
Note: all RAND publications are open access and provided freely on the RAND website www.rand.org
Chari, R., M. S. Blumenthal, L. J. Matthews. 2019. Community Citizen Science: From Promise to Action. RAND Corporation. RR2763.
Matthews, L. J., R. A. Brown, and D. P. Kennedy. 2018. A Manual for Cultural Analysis. RAND Corporation. TL275.
Moore, M., L. J. Faherty, S. H. Fischer, et al. 2018. Evaluation of Two Programs Supporting Global Family Planning Data Needs: Assessing Achievements, Informing Future Directions. RAND Corporation. RR2112.
Chari, R., L. J. Matthews, M. S. Blumenthal, A. F. Edelman, and T. Jones. 2017. The Promise of Community Citizen Science. RAND Corporation. PE-256-RC
Nowak, S. A., L. J. Matthews, and A. M. Parker. 2017. A General Agent-Based Model of Social Learning. RAND Corporation. RR1768.
Hussey, P (lead report author) Chapter 6 authors, S Ahluwalia, J Broyles, P Ginsburg, T Gulden, S Hirshman, S MacCarthy, L Matthews, and K Watkins. 2015. Resources and Capabilities of the Department of Veterans Affairs to Provide Timely and Accessible Care to Veterans. RAND Corporation. RR-1165/2-VA
Gonzalez, G.C., L. Matthews, M. Posard, P. Roshan, and S. Ross. 2015. Evaluation of the Military Spouse Employment Partnership: Progress Report on First Stage of Analysis. RAND Corporation. RR-1349-OSD
Note: all RAND publications are open access and provided freely on the RAND website www.rand.org
Invited Presentations
Matthews, L. J. October 2019. Cultural inheritance mechanics: Their affordances for evolutionary adaptation and applications to policy analysis. DySoC/NIMBioS Seminar Series, University of Tennessee Knoxville. recording available here
Matthews, L. J. May 2019. Quantitative cultural analysis of vaccine beliefs suggests novel messaging strategies. Immunization Services Division, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Matthews, L. J. September 2018. Safe and effective marketing analytics for vaccine uptake. Anthropology in Action Speaker Series, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Matthews, L. J. April 2017. Passing through history: 128 years of Galton’s problem and counting. Department of Anthropology, Boston University.
Matthews, L. J. November 2015. Cultural evolution from its primate origins to modern geopolitics, Anthropology in Action Speaker Series, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Matthews, L. J. December 2013. Culture as an evolved emergent property. Department of Anthropology, Yale University.
Matthews, L. J. April 2013. Panelist and moderator in session: Using Email and Online Data to Discover Organizational Networks and Leverage Influence. The Network Roundtable Conference.
Matthews, L. J. February 2013. Panelist in session: Healthcare innovations for driving consumers to action. Healthcare Conference, Healthcare Club of Harvard Business School.
Matthews, L. J. October 2010. Cultural inheritance and the evolution of primate behavior: parallel patterns with genetics. George Washington University, Department of Anthropology, Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology (CASHP).
Matthews, L. J. and P. M. Butler. September 2010. Novelty-seeking DRD4 polymorphisms are associated with human migration distance out-of-Africa after controlling for neutral population gene structure. N. Christakis lab group, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School.
Matthews, L. J. June 2010. Genetic and cultural inheritance in the evolution of primate behavior. National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India.
Matthews, L. J. April 2010. Cultural inheritance mechanisms and the evolution of primate behavior. Department of Anthropology, New Mexico State University.
Matthews, L. J. and M. Franz. January 2010. Distinguishing tree-like descent from ongoing network transmission in putatively cultural data. N. Christakis lab group, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School.
Matthews, L. J. 2008. Field experiments of an extractive processing task in wild white-fronted capuchin monkeys (Cebus albifrons). Conference Symposium – Field experiments: The challenges and benefits of using experimental methods in field research. International Primatological Society XXII Congress.
Matthews, L. J. May 2019. Quantitative cultural analysis of vaccine beliefs suggests novel messaging strategies. Immunization Services Division, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Matthews, L. J. September 2018. Safe and effective marketing analytics for vaccine uptake. Anthropology in Action Speaker Series, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Matthews, L. J. April 2017. Passing through history: 128 years of Galton’s problem and counting. Department of Anthropology, Boston University.
Matthews, L. J. November 2015. Cultural evolution from its primate origins to modern geopolitics, Anthropology in Action Speaker Series, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Matthews, L. J. December 2013. Culture as an evolved emergent property. Department of Anthropology, Yale University.
Matthews, L. J. April 2013. Panelist and moderator in session: Using Email and Online Data to Discover Organizational Networks and Leverage Influence. The Network Roundtable Conference.
Matthews, L. J. February 2013. Panelist in session: Healthcare innovations for driving consumers to action. Healthcare Conference, Healthcare Club of Harvard Business School.
Matthews, L. J. October 2010. Cultural inheritance and the evolution of primate behavior: parallel patterns with genetics. George Washington University, Department of Anthropology, Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology (CASHP).
Matthews, L. J. and P. M. Butler. September 2010. Novelty-seeking DRD4 polymorphisms are associated with human migration distance out-of-Africa after controlling for neutral population gene structure. N. Christakis lab group, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School.
Matthews, L. J. June 2010. Genetic and cultural inheritance in the evolution of primate behavior. National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India.
Matthews, L. J. April 2010. Cultural inheritance mechanisms and the evolution of primate behavior. Department of Anthropology, New Mexico State University.
Matthews, L. J. and M. Franz. January 2010. Distinguishing tree-like descent from ongoing network transmission in putatively cultural data. N. Christakis lab group, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School.
Matthews, L. J. 2008. Field experiments of an extractive processing task in wild white-fronted capuchin monkeys (Cebus albifrons). Conference Symposium – Field experiments: The challenges and benefits of using experimental methods in field research. International Primatological Society XXII Congress.
Presentations and Published Abstracts
Matthews, L. J. 2019. Quantitative cultural analysis of vaccine beliefs suggests novel messaging strategies. Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting.
Matthews, L. J., S. Nowak, C. Gidengil, C. Chen, J. M. Stubbersfield, J. J. Tehrani, and A. M. Parker. 2018. Antivaccine beliefs exhibit multiple modes of cultural transmission. Cultural Transmission of Social Norms 3rd workshop.
Matthews, L. J. 2018. Toward a robust statistical toolkit for cultural evolutionary modeling. Cultural Evolution Society Meeting.
Matthews, L. J. 2018. Correcting for genetic and cultural nonindependence (Galton’s Problem) when testing genetic associations with substance abuse. National Institutes of Drug Abuse (NIDA) Genetics Consortium, NIH.
Participant in roundtable, “Anthropology matters for professionals! Forging non-academic career pathways at the graduate and undergraduate level.” 2017. American Anthropological Association, 116th Annual Meeting
Matthews, L. J. 2016. The evolution and adaptive function of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. American Anthropological Association, 115th Annual Meeting
Matthews, L. J. 2016. Predictive health analytics with networks. International Sunbelt Social Network Conference, 36.
Matthews, L. J. 2014. What phylogenies can teach us about cultural diffusion. American Anthropological Association, 113th Annual Meeting, Washington DC.
Matthews, L. J. 2014. Why religion is common but saints are rare: non-altruistic coordination as an adaptive driver for religion. Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Annual Meeting.
Matthews, L. J. 2013. Biologically informed approaches to the diffusion of religious ideas. Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Annual Meeting.
Matthews, L. J. 2012. Recognition signals in Christian denominations as mechanisms that enable cooperation: a comparative and phylogenetic approach. American Anthropological Association, 110th Annual Meeting.
Matthews, L. J., and C. L. Nunn. 2011. Using phylogenies and social networks to detect the modality of disease transmission in wild primate social groups. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 144: 208-209
Russo, G. A., J. W. Young, and L. J. Matthews. 2011. Ontogeny of caudal vertebral structure in capuchin monkeys (Cebus albifrons and C. apella). American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 144: 259-260.
Matthews, L. J., C. Arnold, and C. L. Nunn. 2010. Niche construction and the evolution of primate sex-biased dispersal patterns. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 141:166.
Arnold, C., L. J. Matthews, and C. L. Nunn. 2010. The 10kTrees Project: a new inference of primate phylogeny for comparative studies. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 141:58.
Franz, M. and L. J. Matthews. 2010. Social enhancement can create adaptive, arbitrary and maladaptive cultural traditions. European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association, 5th Annual Conference.
Matthews, L. J. 2009. Organizer and Chair of session – Social learning and development in an evolutionary context: adapted mechanisms and emerging patterns of tradition. American Anthropological Association, 108th Annual Meeting.
Matthews, L. J. 2009. Simple social learning mechanisms are sufficient to produce foraging traditions in capuchin monkeys (genus Cebus). Presented at: American Anthropological Association, 108th Annual Meeting.
Matthews, L. J. 2009. Cluster analysis and social network theory applied to the study of socially learned traditions in primates. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 138:256.
Montague, M. J. and L. J. Matthews. 2009. Why do capuchin and squirrel monkeys form interspecific associations? A GIS based test using ranging and feeding data. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 138:265-266.
Matthews, L. J. 2008. Ranging behavior of white-fronted capuchins (Cebus albifrons) in the Ecuadorian Amazon: effects of resource use and intergroup interactions. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 46:151.
Hodgson, J. A., K. N. Sterner, L. J. Matthews, R. Jani, C. B. Stewart, and T. R. Disotell. 2008. Phylogenetic relationship of the Platyrrhini inferred from complete mitochondrial genome sequences. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 46:118-119.
Matthews, L. J. and C. A. Schmitt. 2007. Courtship behaviors of genus Cebus: a test case for inferences from phylogeny. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 44:166.
Schmitt, C. A., A. Di Fiore, A. Link, L. J. Matthews, M. J. Montague, A. M. Derby, D. Hurst, G. Carrillo, C. Sendall, M. Y. Field, and E. Fernandez-Duque. 2007. Comparative ranging behavior of eight species of primates in a western Amazonian rainforest. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 44:208-209.
Matthews, L. J. 2005. A behavioral phylogeny of the platyrrhines. Presented at “Monkeys: Old and New,” a symposium sponsored by the New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology.
Matthews, L. J., S. Nowak, C. Gidengil, C. Chen, J. M. Stubbersfield, J. J. Tehrani, and A. M. Parker. 2018. Antivaccine beliefs exhibit multiple modes of cultural transmission. Cultural Transmission of Social Norms 3rd workshop.
Matthews, L. J. 2018. Toward a robust statistical toolkit for cultural evolutionary modeling. Cultural Evolution Society Meeting.
Matthews, L. J. 2018. Correcting for genetic and cultural nonindependence (Galton’s Problem) when testing genetic associations with substance abuse. National Institutes of Drug Abuse (NIDA) Genetics Consortium, NIH.
Participant in roundtable, “Anthropology matters for professionals! Forging non-academic career pathways at the graduate and undergraduate level.” 2017. American Anthropological Association, 116th Annual Meeting
Matthews, L. J. 2016. The evolution and adaptive function of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. American Anthropological Association, 115th Annual Meeting
Matthews, L. J. 2016. Predictive health analytics with networks. International Sunbelt Social Network Conference, 36.
Matthews, L. J. 2014. What phylogenies can teach us about cultural diffusion. American Anthropological Association, 113th Annual Meeting, Washington DC.
Matthews, L. J. 2014. Why religion is common but saints are rare: non-altruistic coordination as an adaptive driver for religion. Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Annual Meeting.
Matthews, L. J. 2013. Biologically informed approaches to the diffusion of religious ideas. Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Annual Meeting.
Matthews, L. J. 2012. Recognition signals in Christian denominations as mechanisms that enable cooperation: a comparative and phylogenetic approach. American Anthropological Association, 110th Annual Meeting.
Matthews, L. J., and C. L. Nunn. 2011. Using phylogenies and social networks to detect the modality of disease transmission in wild primate social groups. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 144: 208-209
Russo, G. A., J. W. Young, and L. J. Matthews. 2011. Ontogeny of caudal vertebral structure in capuchin monkeys (Cebus albifrons and C. apella). American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 144: 259-260.
Matthews, L. J., C. Arnold, and C. L. Nunn. 2010. Niche construction and the evolution of primate sex-biased dispersal patterns. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 141:166.
Arnold, C., L. J. Matthews, and C. L. Nunn. 2010. The 10kTrees Project: a new inference of primate phylogeny for comparative studies. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 141:58.
Franz, M. and L. J. Matthews. 2010. Social enhancement can create adaptive, arbitrary and maladaptive cultural traditions. European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association, 5th Annual Conference.
Matthews, L. J. 2009. Organizer and Chair of session – Social learning and development in an evolutionary context: adapted mechanisms and emerging patterns of tradition. American Anthropological Association, 108th Annual Meeting.
Matthews, L. J. 2009. Simple social learning mechanisms are sufficient to produce foraging traditions in capuchin monkeys (genus Cebus). Presented at: American Anthropological Association, 108th Annual Meeting.
Matthews, L. J. 2009. Cluster analysis and social network theory applied to the study of socially learned traditions in primates. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 138:256.
Montague, M. J. and L. J. Matthews. 2009. Why do capuchin and squirrel monkeys form interspecific associations? A GIS based test using ranging and feeding data. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 138:265-266.
Matthews, L. J. 2008. Ranging behavior of white-fronted capuchins (Cebus albifrons) in the Ecuadorian Amazon: effects of resource use and intergroup interactions. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 46:151.
Hodgson, J. A., K. N. Sterner, L. J. Matthews, R. Jani, C. B. Stewart, and T. R. Disotell. 2008. Phylogenetic relationship of the Platyrrhini inferred from complete mitochondrial genome sequences. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 46:118-119.
Matthews, L. J. and C. A. Schmitt. 2007. Courtship behaviors of genus Cebus: a test case for inferences from phylogeny. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 44:166.
Schmitt, C. A., A. Di Fiore, A. Link, L. J. Matthews, M. J. Montague, A. M. Derby, D. Hurst, G. Carrillo, C. Sendall, M. Y. Field, and E. Fernandez-Duque. 2007. Comparative ranging behavior of eight species of primates in a western Amazonian rainforest. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Supplement. 44:208-209.
Matthews, L. J. 2005. A behavioral phylogeny of the platyrrhines. Presented at “Monkeys: Old and New,” a symposium sponsored by the New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology.
