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PubMed2001

The psychology of social chess and the evolution of attribution mechanisms: explaining the fundamental attribution error.

Theory of mind is the field devoted to understanding how organisms discern the mental states of others. Because mental states are not directly observable, they can only be inferred from observable features of the actor (such as behavior) and the situational context that the actor is in. Social psychologists, who study theory of mind processes under the rubric of attribution research, have shown that people often make a logical error of inference: The "fundamental attribution error" (FAE) is the tendency to assume that an actor's behavior and mental state correspond to a degree that is logically unwarranted by the situation. The social environment in which theory of mind capacities evolved may have influenced attributional processing in ways that could explain the error. In particular, the error could be caused by a psyche that is designed (1) to consider only those noncorresponding mental states (such as deception) that could have fitness consequences to the mind reader; (2) to bias inferences in a way that reduces the costs of erroneous inferences; or (3) to bias inferences in a way that yields reputational benefits. The existing literature is reviewed in light of these hypotheses.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2004

Social threat perception and the evolution of paranoia.

Rapid and efficient judgments about the significance of social threat are important for species survival and may recruit specialized neurocognitive systems, consistent with biological models of threat processing. We review cognitive, psychophysiological, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging evidence in support of specialized neural networks subserving the processing of facial displays of threat. Cognitive research suggests that faces depicting anger are detected quickly when presented amongst other facial expressions, on the basis of distinguishing facial features. Psychophysiological investigations using visual scanpath techniques provide evidence for increased foveal attention to facial features of threat-related expressions (anger, fear), which may facilitate rapid detection and subsequent appraisal of the significance of threat (such as the direction of impending threat). Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies implicate a primary role for the amygdale and pre-frontal cortices in interpreting signs of danger from facial expressions and other social stimuli. Subtle disturbances in these neurocognitive systems underlying efficient threat detection (manifesting in attentional biases and aberrant neural activity) may result in abnormally heightened perception of social threat, as seen in clinical levels of social anxiety and/or persecutory delusions in schizophrenia. Clinical states of paranoia may therefore reflect normal variation (i.e. biases) in the adaptive mechanisms which have evolved, in the Darwinian sense, to facilitate efficient threat detection in humans. As such, clinical levels of paranoia may represent the inevitable cost of efficient threat perception--or 'justified' suspicion--that is necessary for survival of the human species.

Affect↗
PubMed1985

The origin of helping: the role of variability in reproductive potential.

We investigate the relationship between variation in reproductive potential among members of a family and genetic relatedness to determine which combinations favor natural selection for helping behavior. Conditions favoring helping are derived for the helper, the recipient, and the parents of these individuals. Our analysis reveals that a factor of general significance in the evolution of social organisms is variability in reproductive potential among offspring of a parent. To a limited extent this factor has already been appreciated because of its implicit role in "facultative altruism" and "parental manipulation", or suppression of offspring or sibs; however, the unifying role of variance per se and the ways by which it may act have not been widely appreciated. We show that suppression as a source of intra-brood variance is less powerful in the evolution of sociality than other, natural, sources of variance. The facts of natural history appear to be more consistent with a model utilizing natural variance than with a variance-enhancement model for most vertebrates. We present models for discrete and for overlapping generations. Fecundity of young potential helpers relative to adults is an important source of variance for the origin of helping.

Animals↗
PubMed2005

The evolution of infidelity in socially monogamous passerines: the strength of direct and indirect selection on extrapair copulation behavior in females.

Many studies have been aimed at understanding the maintenance of female infidelity in socially monogamous birds. Because engaging in extrapair copulations (EPCs) is believed to be costly for females, it has been argued that EPC behavior must bring indirect benefits to females by elevating offspring fitness. We use empirical data from the literature to assess the relative strength of indirect and direct selection on female EPC behavior, using quantitative genetic approximations of selection. This analysis confirmed that there is generally negative direct selection on EPC behavior caused by depressed paternal investment by social males. In contrast, there was no significant positive indirect selection on EPC behavior in females. A comparison between the two types of selection suggests that the force of direct negative selection is generally much stronger than that of indirect positive selection. Indirect selection is thus unlikely to maintain EPC behavior in the face of direct selection against it. We suggest that EPCs may instead be the result of antagonistic selection on loci influencing the outcome of male-female encounters and that EPC behavior per se may not be adaptive for females but may reflect sexual conflict due to strong selection in males to achieve extrapair copulations.

Animals↗
PubMed2001

Paternal relatedness and age proximity regulate social relationships among adult female rhesus macaques.

Kin selection promotes the evolution of social behavior that increases the survival and reproductive success of close relatives. Among primates, maternal kinship frequently coincides with a higher frequency of grooming and agonistic aiding, but the extent to which paternal kinship influences adult female social relationships has not yet been investigated. Here, we examine the effect of both maternal and paternal kinship, as well as age proximity, on affiliative interactions among semifree-ranging adult female rhesus macaques, Macaca mulatta. Kinship was assessed by using both microsatellites and DNA-fingerprinting. Our study confirms that the closest affiliative relationships characterize maternal half-sisters. We provide evidence that adult females are significantly more affiliative with paternal half-sisters than with nonkin. Furthermore, paternal kin discrimination was more pronounced among peers than among nonpeers, indicating that age proximity has an additional regulatory effect on affiliative interactions. We propose that kin discrimination among cercopithecine primates emerges from ontogenetic processes that involve phenotype matching based on shared behavioral traits, such as inherited personality profiles, rather than physiological or physical characteristics.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2007

The evolution of infidelity in socially monogamous passerines: neglected components of direct and indirect selection.

A recent study by Goran Arnqvist and Mark Kirkpatrick in the American Naturalist (165:S26-S37) suggested that female polyandry in birds is not driven by females because quantitative genetic approximations of selection demonstrated that indirect selection for female infidelity is weaker than natural selection against it. Instead, it was argued that extrapair copulations are the result of antagonistic selection on male behavior driving female coercion. While the approach and framework of the study were very good, the conclusions of the study were premature because a number of potential adaptive components of polyandry were unaccounted for, and several critical assumptions are unsupported by the current empirical data. Our understanding of extrapair paternity in birds, and perhaps polyandry in general, will be improved by a better empirical understanding of the direct benefits of fertility assurance and postcopulatory cryptic female choice and the relationship between polyandry and male investment. In addition, we need to develop a greater awareness of the limitations of trying to study behavior by proxy in the molecular laboratory. Together, these challenges and the framework recently presented should improve our understanding of the true function of extrapair paternity in birds.

Agonistic Behavior↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[The sociality syndrome. A comparative study of the behavior of gerbils].

To explain the evolution of sociality the authors propose the hypothesis that every social interaction is based on the contest. The synergetic nature of any interaction determines the permanent involving partners in the contests and leads to increasing social pressure within community. The contestants' interactions inhibit an activity in one of the partners. Two possible evolutionary strategies of adaptation to increasing social density are: 1) an increase in resistance to the activity inhibition; 2) a retaining in memory the results of inhibition, i.e. reducing of ability to restore inhibited activity. Three species of gerbils (Gerbillidae): Mongolian (Meriones unguiculatus), Libyan (M. libycus), and midday gerbil (M. meridianus) were compared. Being similar in their ecology and behavioural repertoire three species differ strongly in extent of sociality: the highest in Mongolian gerbil and the lowest in midday one. The duration of social acts in laboratory groups of gerbils as well as frequency of acts delaying conflicts under natural conditions were assumed to correlate with increase in resistance to social pressure. Both parameters were higher in mongolian and libyan gerbils. The data on dynamics, asymmetry, and stability of social relations indicates more stable retaining in memory the results of interactions in Mongolian and Libyan gerbils than in midday ones but the latter restore inhibited activity more quickly. In the laboratory groups where the available space is compressed the midday gerbils maintain population at a level not lower than Mongolian ones and much higher than M. libycus. Moreover aggression within the group of midday gerbils doesn't result in rapid population decrease as in other two species.

Agonistic Behavior↗
PubMed1998

The role of defeat and entrapment (arrested flight) in depression: an exploration of an evolutionary view.

BACKGROUND: The social rank theory of psychopathology suggests that with the evolution of social hierarchies various psychobiological mechanisms became attuned to the success or failure in conflict situations. Specifically, subordinates and those who have lost status are at greater risk of pathology than winners and those of higher status. In this theory concepts of defeat and entrapment are seen to be of special relevance to the study of depression. We outline the role of defeat and entrapment within the social rank theory of depression. METHODS: New self-report measures of entrapment and defeat were developed and used to test predictions of the social rank theory of depression. Both a sample of students and depressed patients were assessed with these new scales and other social rank measures (e.g. social comparison and submissive behaviour). RESULTS: The entrapment and defeat measures were found to have good psychometric properties and significantly correlated with depression. They were also strongly associated with other rank variables. Defeat maintained a strong association with depression even after controlling for hopelessness (r = 0.62), whereas the relationship between hopelessness and depression was substantially reduced when controlling for defeat. Entrapment and defeat added substantially to the explained variance of depression after controlling for the other social rank variables. CONCLUSIONS: Defeat and entrapment appear to be promising variables for the study of depression. These variables may also help to develop linkages between human and animal models of psychopathology.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Evolution and the American social sciences: An evolutionary social scientist's view.

American social scientists rarely ever use evolutionary concepts to explain behavior, despite the potential of such concepts to elucidate major social problems. I argue that this observation can be understood as the product of three influences: an ideologically narrowed political liberalism; a fear of ''Social Darwinism'' as a scientific idea, rather than a scientific apostasy; and a widely believed criticism of evolutionary thinking as deterministic, reductionistic, and Panglossian. I ask what is to be done to encourage social scientists to learn and to apply evolutionary lessons. I answer with four solutions. First, evolutionary social scientists should more effectively educate their non-evolutionary students and colleagues. Second, they should publicize, even popularize, accessible refutations of perennially misleading criticisms. Third, they should more credibly assure skeptics that evolutionary theory not only keeps the ''social'' in social science but better explains social behavior than can any individual-level theory, such as rational-choice theory. Fourth, they should recall that biology took generations to become Darwinian, and they must understand that the social sciences may take as long to become evolutionary.

Journal Article↗