Human foragers are obligately group-living, and their high dependence on mutual aid is believed to have characterized our species' social evolution. It was therefore a central adaptive problem for our ancestors to avoid damaging the willingness of other group members to render them assistance. Cognitively, this requires a predictive map of the degree to which others would devalue the individual based on each of various possible acts. With such a map, an individual can avoid socially costly behaviors by anticipating how much audience devaluation a potential action (e.g., stealing) would cause and weigh this against the action's direct payoff (e.g., acquiring). The shame system manifests all of the functional properties required to solve this adaptive problem, with the aversive intensity of shame encoding the social cost. Previous data from three Western(ized) societies indicated that the shame evoked when the individual anticipates committing various acts closely tracks the magnitude of devaluation expressed by audiences in response to those acts. Here we report data supporting the broader claim that shame is a basic part of human biology. We conducted an experiment among 899 participants in 15 small-scale communities scattered around the world. Despite widely varying languages, cultures, and subsistence modes, shame in each community closely tracked the devaluation of local audiences (mean = +0.84). The fact that the same pattern is encountered in such mutually remote communities suggests that shame's match to audience devaluation is a design feature crafted by selection and not a product of cultural contact or convergent cultural evolution.
Becoming valuable to fellow group members so that one would attract assistance in times of need is a major adaptive problem. To solve it, the individual needs a predictive map of the degree to which others value different acts so that, in choosing how to act, the payoff arising from others' valuation of a potential action (e.g., showing bandmates that one is a skilled forager by pursuing a hard-to-acquire prey item) can be added to the direct payoff of the action (e.g., gaining the nutrients of the prey captured). The pride system seems to incorporate all of the elements necessary to solve this adaptive problem. Importantly, data from western(-ized), educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies indicate close quantitative correspondences between pride and the valuations of audiences. Do those results generalize beyond industrial mass societies? To find out, we conducted an experiment among 567 participants in 10 small-scale societies scattered across Central and South America, Africa, and Asia: () Bosawás Reserve, Nicaragua; () Cotopaxi, Ecuador; () Drâa-Tafilalet, Morocco; () Enugu, Nigeria; () Le Morne, Mauritius; () La Gaulette, Mauritius; () Tuva, Russia; () Shaanxi and Henan, China; () farming communities in Japan; and () fishing communities in Japan. Despite widely varying languages, cultures, and subsistence modes, pride in each community closely tracked the valuation of audiences locally (mean = +0.66) and even across communities (mean = +0.29). This suggests that the pride system not only develops the same functional architecture everywhere but also operates with a substantial degree of universality in its content.
Body awareness was studied experimentally in the rat snakes Elaphe radiata. The experimental design required that the snakes take into account the limits of their bodies when choosing a suitable hole for penetration into the shelter. The experimental setup consisted of two compartments, a launch chamber and a shelter, separated by a partition with openings of different diameters. The diameters of the holes and/or their position in the partition were changeable. The subjects were 20 snakes divided into two groups, for one of which only the locations of the holes varied; for another, both the location of the holes and the limits of the body varied. The body was increased by feeding the snakes. In the course of the first three experimental series the snakes formed the skill of taking into account the body limits, which manifested in the reduced number of unsuccessful attempts to select holes too small for their bodies. During the fourth series, with the locations of holes randomized for each trial, the snakes demonstrated behavioral flexibility, significantly more often penetrating into the shelter from the first attempt irrespectively of the location of the suitable hole. We argue that these results demonstrate the body-awareness in snakes.
Body schemata of rats Rattus norvegicus were studied using a procedure according to which the animals had to take into account the enlarged boundaries of their bodies. Rats of experimental and control groups were trained to get the bait putting the head through the hole of a certain size. Then the boundary of the body of rats of the experimental group was increased using a small cylindrical object mounted on the crown of their heads to prevent putting through the hole. For the control group rats, the size of the hole through which the animals have been trained to take the bait was reduced to prevent the penetration of the rat’s head. In the subsequent experimental series, the arrangement of the holes was varied. It is shown that, with the increased boundaries of the body, the rats are capable of forming a new learning adequate to situation change, which was reflected in the reliable reduction of the time for solving the problem by the end of each series and the reduced number of unsuccessful attempts. Rats of the experimental group also showed the ability to transfer previously gained experience to the new situation, when the location of the holes in the box was changed. The data suggest that the rats are able to modify the body scheme in accordance to change in its physical boundaries.
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