Gains to cooperation drive the evolution of egalitarianism

Hooper, Paul L.; Kaplan, Hillard; Jaeggi, Adrian V.

doi:10.1038/s41562-021-01059-y

Cited by 27 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Direct reciprocity and behavioral contextualization are nonetheless distinct forms of behavioral complexity. In the former, one’s consecutive actions toward a fixed opponent can vary ( 56 ). In the latter, one’s concurrent actions toward multiple opponents can vary.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of cooperation with contextualized behavior

McAvoy

Plotkin

2022

Sci. Adv.

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How do networks of social interaction govern the emergence and stability of prosocial behavior? Theoretical studies of this question typically assume unconditional behavior, meaning that an individual either cooperates with all opponents or defects against all opponents—an assumption that produces a pessimistic outlook for the evolution of cooperation, especially in highly connected populations. Although these models may be appropriate for simple organisms, humans have sophisticated cognitive abilities that allow them to distinguish between opponents and social contexts, so they can condition their behavior on the identity of opponents. Here, we study the evolution of cooperation when behavior is conditioned by social context, but behaviors can spill over between contexts. Our mathematical analysis shows that contextualized behavior rescues cooperation across a broad range of population structures, even when the number of social contexts is small. Increasing the number of social contexts further promotes cooperation by orders of magnitude.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of cooperation with contextualized behavior

McAvoy

Plotkin

2022

Sci. Adv.

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“…1.5 A more promising approach emphasizes the role of leveling strategies in supporting the capacity of human groups to enforce strong egalitarian norms among its members and punish antisocial behaviors like dominance, aggrandizing, and hoarding (Boehm 1993;Erdal & Whiten 1996;Power 2009). A rich set of mathematical models now provide a comprehensive picture of how cooperation can evolve in socially asymmetric settings either through third-party punishment performed by leveling coalitions (Boyd et al 2010) or second-party punishment such as in shunning and withdrawing from cooperative relationships with dominant individuals (Hooper et al 2021). Most notably, the role of food sharing as a power leveling mechanism that could lead to the disruption of primate-like dominance hierarchies has been mathematically modeled (Gavrilets 2012).…”

Section: 3mentioning

confidence: 99%

Egalitarian Sharing Explains Food Distributions in a Small-Scale Society

Pinheiro

2022

JASSS

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Among social anthropologists, there is virtual consensus that the food-sharing practices of smallscale non-agricultural groups cannot be understood in isolation from the broader repertoire of leveling strategies that prevent would-be dominants from exercising power and influence over likely subordinates. In spite of that widespread view, quantitatively rigorous empirical studies of food sharing and cooperation in small-scale human groups have typically ignored the internal connection between leveling of income and political power, drawing inspiration instead from evolutionary models that are neutral about social role asymmetries. In this paper, I introduce a spatially explicit agent-based model of hunter-gatherer food sharing in which individuals are driven by the goal of maximizing their own income while minimizing income asymmetries among others. Model simulation results show that seven basic patterns of inter-household food transfers described in detail for the Hadza hunters of Tanzania can be simultaneously reproduced with striking accuracy under the assumption that agents selectively support and carry on sharing interactions in ways that maximize their income leveling potential.

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“…Bregman, 2019;see Hallpike, 2020;Buckner, 2020 for critical reviews). The more nuanced and astute conclusion is that when groups are small and many people know your name, then the greatest individual rewards come from attending to local norms of how to behave, maintaining your reputation, and valuing group harmony above all (Singh et al, 2017;von Rueden, 2020, Hooper et al, 2021. Put simply, fairness and egalitarianism can overlap with self-interest, and the chances of social harmony are increased when they do.…”

Section: Minimal Conditions Of Open Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human nature & the open society

Scott‐Phillips¹

2022

Preprint

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How do we most effectively live together? The goal of this paper is to help reinvigorate the concept of open society, by presenting an updated, summary model of the panhuman cognitive phenotype (‘human nature’), and summarising some of its most important implications for how to think about collective governance. I describe the human mind as a fundamentally social mind, geared towards the specific adaptive challenges of an ultra-social existence among both kin and non-kin. There are, in other words, deep evolutionary and cognitive reasons why reason and decision making are especially effective in dialogue and interaction within small groups. This generates in turn a number of features that balance the interests of relevant parties and work against populist appeal. Relevant and revealing real-world examples include jury discussion in criminal trials, editing on Wikipedia, and the 2018 Irish referendum on abortion. The challenge is how to recapitulate those dynamics in large and complex societies. By distinguishing open engagement within and between institutions, I argue that the traditional liberal demands of open society meet this challenge only in part. We should research, teach and advocate for more overtly open and interactive approaches to governance, including in particular deliberative approaches to law making. This will make more effective use of distinctive human cognitive capacities, and provide new responses to conservative worries about the possible excesses of open society.

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Gains to cooperation drive the evolution of egalitarianism

Cited by 27 publications

References 55 publications

Evolution of cooperation with contextualized behavior

Evolution of cooperation with contextualized behavior

Egalitarian Sharing Explains Food Distributions in a Small-Scale Society

Human nature & the open society

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Gains to cooperation drive the evolution of egalitarianism

Cited by 27 publications

References 55 publications

Evolution of cooperation with contextualized behavior

Evolution of cooperation with contextualized behavior

Egalitarian Sharing Explains Food Distributions in a Small-Scale Society

Human nature &amp; the open society

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Human nature & the open society