Invariances in the architecture of pride across small-scale societies

Abstract

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.

Friendship jealousy: One tool for maintaining friendships in the face of third-party threats?

“…Specifically, we would provide some of the first empirical evidence for a novel theory of friendship jealousy-a phenomenon that, although seemingly common (e.g., Alford, 2014;Rosenfeld, 2004;Hruschka, 2010), remains largely unexplored. Second, results would elucidate the architecture of friendship jealousy in ways similar to other recent research on discrete emotions (e.g., Sell et al, 2009;Sell et al, 2018;Shi et al, 2015;Sznycer, 2019;Sznycer et al, 2017;Sznycer, Cosmides & Tooby, 2017;Sznycer et al, 2018aSznycer et al, , 2018bTracy & Robins, 2006;Tracy, Shariff, & Cheng, 2010): showing what inputs do (and do not) evoke friendship jealousy, which cues are prioritized in driving it, and which behavioral outputs it motivates. Third, predicted findings would challenge existing conceptualizations of friendship jealousy from both early research and lay intuitions (Selman, 1980;Sharp & Welty, 1991)-that friendship jealousy is solely negative-instead aligning with functional research on negative affect serving some beneficial ends.…”

“…We would expect friendship jealousy to exist across nations, cultures, subsistence patterns and so on-and evidence suggests that it does (Hruschka, 2010). Future work should include large-scale studies, studies in non-Western samples, and studies in small-scale societies to assess both the possible universality of friendship jealousy as well as possible cultural differences therein (see, e.g., Scelza, 2014;Sznycer et al, 2018aSznycer et al, , 2018b. Understanding differing cultural norms about friendship exclusivity, for example, and/or features of different local ecologies (e.g., number of prospective friends we might encounter; Schug, Yuki, Horikawa, Takamura, 2009) could lead to empirically-testable predictions about systematic differences in friendship jealousy (see, e.g., Scelza et al, 2019).…”

Biological Anthropology in 2018: Grounded in Theory, Questioning Contexts, Embracing Innovation

“…Consistent with existing experimental data from Western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) populations, field experiments carried out with sixteen globally dispersed subsistence‐scale populations provided further evidence that pride is a universal human attribute that functions to help motivate cooperative behavior (Sznycer et al. ).…”

Cross-cultural invariances in the architecture of shame

“…Although data on shame and partner choice are scarce, there is some evidence consistent with those expectations (40)(41)(42). Moreover, recent cross-cultural evidence supports the hypothesis that the complementary emotion of pride is an adaptation that evolved to motivate the pursuit of courses of action where the prospective benefits of increased valuation exceed the costs, to advertise positive information about the self, and to profit from the benefits of increased valuation by others (43)(44)(45). By hypothesis, shame serves analogous functions with respect to negative information that threatens to diminish others' valuation of the individual.…”