The Developmental and Evolutionary Origins of Human Helping and Sharing

Warneken, Felix; Tomasello, Michael

doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195399813.013.007

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 61 publications

(69 reference statements)

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“…Because non-human primates appear to lack the ability to attribute to others mental states that are different from their own, they may be unable to empathize with others, to recognize the need for help in the absence of a request, and to recognize attempts by others to cheat or free-load [51,[95][96][97][98]. Nonetheless, this distinction between human and nonhuman primates is not as clear-cut as it might seem.…”

Section: Cognitive and Neural Boundaries Of Cooperationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptations for social cognition in the primate brain

Platt

Seyfarth

Cheney

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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One contribution of 18 to a theme issue 'The evolution of cooperation based on direct fitness benefits'. Studies of the factors affecting reproductive success in group-living monkeys have traditionally focused on competitive traits, like the acquisition of high dominance rank. Recent research, however, indicates that the ability to form cooperative social bonds has an equally strong effect on fitness. Two implications follow. First, strong social bonds make individuals' fitness interdependent and the 'free-rider' problem disappears. Second, individuals must make adaptive choices that balance competition and cooperation-often with the same partners. The proximate mechanisms underlying these behaviours are only just beginning to be understood. Recent results from cognitive and systems neuroscience provide us some evidence that many social and nonsocial decisions are mediated ultimately by abstract, domain-general neural mechanisms. However, other populations of neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex, striatum, amygdala and parietal cortex specifically encode the type, importance and value of social information. Whether these specialized populations of neurons arise by selection or through developmental plasticity in response to the challenges of social life remains unknown. Many brain areas are homologous and show similar patterns of activity in human and nonhuman primates. In both groups, cortical activity is modulated by hormones like oxytocin and by the action of certain genes that may affect individual differences in behaviour. Taken together, results suggest that differences in cooperation between the two groups are a matter of degree rather than constituting a fundamental, qualitative distinction.

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Section: Cognitive and Neural Boundaries Of Cooperationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptations for social cognition in the primate brain

Platt

Seyfarth

Cheney

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…Nevertheless, their score was not zero, which corresponds to reports of occasional targeted helping in this species (Warneken and Tomasello, 2015; but see Tennie et al, 2016), as well as occasional food sharing or alerting others of danger. In addition to prosociality, targeted helping also has an important cognitive component, which is particularly strong in the large-brained apes (Burkart et al, 2017a).…”

Section: Prosocial Concernmentioning

confidence: 90%

Evolutionary Origins of Morality: Insights From Non-human Primates

2018

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The aim of this contribution is to explore the origins of moral behavior and its underlying moral preferences and intuitions from an evolutionary perspective. Such a perspective encompasses both the ultimate, adaptive function of morality in our own species, as well as the phylogenetic distribution of morality and its key elements across primates. First, with regard to the ultimate function, we argue that human moral preferences are best construed as adaptations to the affordances of the fundamentally interdependent hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our hominin ancestors. Second, with regard to the phylogenetic origin, we show that even though full-blown human morality is unique to humans, several of its key elements are not. Furthermore, a review of evidence from non-human primates regarding prosocial concern, conformity, and the potential presence of universal, biologically anchored and arbitrary cultural norms shows that these elements of morality are not distributed evenly across primate species. This suggests that they have evolved along separate evolutionary trajectories. In particular, the element of prosocial concern most likely evolved in the context of shared infant care, which can be found in humans and some New World monkeys. Strikingly, many if not all of the elements of morality found in non-human primates are only evident in individualistic or dyadic contexts, but not as third-party reactions by truly uninvolved bystanders. We discuss several potential explanations for the unique presence of a systematic third-party perspective in humans, but focus particularly on mentalizing ability and language. Whereas both play an important role in present day, full-blown human morality, it appears unlikely that they played a causal role for the original emergence of morality. Rather, we suggest that the most plausible scenario to date is that human morality emerged because our hominin ancestors, equipped on the one hand with large and powerful brains inherited from their ape-like ancestor, and on the other hand with strong prosocial concern as a result of cooperative breeding, could evolve into an ever more interdependent social niche.

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“…The evolutionary, economic, and biological origins of human cooperation remain hotly debated [26][27][28] . Both empathy and strategic reasoning contribute to cooperation in humans 29 , supported by 192 distinct but interacting brain networks.…”

Section: Discussion: 190mentioning

confidence: 99%

Neuronal Mechanisms of Strategic Cooperation

Ong

Madlon-Kay

Platt

2018

Preprint

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150w): 2Here we demonstrate that during strategic gameplay monkeys behave as if they reason 4 recursively about other individuals' beliefs and desires in order to predict their choices and to guide their own actions, especially the decision to cooperate. Neurons in mid superior temporal 6 sulcus (mSTS), the putative homolog of the human temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), signal abstract non-perceptual social information, including payoffs, intentions, and outcomes, and 8 further distinguish between social and nonsocial agents while monkeys play the game. We demonstrate for the first time that a subpopulation of these neurons selectively signals 10 cooperatively obtained rewards. Neurons in the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACCg), an area implicated in vicarious reinforcement and empathy, do not distinguish agency and as a 12population carry less information about strategic variables. These findings suggest the capacity to mentalize has deep roots in the strategic social behavior of primates, and endorse mSTS as the 14 evolutionary wellspring of these functions. 16 Main: 18Both emotional and cognitive mechanisms shape the decisions people make when they interact 20 with others 1,2 . Specifically, vicarious feelings of reward or pain experienced by another, often termed empathy, can provoke prosocial actions 3 . Strategic reasoning about the beliefs, desires, 22and goals of another individual, a process referred to as mentalizing or theory of mind, guides the decision to cooperate with or betray a partner 4,5 . These two processes interact as well; 24 manipulations that increase empathy enhance cooperation 6 . Two separate but interacting brain systems appear to support empathy and mentalizing during social decisions 7 . In humans, 26 empathy and vicarious experience evoke hemodynamic activity in anterior cingulate gyrus (ACCg), anterior insula, and amygdala, and neurons in primate ACCg and amygdala signal 28vicarious rewards delivered to other monkeys 8,9 . By contrast, thinking about the beliefs, desires, or goals of others evokes hemodynamic activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and 30 temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) in humans 7,10-12 . The neuronal mechanisms underlying such mentalizing-related brain activity, however, remain poorly understood in part due to the 32 difficulty of eliciting recursive social reasoning in primates or other animals in which neuronal activity can be studied directly (but see Haroush 13 ) as well as the lack of neurophysiological or 34histological evidence for a TPJ homolog in nonhuman primates 14,15 . 36To address this gap, we trained monkeys to play a version of the classic "chicken" game from behavioral economics 16 . We also recorded spiking activity of 448 neurons in the middle 38 superior temporal sulcus (mSTS), a brain area known to encode perceptual social information like faces 17,18 and recently proposed as the primate homolog of TPJ based on MRI-based 40 functional connectivity 15 . For comparison, we recorded spiking activity of 528 neurons in ACCg, an area strongly l...

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The Developmental and Evolutionary Origins of Human Helping and Sharing

Cited by 5 publications

References 61 publications

Adaptations for social cognition in the primate brain

Adaptations for social cognition in the primate brain

Evolutionary Origins of Morality: Insights From Non-human Primates

Neuronal Mechanisms of Strategic Cooperation

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