The Evolution of Tag-Based Cooperation in Humans

Abstract

Recent game-theoretic simulation and analytical models have demonstrated that cooperative strategies mediated by indicators of cooperative potential, or "tags," can invade, spread, and resist invasion by noncooperators across a range of population-structure and cost-benefit scenarios. The plausibility of these models is potentially relevant for human evolutionary accounts insofar as humans possess some phenotypic trait that could serve as a reliable tag. Linguistic markers, such as accent and dialect, have frequently been either cursorily defended or promptly dismissed as satisfying the criteria of a reliable and evolutionarüy viable tag. This paper integrates evidence ftom a range of disciplines to develop and assess the claim that speech accent mediated the evolution of tag-based cooperation in humans. Existing evidence warrants the preliminary conclusion that accent markers meet the demands of an evolutionarüy viable tag and potentially afforded a cost-effective solution to the challenges of maintaining viable cooperative relationships in diffuse, regional social networks.

The development of tag-based cooperation via a socially acquired trait

“…These findings have motivated broad claims about the evolutionary importance of accent as an assortative guide in affiliation and cooperation (Cohen, 2012). The apparent priority of accent over other salient markers of social identity so early in development has prompted the proposal that "accent is a privileged guide to cultural learning" and that "social preferences and reasoning based on accent may have origins in cognitive evolution"; specifically, "cognitive evolution may have favored attention to accent over other social variables (e.g., race) that would not likely have differed across neighboring groups in ancient societies" (Kinzler et al, 2011).…”

Young children discriminate genuine from fake smiles and expect people displaying genuine smiles to be more prosocial

“…However, in the absence of direct experience or reputational information, we need cues that can help us detect honest cooperators -cues which are hard to fake. In an intergroup context, these can include the accent with which someone speaks or other group-specific characteristics signaling in-group membership (Cohen, 2012;Heyes, 2013;Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, 2012). However we also need to be able to detect likely cooperators within intragroup/interpersonal contexts.…”

Early emerging system for reasoning about the social nature of food

“…Language and accent are robust indicators of social and cultural groups (67,68), and infants are sensitive to the social significance of language (58,69). Therefore, we asked whether infants selectively generalize food preferences across people who speak the same language.…”