Reply to comments. Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation: The Interdependence Hypothesis
By E. Wyman, Michael Tomasello, A. Melis, Claudio Tennie, E. Herrmann. 2012
527 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Modern theories of the evolution of human cooperation focus mainly on altruism. In contrast, we propose that humans’ species-unique forms of cooperation—as well as their species-unique forms of cognition, communication, and social life—all derive from mutualistic collaboration (with social selection against cheaters). In a first step, humans became obligate collaborative foragers such that individuals were interdependent with one another and so had a direct interest in the well-being of their partners. In this context, they evolved new skills and motivations for collaboration not possessed by other great apes (joint intentionality), and they helped their potential partners (and avoided cheaters). In a second step, these new collaborative skills and motivations were scaled up to group life in general, as modern humans faced competition from other groups. As part of this new group-mindedness, they created cultural conventions, norms, and institutions (all characterized by collective intentionality), with knowledge of a specific set of these marking individuals as members of a particular cultural group. Human cognition and sociality thus became ever more collaborative and altruistic as human individuals became ever more interdependent.
Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4ca7954462ccca7afd26299ba131e837db5ba1f7
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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
In Social Psychology
In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- How to learn about teaching: An evolutionary framework for the study of teaching behavior in humans and other animals. (2014, background): “In addition, humans often live in highly interdependent communities, which may shape caretaking, sharing, and cooperative behavior in the same ways as cooperative breeding does (Nettle et al. 2011; Roberts 2005; Tomasello et al. 2012).”