Functional Interdependence Theory: An Evolutionary Account of Social Situations (original) (raw)
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Relationships and the social brain: Integrating psychological and evolutionary perspectives
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Cooperation came first: Evolution and human cognition
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Contextual behavioral perspectives on learning and behavior reside under the umbrella of evolution science. In this paper we briefly review current developments in evolution science that bear on learning and behavior, concluding that behavior is now moving to the center of evolution studies. Learning is one of the main ladders of evolution by establishing functional benchmarks within which genetic adaptations can be advantaged. We apply that approach to the beginning feature of human cognition according to Relational Frame Theory: derived symmetry in coordination framing. When combined with the idea that cooperation came before major advances in human cognition or culture, existing abilities in social referencing, joint attention, perspective-taking skills, and relational learning ensure that the behavioral subcomponents of symmetrical equivalence relations would be reinforced. When coordination framing emerged and came under arbitrary contextual control as an operant class, a template was established for the development of multiple relational frames and the emergence and evolutionary impact of human cognition as we know it. Implications of these ideas for translational research are briefly discussed.
Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation
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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.
Why We Need Interdependence Theory
Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2008
The exceptional sociability of human life colors nearly every phenomenon in the social and behavioral sciences. However, most psychological theories continue to adopt a within-person perspective, analyzing human behavior by reference to individual-level biological processes, personal dispositions, or cognitive experiences. Interdependence theory is an important antidote to this actor-focused bias. Interdependence theory identifies the most important characteristics of interpersonal situations via a comprehensive analysis of situation structure and describes the implications of structure for understanding intrapersonal and interpersonal processes. Situation structure matters because it is the interpersonal reality within which motives are activated, toward which cognition is oriented and around which interaction unfolds. This paper describes key principles of interdependence structure and processes, and illustrates the utility of an interdependence theoretic analysis via a review of four phenomena -regulatory fit, persistence in the face of dissatisfaction, tit-for-tat versus generosity, and the origins and consequences of trust.
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 2013
In social interactions, decision makers are often unaware of their interdependence with others, precluding the realization of shared long-term benefits. In an experiment, pairs of participants played an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma under various conditions involving differing levels of interdependence information. Each pair was assigned to one of four conditions: "No-Info" players saw their own actions and outcomes, but were not told that they interacted with another person; "Min-Info" players knew they interacted with another person but still without seeing the other's actions or outcomes; "Mid-Info" players discovered the other's actions and outcomes as they were revealed over time; and "Max-Info" players were also shown a complete payoff matrix mapping actions to outcomes from the outset and throughout the game. With higher levels of interdependence information, we found increased individual cooperation and mutual cooperation, driven by increased reciprocating cooperation (in response to a counterpart's cooperation). Furthermore, joint performance and satisfaction were higher for pairs with more information. We discuss how awareness of interdependence may encourage cooperative behavior in real-world interactions.
Social interactions : Evolution, Psychology and Benefits
Why are we social? Why most other animal species are? What are the pressures and benefits urging for social gatherings? And how are the necessary rules regulating social interactions built? Sociality and social interactions represent one of the most transversal topics in current research. The scientific approach of social interactions implies different theoretical and methodological perspectives, targeting the resolution of various complementary questions such as the causes of social behaviors, their dynamics, their development, their phylogenetic history, the attribution of social roles, and the modalities of synchronization and organization between individuals pursuing different or opposite goals, etc. This book gathers a set of contributions addressing the recent advances in the understanding of biological, neurological, psychological or socio-economic factors influencing social interactions in human and nonhuman (vertebrates and invertebrates) animals. (Imprint: Nova)
The evolutionary basis of human social learning
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2012
Humans are characterized by an extreme dependence on culturally transmitted information. Such dependence requires the complex integration of social and asocial information to generate effective learning and decision making. Recent formal theory predicts that natural selection should favour adaptive learning strategies, but relevant empirical work is scarce and rarely examines multiple strategies or tasks. We tested nine hypotheses derived from theoretical models, running a series of experiments investigating factors affecting when and how humans use social information, and whether such behaviour is adaptive, across several computer-based tasks. The number of demonstrators, consensus among demonstrators, confidence of subjects, task difficulty, number of sessions, cost of asocial learning, subject performance and demonstrator performance all influenced subjects' use of social information, and did so adaptively. Our analysis provides strong support for the hypothesis that human social learning is regulated by adaptive learning rules.
Evolutionary Perspectives on Interpersonal Relationships
Interpersonal communication scholars often integrate and synthesize the work of other disciplines, and their work is affected by developments in those disciplines. One such development is the (re)emergence of evolutionary approaches for studying human behavior. Although evolutionary theory is considered among humanity's crowning scientific-theoretical achievements ever since Darwin (1859), its early (mis)application to human behaviors had regrettable consequences such as justifications of colonialism, slavery, eugenics, and genocide. Partially due to these abuses, evolutionary explanations of human behavior have been discredited for most of the latter part of the 20th century. Recently, however, evolutionary explanations of human behavior have become more sophisticated in their descriptive and predictive ability and in their ethical awareness, and have regained currency in many of the social sciences. In fact, evolutionary theory is poised to become the standard explanatory framework for any scientific explanation of human behavior.