Addresses the nature of human sociality. By bringing together experimental and ethnographic data from fifteen different tribal societies, the contributors are able to explore the universality of human motives in economic decision-making, and the importance of social, institutional and cultural factors.
What motives underlie the ways humans interact socially? Are these the same for all societies? Are these part of our nature, or influenced by our environments? Over the last decade, research in experimental economics has emphatically falsified the textbook representation of Homo economicus. Literally hundreds of experiments suggest that people care not only about their own material payoffs, but also about such things as fairness, equity and reciprocity. However, this research left fundamental questions unanswered: Are such social preferences stable components of human nature; or, are they modulated by economic, social and cultural environments? Until now, experimental research could not address this question because virtually all subjects had been university students, and while there are cultural differences among student populations throughout the world, these differences are small compared to the full range of human social and cultural environments. A vast amount of ethnographic and historical research suggests that people's motives are influenced by economic, social, and cultural environments, yet such methods can only yield circumstantial evidence about human motives. Combining ethnographic and experimental approaches to fill this gap, this book breaks new ground in reporting the results of a large cross-cultural study aimed at determining the sources of social (non-selfish) preferences that underlie the diversity of human sociality. The same experiments which provided evidence for social preferences among university students were performed in fifteen small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of social, economic and cultural conditions by experienced field researchers who had also done long-term ethnographic field work in these societies. The findings of these experiments demonstrated that no society in which experimental behaviour is consistent with the canonical model of self-interest. Indeed, results showed that the variation in behaviour is far greater than previously thought, and that the differences between societies in market integration and the importance of cooperation explain a substantial portion of this variation, which individual-level economic and demographic variables could not. Finally, the extent to which experimental play mirrors patterns of interaction found in everyday life is traced. The book starts with a succinct but substantive introduction to the use of game theory as an analytical tool and its use in the social sciences for the rigorous testing of hypotheses about fundamental aspects of social behaviour outside artificially constructed laboratories. The results of the fifteen case studies are summarized in a suggestive chapter about the scope of the project.
This book marks an exciting convergence towards the idea that human culture and cognition are rooted in the character of human social interaction, which is unique in the animal kingdom. Roots of Human Sociality attempts for the first time to explore the underlying properties of social interaction viewed from across many disciplines, and examines their origins in infant development and in human evolution. Are interaction patterns in adulthood affected by cultural differences in childhood upbringing? Apes, unlike human infants of only 12 months, fail to understand pointing and the intention behind it. Nevertheless apes can imitate and analyze complex behavior - how do they do it? Deaf children brought up by speaking parents invent their own languages. How might adults deprived of a fully organized language communicate?This book makes the case that the study of these sorts of phenomenon holds the key to understanding the foundations of human social life. The conclusion: our unique brand of social interaction is at the root of what makes us human.
Examining recent experiments on human altruism in economics, this book offers a critique of naturalistic approaches to the phenomenon of human sociality. It draws on philosophical theories of social conflict and recognition, and on theological concepts of neighborly love.
This book marks an exciting convergence towards the idea that human culture and cognition are rooted in the character of human social interaction, which is unique in the animal kingdom. Roots of Human Sociality attempts for the first time to explore the underlying properties of social interaction viewed from across many disciplines, and examines their origins in infant development and in human evolution. Are interaction patterns in adulthood affected by cultural differences in childhood upbringing? Apes, unlike human infants of only 12 months, fail to understand pointing and the intention behind it. Nevertheless apes can imitate and analyze complex behavior - how do they do it? Deaf children brought up by speaking parents invent their own languages. How might adults deprived of a fully organized language communicate?This book makes the case that the study of these sorts of phenomenon holds the key to understanding the foundations of human social life. The conclusion: our unique brand of social interaction is at the root of what makes us human.
This text attempts a broad theoretical synthesis within the field of sociology and its closely allied sister discipline of anthropology. It draws together these disciplines' theoretical approaches into a synthesized theory called Darwinian conflict theory.
Questions about the origins of human cooperation have long puzzled and divided scientists. Social norms that foster fair-minded behavior, altruism and collective action undergird the foundations of large-scale human societies, but we know little about how these norms develop or spread, or why the intensity and breadth of human cooperation varies among different populations. What is the connection between social norms that encourage fair dealing and economic growth? How are these social norms related to the emergence of centralized institutions? Informed by a pioneering set of cross-cultural data, Experimenting with Social Norms advances our understanding of the evolution of human cooperation and the expansion of complex societies. Editors Jean Ensminger and Joseph Henrich present evidence from an exciting collaboration between anthropologists and economists. Using experimental economics games, researchers examined levels of fairness, cooperation, and norms for punishing those who violate expectations of equality across a diverse swath of societies, from hunter-gatherers in Tanzania to a small town in rural Missouri. These experiments tested individuals’ willingness to conduct mutually beneficial transactions with strangers that reap rewards only at the expense of taking a risk on the cooperation of others. The results show a robust relationship between exposure to market economies and social norms that benefit the group over narrow economic self-interest. Levels of fairness and generosity are generally higher among individuals in communities with more integrated markets. Religion also plays a powerful role. Individuals practicing either Islam or Christianity exhibited a stronger sense of fairness, possibly because religions with high moralizing deities, equipped with ample powers to reward and punish, encourage greater prosociality. The size of the settlement also had an impact. People in larger communities were more willing to punish unfairness compared to those in smaller societies. Taken together, the volume supports the hypothesis that social norms evolved over thousands of years to allow strangers in more complex and large settlements to coexist, trade and prosper. Innovative and ambitious, Experimenting with Social Norms synthesizes an unprecedented analysis of social behavior from an immense range of human societies. The fifteen case studies analyzed in this volume, which include field experiments in Africa, South America, New Guinea, Siberia and the United States, are available for free download on the Foundation’s website:www.russellsage.org.
The last 20 years have yielded an explosion of information from the still nascent field of social neuroscience. Studies devoted to identifying neural correlates of social cognitive and moral judgment processing have established subcortical and cortical regions that are integral for how we filter and interpret information pertinent to family and friends, our social in-group, and strangers and engage in everything from forming immediate impressions of them to judging their behavior with respect to complex moral norms. What is less clear is how neural regions involved in implicit and explicit cognitive processing, or those cognitive processes that occur almost instantaneously as opposed to those that are more controlled respectively, interact to bias perceptions and behavior. Even less is known about how genes (and their variants) critical for neural function and the structural integrity within neural regions may modulate neural interactions critical for social cognitive and moral judgment processing. Recent methodological advancements assessing how different neural regions functionally work together with others, and how different genetic variants integral for neural function alter behavior, are establishing a more comprehensive view of the implicit and explicit social brain. These advancements demonstrate that structures critical for implicit processing, e.g., the amygdala, reliably covary in their activity with structures integral for explicit processing, e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, early and often during the processing of social information of varying complexity and in different contexts. This suggests that interactions between these regions are necessary to successfully navigate and immediately adapt to one’s environment. In turn, genetic variants like those that comprise the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene, oxytocin receptor gene, or serotonin transporter gene likely play an important role in modulating the interaction between and within neural regions integral for interpersonal trust, intergroup processes, person perception, theory of mind (i.e., inferring the thoughts and feelings of others), and moral judgment processing. The purpose of this Research Topic is to further our understanding of how subcortical and cortical neural regions that vary in their functional contributions to social behavior also depend upon genetic influences in shaping individuals’ perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and how information is attended to and encoded to influence future social behaviors. It is particularly important to demonstrate how these regions reliably interact as a function of processing speed (i.e., implicit or explicit) and/or context to predict behavior or performance. Demonstrating how different genetic factors in turn moderate this interaction, or how genetic factors alter a specific region’s interaction with other regions, is equally important. We therefore solicit original empirical work, review and opinion papers, and methodological papers that can promote our understanding of how interactions between neural regions underlying implicit and explicit processes influence social cognitive and moral judgment processing and are, in turn, modulated by genetic predispositions. This includes work that utilizes fMRI, EEG and psychophysiological methodologies, lesion samples, as well as developmental and computational approaches. This Research Topic could serve as an important step in the evolution of our understanding of the complexity of the social mind as well as illuminate the robust effects context has on the way the brain interacts with different stimuli at every level of cognitive processing.
Scientific developments have increasingly been transforming our understanding of the place of human beings in nature. The contributors to this book focus on the current status of research on sociality and the evolution of cooperative and altruistic behaviour in non-human and human primates. They examine questions related to the evolution, cultural viability, and hormonal underpinnings of human sociality in specific detail, and describe patterns of sociality that shed light on human social behaviour.
Human beings evolved in the company of others. Mutually reinforcing connections between brains, minds, and societies have profound implications for physical and emotional health. Social Neuroscience offers a comprehensive new framework for studying human brain development and human behavior in their social context.
