Abstract
Humans are unique both in their cognitive abilities and in the extent of cooperation in large groups of unrelated individuals. How our species evolved high intelligence in spite of various costs of having a large brain is perplexing. Equally puzzling is how our ancestors managed to overcome the collective action problem and evolve strong innate preferences for cooperative behaviour. Here, I theoretically study the evolution of social-cognitive competencies as driven by selection emerging from the need to produce public goods in games against nature or in direct competition with other groups. I use collaborative ability in collective actions as a proxy for social-cognitive competencies. My results suggest that collaborative ability is more likely to evolve first by between-group conflicts and then later be utilized and improved in games against nature. If collaborative abilities remain low, the species is predicted to become genetically dimorphic with a small proportion of individuals contributing to public goods and the rest free-riding. Evolution of collaborative ability creates conditions for the subsequent evolution of collaborative communication and cultural learning.
Highlights
Our species is unique in a great variety of different ways but the most crucial of them are related to the size and complexity of our brain [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Many social organisms living in stable groups often engage in aggressive group interactions with conspecifics from neighbouring groups over territory and other resources, including mating opportunities [34,35,49,50,51,52,53]
There are limits on the extent and benefits of simple cooperative acts imposed by the collective action problem
Summary
Our species is unique in a great variety of different ways but the most crucial of them are related to the size and complexity of our brain [1,2,3,4,5,6]. It has been argued that the evolutionary roots of human cognition are in our capacity to form shared goals, be committed to them, and collaborate in pursuing them and that this capacity evolved within the context of small-group cooperation [23,24,25] that enhanced competitive ability visa-vis that of other groups [3,5,26]. Within this version of the social intelligence hypothesis, selection for increased ability to collaborate with others They intentionally neglect the effects of language, culture and social institutions which are crucial for human ability to cooperate in very large groups
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