Barrett H Clark, Cosmides Leda, Tooby John
Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture; Department of Anthropology; University of California; Los Angeles, CA USA.
Commun Integr Biol. 2010 Nov;3(6):522-4. doi: 10.4161/cib.3.6.12604. Epub 2010 Nov 1.
The evolution of cooperation between unrelated individuals has long been a puzzle in evolutionary biology. Formal models show that reciprocal altruism is approximately as stable as kin-based altruism when cooperators can assort. Why, then, is reciprocal altruism so rare? We suggest that the key lies in the difficulty of assortment based on underlying intentions: if individuals are able to reliably detect others' cooperative intent then cooperation is stable, but detecting intentions is notoriously difficult, especially when there are incentives to deceive. For this reason, we suggest, there is likely to be a coevolutionary relationship between human cooperativeness and our skills of social causal cognition; it is not a coincidence that we are both extraordinarily social, cooperating with non-kin to a degree not seen in other species and extraordinarily good at inferring others' beliefs, intentions and motivations, a skill sometimes known as mindreading. We discuss results of a recent study that provides evidence for this coevolutionary view of cooperation and social cognition.
无关个体之间合作行为的进化长期以来一直是进化生物学中的一个难题。形式模型表明，当合作者能够进行分类时，互惠利他行为与基于亲缘关系的利他行为大致一样稳定。那么，为什么互惠利他行为如此罕见呢？我们认为关键在于基于潜在意图进行分类的困难：如果个体能够可靠地察觉他人的合作意图，那么合作就是稳定的，但察觉意图是出了名的困难，尤其是当存在欺骗动机时。我们认为，正因为如此，人类的合作性与我们的社会因果认知技能之间可能存在协同进化关系；我们既极度社会化，与非亲属的合作程度在其他物种中未见，又极其擅长推断他人的信念、意图和动机（这种技能有时被称为读心术），这并非巧合。我们讨论了最近一项研究的结果，该研究为合作与社会认知的这种协同进化观点提供了证据。
