1Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA.
Pers Soc Psychol Rev. 2014 May;18(2):168-86. doi: 10.1177/1088868314521016. Epub 2014 Feb 5.
Grief is a puzzling phenomenon. It is often costly and prolonged, potentially increasing mortality rates, drug abuse, withdrawal from social life, and susceptibility to illness. These costs cannot be repaid by the deceased and therefore might appear wasted. In the following article, we propose a possible solution. Using the principles of social selection theory, we argue that an important selective pressure behind the human grief response was the social decisions of other humans. We combine this with insights from signaling theory, noting that grief shares many properties with other hard-to-fake social signals. We therefore contend that grief was shaped by selective forces to function as a hard-to-fake signal of (a) a person's propensity to form strong, non-utilitarian bonds and (b) a person's current level of commitment to a group or cause. This theory explains many of the costly symptoms of grief and provides a progressive framework for future research.
悲伤是一种令人费解的现象。它常常代价高昂且旷日持久，可能会增加死亡率、药物滥用、脱离社交生活以及易患病的风险。这些代价无法由逝者偿还，因此可能显得是浪费的。在接下来的文章中，我们提出了一种可能的解决方案。我们运用社会选择理论的原理，认为人类悲伤反应背后的一个重要选择压力是其他人类的社会决策。我们将这一点与信号理论的见解结合起来，指出悲伤与其他难以伪造的社会信号有许多共同特征。因此，我们认为悲伤是由选择压力塑造的，其作用是作为（a）一个人形成强烈、非功利性纽带的倾向，以及（b）一个人对一个群体或事业当前承诺水平的难以伪造的信号。这一理论解释了悲伤的许多代价高昂的症状，并为未来的研究提供了一个渐进的框架。
