AI Quiz PDF

9 COOPERATIVE ALLIANCES 261 Figure 9.2 Distribution of Charity Ofers in Public and Anonymous Groups as a Function of the Perceived Cost of the Altruistic Action Source: Bereczkei, T., Birkas, B., & Kerekes, Z. (2010). Altruism toward strangers in need: Costly signaling in an industrial society. E...

9 COOPERATIVE ALLIANCES 261 Figure 9.2 Distribution of Charity Ofers in Public and Anonymous Groups as a Function of the Perceived Cost of the Altruistic Action Source: Bereczkei, T., Birkas, B., & Kerekes, Z. (2010). Altruism toward strangers in need: Costly signaling in an industrial society. Evolution and Human Behaviour, 31, 95–103. Reprinted with permission from Elsevier. Costs were measured on a 7-point scale by independent raters. Should Altruism Be Defned According to the Cost Incurred? According to existing evolutionary theories about the evolution of altruism, altruism is not considered to have occurred unless the individual incurs a cost. In kin selection, the person incurs a cost to the self that is ofset by the beneft gained by a genetic relative. In reciprocal altruism, the person incurs a cost to the self that is later ofset by a beneft gained when the friend returns the favor. In short, altruism has been defned by the costs the altruist incurs. What happens if we reframe the defnition? Rather than focusing on whether a person incurs costs, why not focus on the evolution of adaptations designed to deliver benefts to others? In fact, it is the existence of mechanisms designed to deliver benefts to others that we are trying to explain to begin with, regardless of whether they turn out to be costly. Let’s consider a simple example. Imagine that you are about to drive to your favorite grocery store to stock up on food for the week. Your friend asks whether she can come along to pick up a few items. By letting your friend come along, you incur no additional cost—you are going to the store anyway. So according to the classical theories of the evolution of altruism, this act would not be defned as altruism because you are not incurring a cost. Common sense, of course, tells us that you are certainly delivering a beneft to your friend, and this is true whether the act of helping your friend is benefcial to you, doesn’t have any efect, or is costly. From an evolutionary perspective, in fact, the greater the cost to a person of delivering benefts to others, the less widespread delivering such benefts will be. The less costly it is to deliver benefts to others, the more widespread they will be. Once adaptations for delivering benefts to others have evolved, further evolution will act to minimize their costs or even make it benefcial to the actor to deliver such benefts. This reasoning suggests that there is a large class of altruistic mechanisms that have gone unexplored—mechanisms that are designed to deliver benefts to others when actions stemming from them are least costly and most benefcial to the actor. The Banker’s Paradox Bankers who loan money face a dilemma: A larger number of people seek loans than any bank has money to lend. Bankers must make hard decisions about to whom they should loan money. Some people are good credit risks, showing a high likelihood of paying back the money. Others are poor credit risks and might not be able to pay the money back. The “banker’s paradox” (Tooby & Cosmides, 1996) is this: Those who need money most desperately are precisely the same people who are the poorest credit risks; those who need money less are far better credit risks. The bank ends up loaning money to those who need it least while refusing to loan money to those who need it most. PROBLEMS OF GROUP LIVING 262 This dilemma is similar to a profound adaptive problem faced by our ancestors. Each person has a limited amount of help to dispense to others. When someone urgently needs help, however, is precisely the time when they are the worst “credit risk” and are least likely to be able to reciprocate. If an ancestral woman became injured or diseased, for example, that is precisely the time when she most needed help. At the same time, this woman was least likely to be a good person on whom to spend one’s limited time helping. Our ancestors thus faced a dilemma similar to that of bankers: They had to make critical decisions about to whom to extend credit and when to extend credit to other individuals. Just as some people are better credit risks for banks, some people are more attractive as objects of our limited ability to assist. What sorts of adaptations might regulate these crucial decisions? First, people should be able to evaluate whether a person to whom they extend credit will be willing to repay in the future. Is this someone who commonly exploits others for their resources or someone who appreciates the help received and tries to bestow benefts on others? Second, people should be able to evaluate whether the person will be in a position to repay in the future. Is this person’s fortune likely to change for the better in the future, or will the dire current circumstances continue? Third, is helping this particular person the best use of one’s limited capacity to help, relative to other people who might be more attractive objects of investment? If the recipient of the help dies, sufers a permanent loss of status within the group, or becomes severely impaired, then one’s investment might be lost. If a person is in dire straits, then he or she becomes less desirable as an investment relative to individuals whose circumstances are more favorable. This might lead to adaptations that cause a person to callously abandon a friend precisely when he or she most needs help. On the other hand, if the person’s trouble is temporary, such as an unusual failure at hunting, then the person might be an especially attractive object for help. Indeed, helping someone whose need is temporary might be promising because the help would be greatly appreciated by the person in need. In sum, selection should favor adaptations that motivate good decisions about when and to whom to extend help. Yet the problem remains: Evolution should favor psychological mechanisms that cause people to desert you precisely when you most need help. How can selection get us out of this predicament? How might we evolve to induce others to help us when we need it most? Becoming Irreplaceable Tooby and Cosmides (1996) propose one solution to this adaptive problem: becoming irreplaceable or indispensable to others. Consider a hypothetical example. Suppose two people are in need of your assistance, but you can help only one of them. Both are your friends, and both provide you with benefts that are roughly equal in value to you (e.g., one helps you with your math homework, the other helps you by providing notes from classes you miss). Both fall ill at the same time, but you can nurse only one of them back to health. Which one do you help? One factor that might infuence this decision is which friend is more irreplaceable. If you know several other people who might provide you with notes from classes that you miss, for example, but you don’t know anyone else who can help you with your math homework, then your math friend is more difcult to replace. A replaceable person—someone who provides benefts that are readily available from others—is more vulnerable to desertion than someone who is irreplaceable, even if these two friends provide benefts to you that are equal in value. The loyalty of your friendship, according to this reasoning, should be based in part on how irreplaceable each friend has become. How might a person act to increase the odds of becoming irreplaceable? Tooby and Cosmides (1996) outline several strategies: 1. Promote a reputation that highlights one’s unique or exceptional attributes; 2. Be motivated to recognize personal attributes that others value but that they have difculty getting from other people; 9 COOPERATIVE ALLIANCES 3. Cultivate specialized skills that increase irreplaceability; 4. Preferentially seek out people or groups that value what you have to ofer and what others in the group tend to lack—groups in which one’s assets will be most appreciated; 5. Avoid social groups in which one’s unique attributes are not valued or in which one’s unique attributes are easily provided by others; or 6. Drive of rivals who ofer benefts that you alone formerly provided; people seem to be especially sensitive to “newcomers” who may duplicate your skill set, interfere with your existing alliances, or threaten to impose costs on your well-functioning group. (Cimino & Delton, 2010) No empirical studies have been conducted thus far to test the efectiveness of these strategies for becoming irreplaceable. However, these strategies appear to capture many aspects of what people actually do. People choose professions that make use of their unique talents, whether athletic ability, manual dexterity, spatial ability, facility with languages, musical talent, or social skills, for example. We split into smaller local groups—churches splinter of into denominations and sects; psychologists splinter of into diferent schools of thought. We sometimes feel threatened when the “new kid in town” has talents that are similar to or exceed the talents that formerly we alone ofered. In sum, people appear to act in many ways to cultivate a sense of individuality and uniqueness that would facilitate becoming irreplaceable—methods that encourage others to deliver benefts through thick and thin. Fair-Weather Friends, Deep Engagement, and the Dilemmas of Modern Living It’s easy to be someone’s friend when times are good. It’s when you are really in trouble that you fnd out who your true friends are. Everyone has experienced fairweather friends who are there only when times are good. But fnding a true friend, someone you know in your heart you can rely on when the going gets tough, can be a challenge. The problem is that when times are good, fair-weather friends and true friends act pretty much alike. It’s difcult to know who your true friends are when the sailing is smooth. Fair-weather friends can mimic true friends, so the adaptive problem becomes how to diferentiate true friends, who are deeply engaged in your welfare, from fair-weather friends, who will disappear in your hour of deepest need (Tooby & Cosmides, 1996). Selection should fashion assessment mechanisms to make these distinctions. The most reliable evidence of friendship comes from the help you receive when you are desperately in need, especially if that help is costly to the helper. Receiving help during this time will be a far more reliable litmus test than help received at any other time. Intuitively, we do seem to have special recall for precisely these times. We take pains to express our appreciation, communicating that we will never forget the person who helped us when we needed it most. Modern living creates a paradox (Tooby & Cosmides, 1996). Humans generally act to avoid episodes of hazardous personal trouble. Many traditional “hostile forces of nature” have been subdued. We have laws to deter robbery, assault, and murder. We have police to perform many of the functions previously performed by friends. We have modern medicine that has eliminated or reduced many diseases. We live in an environment that is safer and more stable than that inhabited by our ancestors. Ironically, therefore, we sufer from a relative scarcity of critical events that would allow us to accurately assess those who are deeply engaged in our welfare—to distinguish true from fair-weather friends. It is possible that the loneliness and sense of alienation that many feel in modern living—a lack of a feeling of deep social connectedness despite the presence of many warm and friendly interactions and hundreds of social media “friends”—might stem from the lack of critical assessment events that tell us who is deeply engaged in our welfare. 263 PROBLEMS OF GROUP LIVING 264 A profound adaptive problem for humans is distinguishing “true friends” who are deeply engaged in our welfare from “ fair-weather friends.” Limited Niches for Friendships According to the Tooby and Cosmides theory of the evolution of friendship, each person has a limited amount of time, energy, and efort. Just as you cannot be in two places at one time, the decision to befriend one person is simultaneously a decision not to befriend another. Each person has a limited number of friendship niches, so the adaptive problem is deciding who will fll these slots. The implications of this theory are diferent from the implications of the standard theory of reciprocal altruism, in which you bestow benefts in the expectation that they will be returned at a later time. Tooby and Cosmides (1996) suggest instead that several other factors should determine your choice of friends. 1. Number of slots already flled. How many friends do you already have, and are they true friends or fair-weather friends? If they are few in number, then recruit new friends, consolidate or deepen existing friendships, or make yourself more appealing to prospective friends. 2. Evaluate who emits positive externalities. Let’s say that someone who is physically formidable lives in your neighborhood. His mere existence in your neighborhood deters muggers and other criminals, so you beneft because fewer criminals prey on you and your family as a result of his presence. Some people provide benefts as mere side efects of their existence— benefts to you that are not really intentional acts of altruism from them. Economists call these benefcial side efects positive externalities. People who have special talents or abilities— such as speaking others’ dialects or being better at locating berries, game, or water—might provide benefts to those with whom they associate, regardless of whether they help intentionally. Those who radiate many positive externalities are more attractive as potential friends than are those who emit fewer. 3. Select friends who are good at reading your mind. Helping people is easier if you can read their minds and anticipate needs. A friend who can read your mind and understand your desires, beliefs, and values is better positioned to help you. 9 COOPERATIVE ALLIANCES 4. Select friends who consider you to be irreplaceable. A friend who considers you irreplaceable has a stronger stake in your well-being than does someone who considers you expendable. Filling your life with friends who consider you irreplaceable, all else being equal, should result in a greater fow of benefts. Circumstantial support for this strategy comes from research testing the alliance hypothesis (DeScioli & Kurzban, 2009). According to the alliance hypothesis, a key function of friendship is to assemble support groups that can come to one’s aid in social conficts. A person has to know who he or she can depend on when the going gets rough, to assess the reliability of friends. And one of the best predictors of who you value as a friend is who values you as a friend—in other words, someone who considers you to be irreplaceable (DeScioli & Kurzban, 2009). 5. Select friends who want the same things that you want. Hanging around with friends who value the same things you do has wonderful consequences: In the process of changing their local environments to suit their own desires, they simultaneously change your environment benefcially because the two of you desire the same things. Let’s take a trivial example. Suppose you like wild parties and you have a friend who also likes wild parties. Your friend seeks out, gets invited to, and frequently attends such parties. Because you are friends with this person, you get to tag along. Your friend provides you with benefts merely because you happen to want the same things. Because we all have a limited number of “friend slots” to fll, selection should favor psychological mechanisms designed to monitor the fow of benefts from each friend—benefts not limited to those the friend intentionally delivers but also those that fow as a result of shared values, positive externalities, and whether the benefts are irreplaceable. The primary risk in friendship is not failure of the friend to reciprocate, as would be true if friendship were based solely on reciprocal exchange. Rather, the primary risk is failing to form friendships characterized by mutual deep engagement. The psychological mechanisms that monitor friendships, therefore, should include signals that a friend’s afection might be declining, signals that another person might be better suited to flling our precious and limited friendship slots, and signals about the degree to which we are regarded as irreplaceable by our friends. Costs and Benefts of Friendship In principle, friendships can provide a bounty of benefts linked directly or indirectly to reproduction. Friends ofer us food and shelter. They take care of us when we are ill. They ofer advice in troubled times. They introduce us to potential mates. Despite the potential benefts, however, friends sometimes become our competitors or rivals. They might infict costs on us by revealing our personal information to our enemies. They might compete for access to the same valuable resources. They sometimes even compete for the same mates. One study of female friendships discovered that the less attractive member of the friendship pair perceived more mating rivalry within their friendship than the more attractive member (Bleske-Rechek & Lighthall, 2010). Friendships vary on a number of dimensions. One dimension is gender. Friendships may be of the same or the opposite sex; the potential benefts and costs might difer dramatically for these two types of friendship. A same-sex friendship, for example, carries the potential for intrasexual rivalry. An opposite-sex friendship usually does not. An opposite-sex friendship, however, ofers a beneft that a same-sex friendship generally lacks, namely, the potential for mating. Bleske and Buss (2001) tested a number of hypotheses about the benefts and costs of friendship by gathering two sources of information from participants: (1) perceptions of how benefcial (or costly) various items would be if they received them from a friend and (2) reports of how often they received these benefts (or costs) from their friends. The frst hypothesis was that for men more than women, one function of opposite-sex friendship is to provide short-term sexual access. This hypothesis follows from the logic of the theory of parental investment (Trivers, 1972). As predicted, men evaluated the potential for sexual access to their opposite-sex friends as signifcantly more benefcial than did 265 266 PROBLEMS OF GROUP LIVING Figure 9.3 Benefts of Friendship: Potential for Sexual Access Source: Bleske, A., & Buss, D. M. (1997, June). The evolutionary psychology of special “friendships.” Paper presented at the ninth annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, University of Arizona, Tucson. SSF = same-sex friendship; OSF = opposite-sex friendship. Figure 9.4 Experiencing Romantic Attraction From a Friend Source: Bleske, A., & Buss, D. M. (1997, June). The evolutionary psychology of special “friendships.” Paper presented at the ninth annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, University of Arizona, Tucson. SSF = same-sex friendship; OSF = opposite-sex friendship. women, as shown in Figure 9.3. Men also reported experiencing unreciprocated attraction toward their opposite-sex friends more often than did women. Women more often than men reported having an opposite-sex friendship in which their friend was romantically attracted to them (Figure 9.4). People who desire their opposite-sex friend sexually or romantically tend to project those desires onto their friends, erroneously believing that their own feelings are reciprocated (Lemay & Wolf, 2016). This sometimes leads those with desires to initiate romantic overtures, and these are sometimes reciprocated, but only if the receiver perceives the initiator to be high in mate value. In general, men are denied sexual access to their oppositesex friends more frequently than women. Sexual attraction is a signifcant problem in oppositesex friendships, one that leads to ending the friendship roughly 38 percent of the time (Halatsis & Christakis, 2009). In sum, the evidence supports the hypothesis that men more than women view sexual access as a potential beneft of opposite-sex friendship, and unreciprocated attraction sometimes leads to confict. Results show that men evaluated the potential for sexual access as signifcantly more benefcial than did women. Women more ofen than men reported having an opposite-sex friendship in which their friend felt romantically attracted to them but in which they were not romantically attracted to their friend. The second hypothesis was that for women more than for men, a function of opposite-sex friendship is to provide protection. Over evolutionary history, women who were able to secure protection from men were more reproductively successful than were women who were unable to secure these resources. Bleske and Buss (2001) found that women indeed reported receiving protection from their opposite-sex friends, supporting this hypothesized beneft.