Cognitive cooperation

Abstract

Cooperation can evolve in the context of cognitive activities such as perception, attention, memory, and decision making, in addition to physical activities such as hunting, gathering, warfare, and childcare. The social insects are well known to cooperate on both physical and cognitive tasks, but the idea of cognitive cooperation in humans has not received widespread attention or systematic study. The traditional psychological literature often gives the impression that groups are dysfunctional cognitive units, while evolutionary psychologists have so far studied cognition primarily at the individual level. We present two experiments that demonstrate the superiority of thinking in groups, but only for tasks that are sufficiently challenging to exceed the capacity of individuals. One of the experiments is in a brain-storming format, where advantages of real groups over nominal groups have been notoriously difficult to demonstrate. Cognitive cooperation might often operate beneath conscious awareness and take place without the need for overt training, as evolutionary psychologists have stressed for individual-level cognitive adaptations. In general, cognitive cooperation should be a central subject in human evolutionary psychology, as it already is in the study of the social insects.

The origins of human cumulative culture: from the foraging niche to collective intelligence

“…For example, the stepwise transition to the foraging niche increased interdependence and reliance on cultural transmission, causing stronger pressure for cooperation and collective problem solving. We propose that the result was the evolution of more sophisticated collective intelligence and shared intentionality [ 3 , 7 , 8 , 11 ]. While those cognitive abilities had often been described as causes of human culture from a mechanistic or proximate perspective, they are ultimate consequences of the selective pressures for cumulative culture in the foraging niche.…”

“…Human cumulative culture [1][2][3][4][5][6] differs from the culture in other primates in that it more extensively accumulates over generations without loss, a property described as directional or 'ratchet' effect [7]. Human culture extends across multiple minds [8][9][10][11] and generally cannot be recreated from scratch [12]. While chimpanzees present cultural traditions and instances of teaching [6,13], evidence of cultural ratcheting beyond three-part tools is so far absent [14].…”

The reluctant innovator: orangutans and the phylogeny of creativity

“…Individuals may have begun benefitting from trade based on the appearance of specialization, which in turn is linked to the number and complexity of learned skills needed in daily life. Alternatively, it is possible that at some stage, owing to the establishment of cooperative breeding [100], joint innovation became favoured [101].…”

Social coding of the multisensory space around us

“…However, in the collaborative experiment, participants' PPS were more symmetrical. In social psychology, it has been observed that individuals involved in a group sometimes think and act in a way that seems logical at the group level while appearing irrational, even detrimental, at the individual level [47,48]. Similar phenomena could also be present at the level of sensory integration near the body where the seemingly disadvantageous symmetrical remapping of PPS could actually be beneficial for group behaviour.…”