Collective action and the collaborative brain

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 behavior. 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. 1. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under aThe copyright holder for this preprint (which was not . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/009746 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Oct. 28, 2014; Wednesday 24 th September, 2014 9:06am 2 IntroductionOur 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 (1-6). Brain size in the genus Homo tripled in the past 2.5 Myr as a result of several punctuated changes supplemented by gradual within-lineage changes in Homo erectus and Homo sapiens (2, 7,8). In modern humans, the brain is very expensive metabolically: it represents about 2% of the body's weight but utilizes approximately 20% of the energy consumed (8,9). Other costs include a need for extended parental care due to a longer growth period, difficulties at giving birth to larger-headed babies, and some mental illnesses that come with brain complexity. A burning question is what factors were responsible for the evolution of human brain size and intelligence despite all these costs.Two sets of explanations have been hotly debated. Ecological explanations include climate variability and harshness, parasites' and predators' pressure, as well as changes in diet, habitat use, and food extraction techniques (10, 11). However the empirical support for the role of ecology in human brain evolution is relatively weak. Neocortex size does not seem to correlate with several indices related to diet and habitat (12). There is a statistically significant association of cranial capacity with climate variability and harshness, and parasite pressure, but these factors are much less important than the population density (7).An alternative set of explanations coming under the rubric of the social brain hypothesis focuses on s...

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