Men’s Physical Strength Moderates Conceptualizations of Prospective Foes in Two Disparate Societies

Fessler, Daniel M. T.; Holbrook, Colin; Gervais, Matthew M.

doi:10.1007/s12110-014-9205-4

Cited by 38 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…These theories, in turn, led to the empirical discovery of various choice architectures that evolved to produce best-bet welfare trade-off decisions given the information available to the actor about a potential recipient [e.g., how to respond to cues of genetic relatedness; how to respond to cues predicting the recipient's ability to effectively assert and defend her or his interests; how to respond to cues indicating a potential partner tends to cheat or free-ride (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)]. …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Shame closely tracks the threat of devaluation by others, even across cultures

Sznycer

Tooby

Cosmides

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

206

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We test the theory that shame evolved as a defense against being devalued by others. By hypothesis, shame is a neurocomputational program tailored by selection to orchestrate cognition, motivation, physiology, and behavior in the service of: (i) deterring the individual from making choices where the prospective costs of devaluation exceed the benefits, (ii) preventing negative information about the self from reaching others, and (iii) minimizing the adverse effects of devaluation when it occurs. Because the unnecessary activation of a defense is costly, the shame system should estimate the magnitude of the devaluative threat and use those estimates to cost-effectively calibrate its activation: Traits or actions that elicit more negative evaluations from others should elicit more shame. As predicted, shame closely tracks the threat of devaluation in the United States (r = .69), India (r = .79), and Israel (r = .67). Moreover, shame in each country strongly tracks devaluation in the others, suggesting that shame and devaluation are informed by a common species-wide logic of social valuation. The shame-devaluation link is also specific: Sadness and anxietyemotions that coactivate with shame-fail to track devaluation. To our knowledge, this constitutes the first empirical demonstration of a close, specific match between shame and devaluation within and across cultures.shame | emotion | valuation | culture | evolutionary psychology I n all known foraging societies past and present, humans have lived embedded in dense networks of cooperative and competitive interactions, a condition that is believed to have prevailed during the evolution of our species (1-3). Individuals in such social ecologies suffered or prospered depending on the summed effects of the choices of others-such as when and how often to share food, to provide care for another's child, to defer in conflicts, and so on. Ancestrally, the difference between an individual reproducing successfully, struggling, or dying early would have depended (in part) on the degree to which others traded off their own welfare for the welfare of that individual.Over the last fifty years, evolutionary researchers have identified a number of selection pressures that favored the evolution of decision systems that regulate welfare trade-offs between individuals, including kin selection (4), reciprocity/exchange (5, 6), risk-pooling (2), parenting (7), mating (8), externality management (9), and the asymmetric war of attrition (10). These theories, in turn, led to the empirical discovery of various choice architectures that evolved to produce best-bet welfare trade-off decisions given the information available to the actor about a potential recipient [e.g., how to respond to cues of genetic relatedness; how to respond to cues predicting the recipient's ability to effectively assert and defend her or his interests; how to respond to cues indicating a potential partner tends to cheat or free-ride (11-16)].In short, favorable valuation by others was a critical resource for our anc...

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Shame closely tracks the threat of devaluation by others, even across cultures

Sznycer

Tooby

Cosmides

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

206

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Moreover, these theories led to the empirical discovery of an array of specialized choice architectures that implement welfare-tradeoff decisions given the information available to the actor about an interaction partner [e.g., how to respond to cues of the recipient's relatedness, skills, generosity, attractiveness, ability to defend her interests, etc. (6,(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)]. Each specific theory provides contentful predictions about the dimensions of the psychology of valuation in our species that the pride system targets (e.g., productivity, generosity, bravery, strength, health, and attractiveness).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-cultural regularities in the cognitive architecture of pride

Sznycer

Al-Shawaf

Bereby‐Meyer

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

119

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Pride occurs in every known culture, appears early in development, is reliably triggered by achievements and formidability, and causes a characteristic display that is recognized everywhere. Here, we evaluate the theory that pride evolved to guide decisions relevant to pursuing actions that enhance valuation and respect for a person in the minds of others. By hypothesis, pride is a neurocomputational program tailored by selection to orchestrate cognition and behavior in the service of: (i) motivating the costeffective pursuit of courses of action that would increase others' valuations and respect of the individual, (ii) motivating the advertisement of acts or characteristics whose recognition by others would lead them to enhance their evaluations of the individual, and (iii) mobilizing the individual to take advantage of the resulting enhanced social landscape. To modulate how much to invest in actions that might lead to enhanced evaluations by others, the pride system must forecast the magnitude of the evaluations the action would evoke in the audience and calibrate its activation proportionally. We tested this prediction in 16 countries across 4 continents (n = 2,085), for 25 acts and traits. As predicted, the pride intensity for a given act or trait closely tracks the valuations of audiences, local (mean r = +0.82) and foreign (mean r = +0.75). This relationship is specific to pride and does not generalize to other positive emotions that coactivate with pride but lack its audience-recalibrating function.pride | valuation | decision-making | emotion | culture

show abstract

“…A second constraint imposed by the use of estimates of physical size and muscularity as a dependent measure is that the target individuals must be presented in such a way that they can be construed as potential combatants. The representational system at issue is deployed in situations of potential agonistic conflict, hence the meaning of participants' estimates hinges on an agonistic context being present (Fessler et al, 2014b). Indeed, because, in what appears to be a serially homologous application of the trait, the same envisioned dimensions are also used to represent prestige , merely presenting synchronized behavior absent an agonistic framing could well produce spurious responses.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consistent with this thesis, being aware that an opponent is armed (Fessler et al, 2012) or is prone to take physical risks (Fessler et al, 2014a;Fessler et al, 2014c) increases observers' 8 estimates of his size and muscularity. Such estimates are similarly influenced by the observer's own physical strength (Fessler et al, 2014b) and, inversely, temporary incapacitation (Fessler & Holbrook, 2013a); having vulnerable children (Fessler et al, 2014d); being in a vulnerable phase of the menstrual cycle (Fessler et al, 2015); one's friends' physical proximity (Fessler & Holbrook, 2013b); and information concerning a target's ethnicity or degree of commitment to a coalition and its agonistic objectives .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Synchronized behavior increases assessments of the formidability and cohesion of coalitions

Fessler

Holbrook

2016

Evolution and Human Behavior

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Synchronized behavior is a common feature of martial drills and military parades in many societies. Hagen and colleagues Hagen & Hammerstein, 2009) hypothesized that the intentional enactment of synchronized behavior evolved as a means of signaling coalitional strength, as individuals who can synchronize are able to act in concert in agonistic contexts. Previous research has explored either the subjective consequences of synchrony for participants in synchronized behaviors or the effect of synchrony on observers' impressions of rapport among the synchronized actors. Critically, left untested is the central tenet that, by communicating that the individuals constitute a coordinated unit, synchronized behaviors signal elevated fighting capacity. We tested this prediction in two studies by asking large U.S. samples to judge the envisioned physical formidability -previously demonstrated to summarize assessments of diverse determinants of fighting capacity -of U.S. soldiers or terrorists on the basis of audio tracks of either synchronous or asynchronous footsteps.Consonant with the agonistic signaling hypothesis, participants judged the synchronized target individuals to be larger and more muscular than the unsynchronized individuals, an effect mediated by their assessment that the former collectively constitute a single unified entity.Although synchronized footsteps also enhanced listeners' perceptions of social bonding among the target individuals, this assessment did not mediate their judgments of elevated formidability, suggesting that synchrony primarily signals fighting capacity via revealed entitativity rather than inferred motivation.Keywords: synchrony; signaling; fighting capacity; entitativity; perceived coalitional quality 2 1.0 Introduction 1.1 Synchronized behavior: theory and prior research. Across widely diverse cultures, and among societies of very different scales, synchronized behavior is a prominent feature of rituals and collective displays. Over the last two decades a growing literature has explored the psychological effects of synchronized movement and synchronized sound production (reviewed in Keller et al., 2014). At an elementary level, the effects of synchrony can be dichotomized into two classes, namely the impact that synchrony has on participants in such activities, and the impact that it has on observers. In a seminal book, McNeill (1995) proposed that synchronized movement enhances social bonding among participants, and that, over the course of human history, this process has played a pivotal role in the rise of cooperation.Pushing the roots of synchrony even farther back in time, Hagen and colleagues Hagen & Hammerstein, 2009) argued that music and dance derive from phylogenetically ancient coordinated territorial defense signals; in humans, these signals were refined to communicate the size, cohesiveness, and capabilities of coalitions, as intentionally enacted synchronized behavior inherently requires both the ability and the motivation to effectively coordinate actions. In b...

show abstract

Men’s Physical Strength Moderates Conceptualizations of Prospective Foes in Two Disparate Societies

Cited by 38 publications

References 45 publications

Shame closely tracks the threat of devaluation by others, even across cultures

Shame closely tracks the threat of devaluation by others, even across cultures

Cross-cultural regularities in the cognitive architecture of pride

Synchronized behavior increases assessments of the formidability and cohesion of coalitions

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About