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Groups in Mind: The Coalitional Roots o[War and Morality
Abstract
War, Coalitions, and the HUnlan Condition War is older than the human species. It is found in every region of the world, among all the branches of humankind. It is found throughout human history, deeply and densely woven into its causal tapestry. It is found in all eras, and in earlier periods no less than later. There is no evidence of it having originated in one place, and spread by contact to others. War is reflected in the most fun-damental features of human social life. When indigenous histories are composed, their authors invariably view wars -unlike almost all other kinds of events -as preeminently worth recording. The foundational works of human literature -the Iliad, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Tanakh, the Quran, the Tale of the Heike -whether oral or written, sacred or secular -reflect societies in which war was a pervasive feature. War is found throughout prehistory (LeBlanc and Register 2003; LeBlanc 1999; Keeley 1996). Wherever in the archaeological record there is sufficient evidence to make a judgment, the traces of war are to be found. It is found across all forms of social organization -in bands, chiefdoms, and states. It was a regular part of hunter-gatherer life wherever population densities were not vanishingly low, and often even in harsh and marginal habitats. The existence of intergroup 191 conflict in chiIIlpanzees suggests that our ancestors have been prac-ticing war for at least 6 n1illion years, and that it was a selective pres-ence acting on the chimpanzee-horninid COn1ITlOn ancestors and their descendants (Manson and Wranghan1 1991; Wilson and Wranghanl 2003; BoehIIl 1992). The evidence indicates that aggressive conflict ainong our foraging ancestors was substantial enough to have con-stituted a nlajor selection pressure, especially on nules (Keeley 1996; Manson and Wranghain 1991). Careful ethnographic studies of liv-ing peoples support this view (Chagnon 1983; Heider 1970). Indeed, in some ethnographically investigated snull-scale societies where actual rates can be Ineasured, a third of the adult rIlales are reported to die violently (Keeley 1996), with rates going as high as 59 percent, reported for the Achuar (Bennett Ross 1984). Coalitions especially male coalitions -and intergroup rivalries are a cross-culturally univer-sal feature of hUlnan societies ranging iI-OlIl hunter-gatherer societies to complex, post-industrial societies. Expressions of coaiitionalisni include states, politics, war, racisnl, ethnic and religious conflict, civil war, castes, gang rivalries, rnale social clubs, con1petitive tealn sports, video gaInes, and war re-enactIIlent (Alexander 1987; Keegan 1994; Sidanius and Pratto 2001; Tiger 1969; Tooby and Cosnlides 1988; Tooby, CosIIlides, and Price 2006).
... Natural selection wrote different rulebooks for siblings, parents and offspring, cooperative partners, and coalitional allies, to mention a few. Different cognitive systems evolved for navigating each of these relationships, including ones specialized for helping kin (5), trading goods and favors (1,(6)(7)(8), pooling risk in foraging (9)(10)(11), and cooperating in groups (3,12,13). Each cognitive system is equipped with different concepts and inferential mechanisms, which generate moral intuitions tailored to its domain. ...
... The war dilemma is also designed to test features of the MTS. Warfare is a domain that was relevant during human evolution (19,20) and activates multiple moral intuitions (3,13,(44)(45)(46). Minimizing loss of life in warfare is often seen as a moral good; so is sparing innocent lives. ...
How does the mind make moral judgments when the only way to satisfy one moral value is to neglect another? Moral dilemmas posed a recurrent adaptive problem for ancestral hominins, whose cooperative social life created multiple responsibilities to others. For many dilemmas, striking a balance between two conflicting values (a compromise judgment) would have promoted fitness better than neglecting one value to fully satisfy the other (an extreme judgment). We propose that natural selection favored the evolution of a cognitive system designed for making trade-offs between conflicting moral values. Its nonconscious computations respond to dilemmas by constructing "rightness functions": temporary representations specific to the situation at hand. A rightness function represents, in compact form, an ordering of all the solutions that the mind can conceive of (whether feasible or not) in terms of moral rightness. An optimizing algorithm selects, among the feasible solutions, one with the highest level of rightness. The moral trade-off system hypothesis makes various novel predictions: People make compromise judgments, judgments respond to incentives, judgments respect the axioms of rational choice, and judgments respond coherently to morally relevant variables (such as willingness, fairness, and reciprocity). We successfully tested these predictions using a new trolley-like dilemma. This dilemma has two original features: It admits both extreme and compromise judgments, and it allows incentives-in this case, the human cost of saving lives-to be varied systematically. No other existing model predicts the experimental results, which contradict an influential dual-process model. moral psychology | evolutionary psychology | moral dilemmas | judgment and decision-making | moral value pluralism
... For various reasons, cheater detection research has often focused on moral contracts expressed as a conditional rule that fits the following template: "If you accept a benefit from X, then you must satisfy the requirement of X." (Cosmides and Tooby, 2015) In reality, as we have argued throughout this article, the range of possible moral contracts is much more diverse. Even seemingly unrelated aspects of human life, such as economic exchange, access to resources, assistance, kinship (Lieberman et al., 2003), or coalition formation (Tooby and Cosmides, 2010), can involve moral contracts. What should be considered cheating is therefore specific to each of these types of contracts. ...
We use an evolutionary approach to explain the existence and design features of human moral cognition. Because humans are under selection to appear as good cooperative investments, they face a trade-off between maximizing the immediate gains of each social interaction and maximizing its long-term reputational benefits. In a simplified game, we show that this trade-off leads individuals to behave according to the generalized Nash bargaining solution at evolutionary equilibrium. From this result, we derive the psychological proposition that moral cognition is a calculator of this bargaining solution. Moral cognition computes reciprocal obligations that would maximize mutual benefit if each partners complied to them, and tags as morally wrong the behaviors that violate these reciprocal contracts. These contractualist computations entail that (i) everyone in a social interaction deserves to receive a net benefit, (ii) people ought to act in a way that would maximize social welfare if everyone acted in the same way, (iii) all domains of social behavior can be moralized, (iv) moral duties can appear deontological and principled, and (v) moral intuitions depend heavily on the context since morality is not a set of rigid rules, but the product of flexible calculations. We then apply this theory to some of the most important areas of morality, such as distributive justice, ownership rules, the prohibition of violence, special obligations toward kin and ingroups, as well as moralistic punishment and obedience to authorities. We show that the same logic of mutually beneficial contracts explains the design features of moral intuitions in all these domains, as well as their cultural variations.
... What people deem ethically 'good' may, however, vary by group and culture (Sachdeva, Singh, & Medin, 2011). The moral standards of the group can be used to determine if an individual is fit to be part of the group or does not conduct himself or herself in accordance with the group's morals (Gert, 1988;Lind & Tyler, 1988;Tooby & Cosmides, 2010). ...
The main objective of the study was to examine moral decadence as a potential predictor of students' academic performance in some selected senior high schools in the Kumasi Metropolis. The descriptive survey design was used for the study. Multistage sampling procedures, namely purposive sampling, proportional sampling and simple random sampling, were used in the selection of the sample. A total of 338 respondents were drawn from 3 senior high schools in the Kumasi Metropolis. Exploratory factor analysis was carried out to validate the instrument and simple linear regression was used to test the hypothesis. Through principal component analysis, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test yielded a value of .636, exceeding the recommended value of 0.6, and Bartlett's test of sphericity reached statistical significance [χ 2 (78) = 360.171, p = 0.000], supporting the factorability of the correlation matrix. The pattern structure and the commonalities results were both inspected. Items that had loadings below 0.30 on the pattern matrix as well as the unrotated loadings of the items were deleted. The outcome of the analysis showed that two items had factor loadings below 0.30. Therefore, those items were discarded. The remaining 11 items were retained because they were all above 0.30. The results again revealed that moral decadence was not a potential predictor of student academic performance in the Kumasi Metropolis [B = −0.395, SE = 0.299, t = −1.322, BootCI (−0.984, 0.193)]. This outcome suggests that students who do not exhibit moral decadence in their schools would have higher chances of experiencing the higher academic performance. The study recommends that educational directorates and head teachers need to strengthen counselling services for students in senior high schools. This may go a long way to prevent a situation whereby the country could lose most of its manpower shortly, as moral decadence could compel some of the students to become dropouts and drug addicts.
... In this section, we discuss the challenges associated with different forms of misinformation during a pandemic, as well as strategies for engaging in effective science communication and persuasion around public health. The behaviour of individuals living in communities is regulated by moral norms and values [24][25][26][27][28] . People who do what is 'right' are respected and publicly admired, while those who do what is 'wrong' are devalued and socially excluded [29] . ...
... В этой связи, ответы, предлагаемые эволюционными психологами, представляются более убедительными. Так, рассматривая способность к образованию группы, как одного из важнейших эволюционных достижений человека, способствовавших его выживанию, эволюционные психологи предложили концепцию, согласно которой, в ходе эволюционного процесса у людей выработалась коалиционная психология -специальные психические способности к созданию и распознаванию групп, союзов или коалиций [27]. ...
Recent research in narrative psychology provides insights into the dynamics of collective memories and group identities and how they are exploited by populist and nationalist forces for instigating intergroup conflict. In particular, narrative approach to conflict is important in this regard. In one key way, this approach considers conflicts as competing stories and conflict resolution as narrative transformation and the creation of a common (shared) narrative. In this regard, two questions are of particular concern: 1) What kinds of narratives are conducive to reconciliation between adversaries? 2) Which strategies for dealing with narratives found in intergroup conflicts are effective? As a way of addressing these questions we have developed a theoretical model of narrative intervention which was empirically examined at the context of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh. These studies over the two decades have used different perspectives that enable us to identify “common suffering” type of narrative as a way of eliciting positive implicit attitudes and empathy among the conflicting parties. The research has also identified two psychological constructs - “painful collective memory” and “competitive victimhood”, which are often employed by political forces who are not interested in peace and reconciliation in the region.
As hunter-gatherers, it is unlikely that humans evolved psychological tendencies to extend high levels of concern for predator or prey species. Our coalitional psychology, which evolved to regulate human interactions with other humans, might be the basis for the extension of ethical concerns to non-humans. This research identified three variables (kinship, reciprocity, and conscious deliberation) that affect our altruistic tendencies toward humans and tested them to see if they also affected our concern toward non-humans. Using a sample of 119 respondents from participants at animal auctions, the researchers compared levels of concern to: perceived the animals as family; received benefits from the animals; and/or consciously contemplated appropriate levels of concern. The data supported the hypotheses that concerns rise when animals are re-categorized as kin and/or when individuals have previously considered appropriate levels of concern, but it did not support the hypothesized connection between concern and reciprocity.
This book brings together dozens of the world’s leading scholars in memory studies to explore national memory in an age of populism. Drawing on disciplines ranging from cognitive science to history, these scholars address issues such as how memory is tied to individual and collective identity, how national pasts create political presents, and how a range of disciplines can contribute to an integrated account of national memory. Several chapters examine how these issues play out in the United States, but others take them up in countries such as Israel, China, Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Germany, Japan, and Poland. The book provides a foundation for understanding the vexing issues of national memory and identity that promise to shape the future of countries throughout the world.
When membership of a community depends on commitment to shared beliefs, the community is a belief-based coalition, and the beliefs are identity-defining beliefs. Belief-based coalitions are pervasive features of human social life and routinely drive motivated cognition and epistemically dysfunctional group dynamics. Despite this, they remain surprisingly undertheorised in social epistemology. This article (i) clarifies the properties of belief-based coalitions and identity-defining beliefs, (ii) explains why they often incentivise and coordinate epistemically dysfunctional forms of communication and cognitive labour, and (iii) argues that they provide a better explanation of many epistemic problems on social media than the concepts of epistemic bubbles, echo chambers, and gamification.
In American politics, the truth is rapidly losing relevance. The public square is teeming with misinformation, conspiracy theories, cynicism and hubris. Why has this happened? What does it mean? What can we do about it? In this volume, leading scholars offer multiple perspectives on these questions, and others, to provide the first comprehensive empirical examination of the “politics of truth”—its context, causes, and potential correctives. Combining insights from the fields of political science, political theory, communication, and psychology and offering substantial new arguments and evidence, the experts in this volume draw compelling (if sometimes competing) conclusions regarding this rising democratic threat.
Political conspiracist communities emerge and bind around hard-to-falsify narratives about political opponents or elites convening to secretly exploit the public in contexts of perceived political conflict. While the narratives appear descriptive, we propose that their content as well as the cognitive systems regulating their endorsement and dissemination may have co-evolved, at least in part, to reach coalitional goals: To drive allies’ attention to the social threat to increase their commitment and coordination for collective action, and to signal devotion to gain within-group status. Those evolutionary social functions may be best fulfilled if individuals endorse the conspiratorial narrative sincerely.
In response to S. E. Cross and L. Madson’s (1997) suggestion that men’s behaviors reflect a desire for independence and separateness, the authors propose that those same behaviors are designed to form connections with other people but in a broader social sphere. Women’s sociality is oriented toward dyadic close relationships, whereas men’s sociality is oriented toward a larger group. Gender differences in aggression, helping behavior, desire for power, uniqueness, self-representations, interpersonal behavior, and intimacy fit this view.
Organizations are composed of stable, predominantly cooperative interactions or n-person exchanges. Humans have been engaging in n-person exchanges for a great enough period of evolutionary time that we appear to have evolved a distinct constellation of species-typical mechanisms specialized to solve the adaptive problems posed by this form of social interaction. These mechanisms appear to have been evolutionarily elaborated out of the cognitive infrastructure that initially evolved for dyadic exchange. Key adaptive problems that these mechanisms are designed to solve include coordination among individuals, and defense against exploitation by free riders. Multi-individual cooperation could not have been maintained over evolutionary time if free riders reliably benefited more than contributors to collective enterprises, and so outcompeted them. As a result, humans evolved mechanisms that implement an aversion to exploitation by free riding, and a strategy of conditional cooperation, supplemented by punitive sentiment towards free riders. Because of the design of these mechanisms, how free riding is treated is a central determinant of the survival and health of cooperative organizations. The mapping of the evolved psychology of n-party exchange cooperation may contribute to the construction of a principled theoretical foundation for the understanding of human behavior in organizations.
Why do Internet, financial service, and beer commercials dominate Super Bowl advertising? How do political ceremonies establish authority? Why does repetition characterize anthems and ritual speech? Why were circular forms favored for public festivals during the French Revolution? This book answers these questions using a single concept: common knowledge.Game theory shows that in order to coordinate its actions, a group of people must form "common knowledge." Each person wants to participate only if others also participate. Members must have knowledge of each other, knowledge of that knowledge, knowledge of the knowledge of that knowledge, and so on. Michael Chwe applies this insight, with striking erudition, to analyze a range of rituals across history and cultures. He shows that public ceremonies are powerful not simply because they transmit meaning from a central source to each audience member but because they let audience members know what other members know. For instance, people watching the Super Bowl know that many others are seeing precisely what they see and that those people know in turn that many others are also watching. This creates common knowledge, and advertisers selling products that depend on consensus are willing to pay large sums to gain access to it. Remarkably, a great variety of rituals and ceremonies, such as formal inaugurations, work in much the same way.By using a rational-choice argument to explain diverse cultural practices, Chwe argues for a close reciprocal relationship between the perspectives of rationality and culture. He illustrates how game theory can be applied to an unexpectedly broad spectrum of problems, while showing in an admirably clear way what game theory might hold for scholars in the social sciences and humanities who are not yet acquainted with it.
In the current resurgence of interest in the biological basis of animal behavior and social organization, the ideas and questions pursued by Charles Darwin remain fresh and insightful. This is especially true of The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin's second most important work. This edition is a facsimile reprint of the first printing of the first edition (1871), not previously available in paperback. The work is divided into two parts. Part One marshals behavioral and morphological evidence to argue that humans evolved from other animals. Darwin shoes that human mental and emotional capacities, far from making human beings unique, are evidence of an animal origin and evolutionary development. Part Two is an extended discussion of the differences between the sexes of many species and how they arose as a result of selection. Here Darwin lays the foundation for much contemporary research by arguing that many characteristics of animals have evolved not in response to the selective pressures exerted by their physical and biological environment, but rather to confer an advantage in sexual competition. These two themes are drawn together in two final chapters on the role of sexual selection in humans. In their Introduction, Professors Bonner and May discuss the place of The Descent in its own time and relation to current work in biology and other disciplines.
Previous research on moral judgment development was criticized as having failed to demonstrate age changes in the judgment basis because researchers have not distinguished between (1) the way subjects understand their stories, and (2) the criteria subjects use to evaluate actors. The study consisted of 2 parts. The first sought to demonstrate that age differences in story interpretations can reliably predict differences in patterns of evaluations. The second attempted to characterize the nature of these age-related interpretation differences. Stimulus stories represented each of Heider's levels of responsibility and also varied in outcome value, outcome seriousness, and actor type (adult vs. child). Interviews assessed children's (8- and 11-year-olds) and undergraduate adults' interpretations of the situations, as well as their evaluations of the actors. Analyses demonstrated age-related differences in story interpretations and showed that these were associated with differences in evaluations. Moreover, children who disagreed with adult-like interpretations imputed intentionality where adults did not. This tendency was found to be associated with violations of the logic that governs adults' plan interpretations. The results were discussed in terms of a 3-phase process description of the reasoning involved in interpreting actors' plans.