Social Intelligence Hypothesis

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Alizée Vernouillet
Keyword(s):  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Social Intelligence Hypothesis

scholarly journals Social intelligence, human intelligence and niche construction

2007 ◽  
Vol 362 (1480) ◽  
pp. 719-730 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Sterelny
Keyword(s):  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Niche Construction ◽  
Ecological Environment ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Foraging Mode ◽  
Social Intelligence Hypothesis ◽  
Hominin Evolution ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ecological Complexity ◽  
Intelligence Models

This paper is about the evolution of hominin intelligence. I agree with defenders of the social intelligence hypothesis in thinking that externalist models of hominin intelligence are not plausible: such models cannot explain the unique cognition and cooperation explosion in our lineage, for changes in the external environment (e.g. increasing environmental unpredictability) affect many lineages. Both the social intelligence hypothesis and the social intelligence–ecological complexity hybrid I outline here are niche construction models. Hominin evolution is hominin response to selective environments that earlier hominins have made. In contrast to social intelligence models, I argue that hominins have both created and responded to a unique foraging mode; a mode that is both social in itself and which has further effects on hominin social environments. In contrast to some social intelligence models, on this view, hominin encounters with their ecological environments continue to have profound selective effects. However, though the ecological environment selects, it does not select on its own. Accidents and their consequences, differential success and failure, result from the combination of the ecological environment an agent faces and the social features that enhance some opportunities and suppress others and that exacerbate some dangers and lessen others. Individuals do not face the ecological filters on their environment alone, but with others, and with the technology, information and misinformation that their social world provides.

scholarly journals Cooperation and the evolution of intelligence

2012 ◽  
Vol 279 (1740) ◽  
pp. 3027-3034 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke McNally ◽  
Sam P. Brown ◽  
Andrew L. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Artificial Neural Network Model ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Arms Race ◽  
Selection Pressures ◽  
Social Intelligence Hypothesis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Selection For

The high levels of intelligence seen in humans, other primates, certain cetaceans and birds remain a major puzzle for evolutionary biologists, anthropologists and psychologists. It has long been held that social interactions provide the selection pressures necessary for the evolution of advanced cognitive abilities (the ‘social intelligence hypothesis’), and in recent years decision-making in the context of cooperative social interactions has been conjectured to be of particular importance. Here we use an artificial neural network model to show that selection for efficient decision-making in cooperative dilemmas can give rise to selection pressures for greater cognitive abilities, and that intelligent strategies can themselves select for greater intelligence, leading to a Machiavellian arms race. Our results provide mechanistic support for the social intelligence hypothesis, highlight the potential importance of cooperative behaviour in the evolution of intelligence and may help us to explain the distribution of cooperation with intelligence across taxa.

scholarly journals An intraspecific appraisal of the social intelligence hypothesis

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1756) ◽  
pp. 20170288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin J. Ashton ◽  
Alex Thornton ◽  
Amanda R. Ridley
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Cognitive Evolution ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Social Intelligence Hypothesis ◽  
Developmental Factors ◽  
Cognitive Research ◽  
The Social

The prevailing hypotheses for the evolution of cognition focus on either the demands associated with group living (the social intelligence hypothesis (SIH)) or ecological challenges such as finding food. Comparative studies testing these hypotheses have generated highly conflicting results; consequently, our understanding of the drivers of cognitive evolution remains limited. To understand how selection shapes cognition, research must incorporate an intraspecific approach, focusing on the causes and consequences of individual variation in cognition. Here, we review the findings of recent intraspecific cognitive research to investigate the predictions of the SIH. Extensive evidence from our own research on Australian magpies ( Cracticus tibicen dorsalis ), and a number of other taxa, suggests that individuals in larger social groups exhibit elevated cognitive performance and, in some cases, elevated reproductive fitness. Not only do these findings demonstrate how the social environment has the potential to shape cognitive evolution, but crucially, they demonstrate the importance of considering both genetic and developmental factors when attempting to explain the causes of cognitive variation. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Causes and consequences of individual differences in cognitive abilities’.

scholarly journals A tehetség eredete

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bereczkei Tamás
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Fluid Intelligence ◽  
Social Intelligence Hypothesis ◽  
Hereditary Factors ◽  
Sexual Selection Theory ◽  
Machiavellian Intelligence ◽  
Level I ◽  
The One ◽  
Level Of Analysis

Tanulmányunkban a tehetség két aspektusát elemezzük. Az egyik szinten arra a kérdésre keresünk választ, hogy milyen örökletes tényezők tehetők felelőssé a lángész kialakulásáért. Megállapítjuk, hogy a jelenlegi kutatások szerint a tehetség mögött nem fedezhetők fel specifikus gének, de lehetségesek olyan genetikai hatások, amelyek egyfajta emergens szerveződése teremti meg az alapját a lángész kialakulásának – természetesen a különböző környezeti hatásokkal kölcsönhatásban. A másik szintű elemzésben a tehetség evolúciós eredetére kérdezünk rá, és négy olyan humánspecifikus kognitív képesség kialakulását elemezzük, amelyek fontos szerepet játszhatnak a szellemi kiválóság megjelenésében. Nevezetesen arra teszünk kísérletet, hogy megértsük az elmeolvasás, rugalmas gondolkodás, nyelv és kreativitás evolúciós létrejöttét. Ehhez olyan magyarázó model-leket veszünk igénybe, mint a Szociális Intelligencia, Machiavelli Intelligencia, Szexuális Szelekció és Fluid Intelligencia hipotézisek. E magyarázatok megerősítése további kutatásokat igényel.In this paper, two aspects of talent are analyzed. On the one level, I am looking for an answer to what hereditary factors would be responsible for the development of talent. In the light of the current studies, no specific genes have been found to prescribe talent. However, possible genetic effects with an emergent property of their mutual relationships may create the basis of formation of genius – obviously interacting with the environmental effects. On the other level of analysis I am focusing on the evolutionary background of talent. Four human specific cognitive abilities are analyzed that play important roles in the formation of intellectual excellence: mind reading, flexible thought, language, and creativity. The explanations to the evolution of these abilities include Social Intelligence Hypothesis, Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis, Sexual Selection Theory, and Fluid Intelligence Hypothesis. The confirmation of these explanations requires further studies.

The Social Brain

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-122
Author(s):  
Susan D. Healy
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Brain Size ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
Social Intelligence Hypothesis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intellectual Abilities ◽  
Main Driver ◽  
Machiavellian Intelligence

The first discussion of a relationship between sociality and intelligence came in the middle of the twentieth century, especially by Humphrey who suggested that living socially demanded intellectual abilities above and beyond those required by an animal’s ecology. This led to the Social Intelligence Hypothesis, and then the Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis, both proposing that sociality was the main driver of the superior intellect of primates, especially humans. Two key challenges for this hypothesis are that sociality is difficult to quantify and cognition is not well tested by problem solving. More importantly, as data from more species have been examined, the analyses increasingly fail to show that sociality explains variation in brain size, even in primates. I conclude that appealing as this hypothesis is, it does not do a very compelling job of explaining variation in brain size.

Social Intelligence and Altruism

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-185
Author(s):  
Daeyeol Lee
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Social Intelligence Hypothesis ◽  
Neuroscience Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Social Decision Making

According to the social intelligence hypothesis, the unusual enlargement of primate brains, including the human brain, was driven by the complexity of social decision-making primates face in their societies. Social decision-making is fundamentally more complex due to the recursive nature of social reasoning. This chapter begins with the review of game theory and illustrates how game theory has transformed neuroscience research on social decision-making. Some of the topics covered include the supposed death of game theory, altruism and its dark side, cooperation, the theory of the mind, the prisoner’s dilemma, the recursive mind, and the social brain.

scholarly journals Neocortex evolution in primates: the ‘social brain’ is for females

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 407-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrik Lindenfors
Keyword(s):  
Group Size ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Female Group ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Social Intelligence Hypothesis ◽  
Male Group ◽  
The Social ◽  
Size Limits ◽  
The Relationship

According to the social intelligence hypothesis, relative neocortex size should be directly related to the degree of social complexity. This hypothesis has found support in a number of comparative studies of group size. The relationship between neocortex and sociality is thought to exist either because relative neocortex size limits group size or because a larger group size selects for a larger neocortex. However, research on primate social evolution has indicated that male and female group sizes evolve in relation to different demands. While females mostly group according to conditions set by the environment, males instead simply go where the females are. Thus, any hypothesis relating to primate social evolution has to analyse its relationship with male and female group sizes separately. Since sex-specific neocortex sizes in primates are unavailable in sufficient quantity, I here instead present results from phylogenetic comparative analyses of unsexed relative neocortex sizes and female and male group sizes. These analyses show that while relative neocortex size is positively correlated with female group size, it is negatively, or not at all correlated with male group size. This indicates that the social intelligence hypothesis only applies to female sociality.

scholarly journals Problems with comparative analyses of avian brain size

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Hooper ◽  
Becky Brett ◽  
Alex Thornton
Keyword(s):  
Body Size ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Brain Size ◽  
Avian Brain ◽  
Social Intelligence Hypothesis ◽  
Size Evolution ◽  
The Social ◽  
Community Of Researchers ◽  
Direct Measures ◽  
Size Estimates

There are multiple hypotheses for the evolution of cognition. The most prominent hypotheses are the Social Intelligence Hypothesis (SIH) and the Ecological Intelligence Hypothesis (EIH), which are often pitted against one another. These hypotheses tend to be tested using broad-scale comparative studies of brain size, where brain size is used as a proxy of cognitive ability, and various social and/or ecological variables are included as predictors. Here, we test how methodologically robust such analyses are. First, we investigate variation in brain and body size measurements across >1000 species of bird. We demonstrate that there is substantial variation in brain and body size estimates across datasets, indicating that conclusions drawn from comparative brain size models are likely to differ depending on the source of the data. Following this, we subset our data to the Corvides infraorder and interrogate how modelling decisions impact results. We show that model results change substantially depending on variable inclusion, source and classification. Indeed, we could have drawn multiple contradictory conclusions about the principal drivers of brain size evolution. These results reflect recent concerns that current methods in comparative brain size studies are not robust. We add our voices to a growing community of researchers suggesting that we move on from using such methods to investigate cognitive evolution. We suggest that a more fruitful way forward is to instead use direct measures of cognitive performance to interrogate why variation in cognition arises within species and between closely related taxa.

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