scholarly journals Chimpanzees trust conspecifics to engage in low-cost reciprocity

2015 ◽  
Vol 282 (1801) ◽  
pp. 20142803 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan M. Engelmann ◽  
Esther Herrmann ◽  
Michael Tomasello

Many of humans' most important social interactions rely on trust, including most notably among strangers. But little is known about the evolutionary roots of human trust. We presented chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) with a modified version of the human trust game—trust in reciprocity—in which subjects could opt either to obtain a small but safe reward on their own or else to send a larger reward to a partner and trust her to reciprocate a part of the reward that she could not access herself. In a series of three studies, we found strong evidence that in interacting with a conspecific, chimpanzees show spontaneous trust in a novel context; flexibly adjust their level of trust to the trustworthiness of their partner and develop patterns of trusting reciprocity over time. At least in some contexts then, trust in reciprocity is not unique to humans, but rather has its evolutionary roots in the social interactions of humans' closest primate relatives.

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Leigh Seaman ◽  
Alexander P. Christensen ◽  
Katherine Senn ◽  
Jessica Cooper ◽  
Brittany Shane Cassidy

Trust is a key component of social interaction. Older adults, however, often exhibit excessive trust relative to younger adults. One explanation is that older adults may learn to trust differently than younger adults. Here, we examine how younger (N=33) and older adults (N=30) learn to trust over time. Participants completed a classic iterative trust game with three partners. Younger and older adults shared similar amounts but differed in how they shared money. Compared to younger adults, older adults invested more with untrustworthy partners and less with trustworthy partners. As a group, older adults displayed less learning than younger adults. However, computational modeling shows that this is because older adults are more likely to forget what they have learned over time. Model-based fMRI analyses revealed several age-related differences in neural processing. Younger adults showed prediction error signals in social processing areas while older adults showed over-recruitment of several cortical areas. Collectively, these findings suggest that older adults attend to and learn from social cues differently from younger adults.


2019 ◽  
pp. 088626051988152
Author(s):  
Kyrie Sellnow ◽  
Karyn Esbensen ◽  
Josh M. Cisler

Trauma research has traditionally focused on altered emotion regulation and its role in psychopathology, whereas mechanisms of social behavior remain comparatively unexplored, particularly among adolescents. It has been previously reported that adolescents with histories of interpersonal violence (IV) demonstrate disrupted social learning, and the degree to which they are impaired during social interactions requiring trustful behaviors may be associated with their levels of anxiety. In the present study, 52 adolescent females ( n = 26 control; n = 26 IV-exposed) between ages of 11 and 17 completed a multi-round adaptation of the Trust Game in which they interacted with a confederate peer run by a computer program, alternating between the roles of investor and investee. The task was designed to operationalize the social behaviors of trust and trust reciprocity, where the magnitude of the participants’ monetary investment in the confederate during the investor role represented trust while the proportion of investment returned to the confederate in the investee role represented trust reciprocity. IV-exposed and control participants did not differ in trust (i.e., as investors); however, IV-exposed participants without anxiety diagnoses demonstrated lower trust than those with anxiety diagnoses. For trust reciprocity (i.e., as investees), there were again no differences between IV-exposed participants and controls; however, IV-exposed participants with anxiety diagnoses had increased trust reciprocity compared with both other groups. Similarly, caregiver-reported anxiety symptoms were associated with trust reciprocity behaviors among the IV-exposed adolescents. Findings suggest that IV exposure and associated anxiety impacts adolescents’ trust behaviors, demonstrating potential mechanisms for maladaptive social behavior among trauma-exposed youth.


Autism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 136236132110059
Author(s):  
Yu-Lun Chen ◽  
Laura L Senande ◽  
Michael Thorsen ◽  
Kristie Patten

Social interaction is inherently bidirectional, but research on autistic peer interactions often frames communication as unidirectional and in isolation from the peer context. This study investigated natural peer interactions among six autistic and six non-autistic adolescents in an inclusive school club over 5 months (14 45-min sessions in total) to examine the students’ peer preferences in real-world social interactions and how the preferences changed over time. We further examined whether social behavior characteristics differ between student and peer neurotype combinations. Findings showed that autistic students were more likely to interact with autistic peers then non-autistic peers. In both autistic and non-autistic students, the likelihood of interacting with a same-neurotype peer increased over time. Autistic and non-autistic students’ within-neurotype social interactions were more likely to reflect relational than functional purposes, be characterized as sharing thoughts and experiences rather than requesting help or objects, and be highly reciprocal, as compared with cross-neurotype interactions. These peer preferences and patterns of social interactions were not found among student-peer dyads with the same genders. These findings suggest that peer interaction is determined by more than just a student’s autism diagnosis, but by a combination of student and peer neurotypes. Lay abstract Autistic students often experience challenges in peer interactions, especially for young adolescents who are navigating the increased social expectations in secondary education. Previous research on the peer interactions of autistic adolescents mainly compared the social behaviors of autistic and non-autistic students and overlooked the peers in the social context. However, recent research has shown that the social challenges faced by autistic may not be solely contributed by their social differences, but a mismatch in the social communication styles between autistic and non-autistic people. As such, this study aimed to investigate the student-and-peer match in real-world peer interactions between six autistic and six non-autistic adolescents in an inclusive school club. We examined the odds of autistic and non-autistic students interacting with either an autistic peer, a non-autistic peer, or multiple peers, and the results showed that autistic students were more likely to interact with autistic peers then non-autistic peers. This preference for same-group peer interactions strengthened over the 5-month school club in both autistic and non-autistic students. We further found that same-group peer interactions, in both autistic and non-autistic students, were more likely to convey a social interest rather than a functional purpose or need, be sharing thoughts, experiences, or items rather than requesting help or objects, and be highly reciprocal than cross-group social behaviors. Collectively, our findings support that peer interaction outcomes may be determined by the match between the group memberships of the student and their peers, either autistic or non-autistic, rather than the student’s autism diagnosis.


2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 121-125
Author(s):  
Alina Kalinowska ◽  
Adam Stański

One day, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was known mainly as a philosopher and a pedagogue, told a deer hunting story. In doing so, he managed to play a small role in the development of the branch of maths called ‘game theory’. Later his story was converted into a game. Initially game theory was used to explain exchange in the field of economics. Over time, the mathematical modeling was found to be useful in the social sciences. A game theory describes diverse and cognizant participants forced to make decisions. In regards to the game based on cooperation, a choice is at the same time a dilemma. It can be viewed as a moral or philosophical predicament and in addition it gives as an inside into the human psyche and behaviour. Game theory has the potential to offer an attractive mathematical model, useful in analyzing social interactions. Though currently unappreciated by pedagogy, it has the potential to be successfully used in pedagogical studies analyzing conflict of interest of all participants in an educational process.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N Fisher ◽  
Noa Pinter-Wollman

Abstract Social organisms often show collective behaviors such as group foraging or movement. Collective behaviors can emerge from interactions between group members and may depend on the behavior of key individuals. When social interactions change over time, collective behaviors may change because these behaviors emerge from interactions among individuals. Despite the importance of, and growing interest in, the temporal dynamics of social interactions, it is not clear how to quantify changes in interactions over time or measure their stability. Furthermore, the temporal scale at which we should observe changes in social networks to detect biologically meaningful changes is not always apparent. Here we use multilayer network analysis to quantify temporal dynamics of social networks of the social spider Stegodyphus dumicola and determine how these dynamics relate to individual and group behaviors. We found that social interactions changed over time at a constant rate. Variation in both network structure and the identity of a keystone individual was not related to the mean or variance of the collective prey attack speed. Individuals that maintained a large and stable number of connections, despite changes in network structure, were the boldest individuals in the group. Therefore, social interactions and boldness are linked across time, but group collective behavior is not influenced by the stability of the social network. Our work demonstrates that dynamic social networks can be modeled in a multilayer framework. This approach may reveal biologically important temporal changes to social structure in other systems.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. Smith

This paper is for the 2017 Annual Meeting, Society for American Archaeology.Although initially developed to understand contemporary urban systems, the method and theory of settlement scaling are particularly appropriate for archaeological data. The scaling framework can be seen as an outgrowth of existing archaeological research on demography and settlement patterns. Although developed independently, the "social reactor" model that explains observed patterning is, in fact, well grounded in anthropological and archaeological theory. The key process that drives change is “energized crowding,” or the social interactions among individuals within the built environment. The scaling framework is general enough to apply to settlements in all types of human societies; it does not require the institutions or behaviors of the contemporary capitalist economy. This is a thoroughly empirical line of research that generates propositions that can be rigorously tested against archaeological data. Our positive findings to date contribute to a richer and broader fundamental understanding of human settlements, their generative character, and their changes over time.


2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1886) ◽  
pp. 20181366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund R. Hunt ◽  
Brian Mi ◽  
Camila Fernandez ◽  
Brandyn M. Wong ◽  
Jonathan N. Pruitt ◽  
...  

The behavioural composition of a group and the dynamics of social interactions can both influence how social animals work collectively. For example, individuals exhibiting certain behavioural tendencies may have a disproportionately large impact on the group, and so are referred to as keystone individuals, while interactions between individuals can facilitate information transmission about resources. Despite the potential impact of both behavioural composition and interactions on collective behaviour, the relationship between consistent behaviours (also known as personalities) and social interactions remains poorly understood. Here, we use stochastic actor-oriented models to uncover the interdependencies between boldness and social interactions in the social spider Stegodyphus dumicola . We find that boldness has no effect on the likelihood of forming social interactions, but interactions do affect boldness, and lead to an increase in the boldness of the shyer individual. Furthermore, spiders tend to interact with the same individuals as their neighbours. In general, boldness decreases over time, but once an individual's boldness begins to increase, this increase accelerates, suggesting a positive feedback mechanism. These dynamics of interactions and boldness result in skewed boldness distributions of a few bold individuals and many shy individuals, as observed in nature. This group behavioural composition facilitates efficient collective behaviours, such as rapid collective prey attack. Thus, by examining the relationship between behaviour and interactions, we reveal the mechanisms that underlie the emergence of adaptive group composition and collective behaviour.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hirshleifer ◽  
Siew Hong Teoh

AbstractEvolved dispositions influence, but do not determine, how people think about economic problems. The evolutionary cognitive approach offers important insights but underweights the social transmission of ideas as a level of explanation. The need for asocialexplanation for the evolution of economic attitudes is evidenced, for example, by immense variations in folk-economic beliefs over time and across individuals.


Crisis ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoon A. Leenaars ◽  
David Lester

Canada's rate of suicide varies from province to province. The classical theory of suicide, which attempts to explain the social suicide rate, stems from Durkheim, who argued that low levels of social integration and regulation are associated with high rates of suicide. The present study explored whether social factors (divorce, marriage, and birth rates) do in fact predict suicide rates over time for each province (period studied: 1950-1990). The results showed a positive association between divorce rates and suicide rates, and a negative association between birth rates and suicide rates. Marriage rates showed no consistent association, an anomaly as compared to research from other nations.


Author(s):  
Gulbarshyn Chepurko ◽  
Valerii Pylypenko

The paper examines and compares how the major sociological theories treat axiological issues. Value-driven topics are analysed in view of their relevance to society in times of crisis, when both societal life and the very structure of society undergo dramatic change. Nowadays, social scientists around the world are also witnessing such a change due to the emergence of alternative schools of sociological thought (non-classical, interpretive, postmodern, etc.) and, subsequently, the necessity to revise the paradigms that have been existed in sociology so far. Since the above-mentioned approaches are often used to address value-related issues, building a solid theoretical framework for these studies takes on considerable significance. Furthermore, the paradigm revision has been prompted by technological advances changing all areas of people’s lives, especially social interactions. The global human community, integral in nature, is being formed, and production of human values now matters more than production of things; hence the “expansion” of value-focused perspectives in contemporary sociology. The authors give special attention to collectivities which are higher-order units of the social system. These units are described as well-organised action systems where each individual performs his/her specific role. Just as the role of an individual is distinct from that of the collectivity (because the individual and the collectivity are different as units), so too a distinction is drawn between the value and the norm — because they represent different levels of social relationships. Values are the main connecting element between the society’s cultural system and the social sphere while norms, for the most part, belong to the social system. Values serve primarily to maintain the pattern according to which the society is functioning at a given time; norms are essential to social integration. Apart from being the means of regulating social processes and relationships, norms embody the “principles” that can be applied beyond a particular social system. The authors underline that it is important for Ukrainian sociology to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field of axiology and make good use of those ideas because this is a prerequisite for its successful integration into the global sociological community.


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