Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange Leda Cosmides and John Tooby presented by Nat Twarog

Overall Statements of Paper ● The human mind does contain content-specific machinery adapted for a certain class of problems or situations ● One such group of mechanisms exists for social exchange  These mechanisms apply specifically to social explained problems and are designed to detect “cheaters,” i.e., those who take a benefit without paying the cost required by the social contract

What about the Tabula Rasa? ● According to the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM) all innate neural mechanism are general purpose, non-content-specific  Things like “learning,” “induction,” “rationality” etc. ● All content, and content specific processing, is learned from the environment, and derives from one or more of these general purpose mechanisms ● Tooby and Cosmides claim this view is held as sacred without justification

Justifications ● Why should there be any content-specific evolved machinery at all? ● Human culture could not exist without them ● Certain social interactions are so integral to human life and so universal, the mind would have to adapt to them ● Why shouldn't there be?

Why Social Exchange Theory? ● Theory is well understood, both from an game- theoretic and evolutionary perspective ● Social exchange is universal, happens every day, and has been part of everyday human life for a long, long time ● Specialized machinery, if it exists, is affecting human reasoning, which is considered one of the most fundamental aspects of cognition  Basically, the idea is, if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere

What is “Social Exchange”? ● Also called “reciprocal altruism” ● You help me out, and I'll help you next time  Ex: hunter-gatherers ● But there's a problem with altruism:  CHEATERS

Experimental Design ● Subjects are given background or context, and are told a rule of the form “If P, then Q.” ● In most experiments, subjects are then asked which cards must be checked for violations of the rule ● Logically correct answer is P & not-Q P P Q Q not P not Q Rule: “If P, then Q.”

First Experiment ● Give every subject several Wason selection tasks ● One task uses a rule concerning actions or possessions which are novel, but which is clearly a social contract ● Other tasks include a familiar rule which is not a social exchange contract, a novel rule which is realistic but not a social exchange contract, and an abstract rule

Results

Changing your Point-of-View ● Run Wason selection task with the rule “If an employee works 10 years, then he receives a pension” ● Half of subjects are told they are the employer, and half are told they are the employee ● According to social exchange theory, the definition of “cheating” depends on viewpoint, so answers should be different ● If subjects are simply thinking logically, answers should be the same

Results

Other Findings ● Mechanisms do not detect non-cheating violations as well as cheating, including mistakes and genuine altruism ● Performance only improves if situation has clear costs and benefits, rather than just permission schemas ● Performance decreases when subjects are less likely to see benefit as a benefit

Conclusions ● Content dependent, situation-specific mechanisms do exist, adapted for the purpose of detecting cheaters in a social exchange ● These mechanisms clearly demonstrate that some, if not many, of the mechanisms for human cognition are evolved and highly specialized for tasks ● These mechanisms, due to their universality and uniformity, are probably innate

The End (Applause)