Sarah Brosnan is a researcher studying the development of cognitive processes that underlie cooperation and reciprocity. The focus of her work has been on how animals perceive "exchanged goods and services," as demonstrated by reciprocal interactions,. She has looked at both human and nonhuman primates as a way of understanding the evolution of cooperative and economic behaviors, specifically the topic of inequity aversion and the cooperative pulling paradigm. She works at Georgia State University in the Department of Psychology, and directs the university's Comparative Economics and Behavioral Studies Laboratory (CEBUS Lab). [1] [2] [3]
Franciscus Bernardus Maria de Waal was a Dutch-American primatologist and ethologist. He was the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory, and author of numerous books including Chimpanzee Politics (1982) and Our Inner Ape (2005). His research centered on primate social behavior, including conflict resolution, cooperation, inequity aversion, and food-sharing. He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Inequity aversion (IA) is the preference for fairness and resistance to incidental inequalities. The social sciences that study inequity aversion include sociology, economics, psychology, anthropology, and ethology. Researches on inequity aversion aim to explain behaviors that are not purely driven by self-interests but fairness considerations.
A pack hunter or social predator is a predatory animal which hunts its prey by working together with other members of its species. Normally animals hunting in this way are closely related, and with the exceptions of chimpanzees where only males normally hunt, all individuals in a family group contribute to hunting. When hunting cooperation is across two or more species, the broader term cooperative hunting is commonly used.
In evolution, cooperation is the process where groups of organisms work or act together for common or mutual benefits. It is commonly defined as any adaptation that has evolved, at least in part, to increase the reproductive success of the actor's social partners. For example, territorial choruses by male lions discourage intruders and are likely to benefit all contributors.
Torkel Weis-Fogh was a Danish zoologist and Professor at the University of Cambridge and the University of Copenhagen. He is best known for his contributions to the understanding of insect flight, especially the clap and fling mechanism used by very small insects. James Lighthill named this "the Weis-Fogh mechanism of lift generation".
The concept of the evolution of morality refers to the emergence of human moral behavior over the course of human evolution. Morality can be defined as a system of ideas about right and wrong conduct. In everyday life, morality is typically associated with human behavior rather than animal behavior. The emerging fields of evolutionary biology, and in particular evolutionary psychology, have argued that, despite the complexity of human social behaviors, the precursors of human morality can be traced to the behaviors of many other social animals. Sociobiological explanations of human behavior remain controversial. Social scientists have traditionally viewed morality as a construct, and thus as culturally relative, although others such as Sam Harris argue that there is an objective science of morality.
Inequity is injustice or unfairness or an instance of either of the two. Aversion is "a feeling of repugnance toward something with a desire to avoid or turn from it; a settled dislike; a tendency to extinguish a behavior or to avoid a thing or situation and especially a usually pleasurable one because it is or has been associated with a noxious stimulus". The given definition of inequity aversion is "the preference for fairness and resistance to inequitable outcomes".
Allomothering, allomaternal infant care/handling, or non-maternal infant care/handling is performed by any group member other than the mother. Alloparental care is provided by group members other than the genetic father or the mother and thus is distinguished from parental care. Both are widespread phenomena among social insects, birds and mammals.
Primate cognition is the study of the intellectual and behavioral skills of non-human primates, particularly in the fields of psychology, behavioral biology, primatology, and anthropology.
Cecilia Heyes is a British psychologist who studies the evolution of the human mind. She is a Senior Research Fellow in Theoretical Life Sciences at All Souls College, and a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oxford. She is also a Fellow of the British Academy, and President of the Experimental Psychology Society.
Social learning refers to learning that is facilitated by observation of, or interaction with, another animal or its products. Social learning has been observed in a variety of animal taxa, such as insects, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals.
David Andrew Whiten, known as Andrew Whiten is a British zoologist and psychologist, Professor of Evolutionary and Developmental Psychology, and Professor Wardlaw Emeritus at University of St Andrews in Scotland. He is known for his research in social cognition, specifically on social learning, tradition and the evolution of culture, social Machiavellian intelligence, autism and imitation, as well as the behavioral ecology of sociality. In 1996, Whiten and his colleagues invented an artificial fruit that allowed to study learning in apes and humans.
Karyoklepty is a strategy for cellular evolution, whereby a predator cell appropriates the nucleus of a cell from another organism to supplement its own biochemical capabilities.
The cooperative pulling paradigm is an experimental design in which two or more animals pull rewards toward themselves via an apparatus that they cannot successfully operate alone. Researchers use cooperative pulling experiments to try to understand how cooperation works and how and when it may have evolved.
The evolution of cognition is the process by which life on Earth has gone from organisms with little to no cognitive function to a greatly varying display of cognitive function that we see in organisms today. Animal cognition is largely studied by observing behavior, which makes studying extinct species difficult. The definition of cognition varies by discipline; psychologists tend define cognition by human behaviors, while ethologists have widely varying definitions. Ethological definitions of cognition range from only considering cognition in animals to be behaviors exhibited in humans, while others consider anything action involving a nervous system to be cognitive.
Inequity aversion in animals is the willingness to sacrifice material pay-offs for the sake of greater equality, something humans tend to do from early age. It manifests itself through negative responses when rewards are not distributed equally between animals. In controlled experiments it has been observed, to varying degrees, in capuchin monkeys, chimpanzees, macaques, marmosets, dogs, wolves, rats, crows and ravens. No evidence of the effect was found in tests with orangutans, owl monkeys, squirrel monkeys, tamarins, kea, and cleaner fish. Based on mixed results in experimental studies it may be concluded that some bonobos, baboons, gibbons, and gorillas are inequity averse. Disadvantageous inequity aversion, which occurs when the animal protests as it gets a lesser reward than another animal, is most common. But advantageous inequity aversion has been observed as well, in chimpanzees, baboons and capuchins: the animal protests when it gets a better reward. Scientists believe that sensitivity to inequity co-evolved with the ability to cooperate, as it helps to sustain benefitting from cooperation. There is little evidence for inequity aversion in non-cooperative species.
Jessica C. Flack is a data scientist, evolutionary biologist, and professor at the Santa Fe Institute.
Jennifer Elaine Smith is a behavioral ecologist and evolutionary biologist. She is an assistant professor of biology at University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. Previously, she was an associate professor and chair of biology at Mills College, in Oakland, California, prior to its merger with Northeastern University. Her research focuses primarily on the social lives of mammals based on insights gained from long-term studies on marked individuals and comparative approaches.
Nichola Jayne Raihani is a British psychologist who is a Professor of Evolution and Behaviour at University College London. Her research considers the evolution of cooperation in nature. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2019. Her first book, The Social Instinct, was released in 2021.
Pathogen avoidance, also referred to as, parasite avoidance or pathogen disgust, refers to the theory that the disgust response, in humans, is an adaptive system that guides behavior to avoid infection caused by parasites such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, helminth worms, arthropods and social parasites. Pathogen avoidance is a psychological mechanism associated with the behavioral immune system. Pathogen avoidance has been discussed as one of the three domains of disgust which also include sexual and moral disgust.