Social Exchange (reciprocation, reciprocal altruism, dyadic cooperation)
For over 20 years, we have been conducting research on cognitive adaptations for social exchange. For a summary and background, click here.
The CEP's Michael Gurven has been researching the behavioral ecology of social exchange in the context of food sharing; click here for his upcoming target article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and here for his website.
For an up-to-date summary of the state of the evidence regarding cognitive adaptations for social exchange, see:
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2005). Neurocognitive adaptations designed for social exchange. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), Evolutionary Psychology Handbook. NY: Wiley.
[For those curious about Buller's recent critique, this paper reviews all the relevant evidence -- Buller neglected to discuss widely-known evidence that disconfirms his view. In particular, his counter-explanation, like Fodor's, requires that all deontic rules elicit good violation detection. But that is not true--a fact that has been known since the early 1990s (and before). So see the sections on "dissociations within the domain of deontic rules".]
The best introductions to the cognitive work on this topic by Cosmides and Tooby are some earlier works:
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1992). Cognitive adaptations for social exchange. In J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
[Discusses the selection pressures, cognitive evidence, and how cognitive adaptations for social exchange shape human cultural life.]
Cosmides, L. (1989). The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task. Cognition, 31, 187-276.
[Presents some of the initial experiments from Cosmides, 1985, plus some early one's discriminating between social contract theory and Cheng & Holyoak's permission schema theory -- see CT 92 for more]
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1989). Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, Part II. Case study: A computational theory of social exchange. Ethology & Sociobiology, 10, 51-97.
[This, and the dissertation, have the computational theory, which served as the basis of the experiments]
This work began with Cosmides' 1985 dissertation:
Cosmides, L. (1985). Deduction or Darwinian Algorithms? An explanation of the "elusive" content effect on the Wason selection task. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. University Microfilms #86-02206.
Other work:
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2004). Social exchange: The evolutionary design of a neurocognitive system. In The New Cognitive Neurosciences, III (Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT press.
[a short review of the evidence]
Fiddick, L. (2004). Domains of deontic reasoning: Resolving the discrepancy between the cognitive and moral reasoning literatures. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 57(3), 447-474. click here
[dissociations, in both moral reasoning and violation detection, between deontic rules involving social exchange and precautionary rules]
Stone, V., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., Kroll, N. & Knight, R. (2002). Selective Impairment of Reasoning About Social Exchange in a Patient with Bilateral Limbic System Damage. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(17), 11531-11536.
[a very narrow neural dissociation between two types of deontic permission rules, both of which involve subjective utilities: ability to detect violators of rules involving hazards and precautions was spared; ability to detect violators of social exchange rules (i.e. cheaters) was impaired.]
Sugiyama, L., Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2002). Cross-cultural evidence of cognitive adaptations for social exchange among the Shiwiar of Ecuadorian Amazonia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(17), 11537-11542.
[cheater detection--necessary for social exchange to be an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) --is buffered against cross-cultural variation. a cultural dissociation between ESS-relevant and ESS-irrelevant aspects of the adaptation]
Fiddick, L., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2000). No interpretation without representation: The role of domain-specific representations and inferences in the Wason selection task. Cognition, 77, 1-79.
[On why Sperber, Cara, & Girotto's version of relevance theory does not explain reasoning about social exchange or precautionary rules. On dissociations between precautionary and social exchange reasoning]
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2000). The cognitive neuroscience of social reasoning. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The New Cognitive Neurosciences, Second Edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Chapter 87, pp. 1259-1270.)
[a short review of the evidence]
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1997). Dissecting the computational architecture of social inference mechanisms. In: Characterizing human psychological adaptations (Ciba Foundation Symposium #208). Chichester: Wiley. (pp. 132-156).
[What empirical criteria allow one to tell whether reasoning is about two domains is governed by a single underlying mechanism, or by two separate ones? Illustrated by discussion of Cheng & Holyoak's permission schema theory versus social contract algorithms.]
Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1996). Friendship and the Bankers Paradox: Other pathways to the evolution of adaptations for altruism. In W. G. Runciman, J. Maynard Smith, & R. I. M. Dunbar (Eds.), Evolution of Social Behaviour Patterns in Primates and Man. Proceedings of the British Academy, 88, 119-143.
[Theoretical article contrasting social exchange with deep engagement relationships: presents an alternative set of selection pressures that should have designed the computational systems that give rise to deep engagement relationships: true friendships, romantic love; certain familial loyalties].
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1995). From function to structure: The role of evolutionary biology and computational theories in cognitive neuroscience. In M. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The cognitive neurosciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Illustrates notion of a computational theory using social exchange]
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1994). Better than rational: Evolutionary psychology and the invisible hand. American Economic Review (May), 327-332.
[How evolved computational specializations shape "the rules of the game"; relation between cognitive adaptations for social exchange and modern trade one example]
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1994). Beyond intuition and instinct blindness: The case for an evolutionarily rigorous cognitive science. Cognition, 50, 41-77.
[Grammars of the social world; grammar of social exchange]
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1991). Reasoning and natural selection. Encyclopedia of Human Biology, vol. 6. San Diego: Academic Press.
See also:
Gigerenzer, G., & Hug, K. (1992). Domain specific reasoning: Social contracts, cheating, and perspective change. Cognition, 43, 127-171.
Platt, R., and Griggs, R. (1993). Darwinian algorithms and the Wason selection task: a factorial analysis of social contract selection task problems. Cognition, 48: 163-192.