scholarly journals The evolution of intergroup tolerance in non-human primates and humans

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne C Pisor ◽  
Martin Surbeck
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Resource Availability ◽  
Foraging Ecology ◽  
Behavioral Flexibility ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Intergroup Encounters ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Human Foraging ◽  
Intergroup Behavior

Primate individuals use a variety of strategies in intergroup encounters, from aggression to tolerance; however, recent focus on the evolution of either warfare or peace has come at the cost of characterizing this variability. We identify evolutionary advantages that may incentivize tolerance toward extra-group individuals in humans and non-human primates, including enhanced benefits in the domains of transfer, mating, and food acquisition. We highlight the role these factors play in the flexibility of gorilla, chimpanzee, bonobo, and human behavior. Given humans have an especially broad range of intergroup behavior, we explore how the human foraging ecology, especially large geographic and temporal fluctuations in resource availability, may have selected for a greater reliance on tolerant between-community relationships – relationships reinforced by status acquisition and cultural institutions. We conclude by urging careful, theoretically-motivated study of behavioral flexibility in intergroup encounters in humans and the non-human great apes.

scholarly journals The evolution of intergroup tolerance in non-human primates and humans

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne C Pisor ◽  
Martin Surbeck
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Resource Availability ◽  
Foraging Ecology ◽  
Behavioral Flexibility ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Intergroup Encounters ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Human Foraging ◽  
Intergroup Behavior

Primate individuals use a variety of strategies in intergroup encounters, from aggression to tolerance; however, recent focus on the evolution of either warfare or peace has come at the cost of characterizing this variability. We identify evolutionary advantages that may incentivize tolerance toward extra-group individuals in humans and non-human primates, including enhanced benefits in the domains of transfer, mating, and food acquisition. We highlight the role these factors play in the flexibility of gorilla, chimpanzee, bonobo, and human behavior. Given humans have an especially broad range of intergroup behavior, we explore how the human foraging ecology, especially large geographic and temporal fluctuations in resource availability, may have selected for a greater reliance on tolerant between-community relationships – relationships reinforced by status acquisition and cultural institutions. We conclude by urging careful, theoretically-motivated study of behavioral flexibility in intergroup encounters in humans and the non-human great apes.

scholarly journals Incentives for intergroup tolerance and association: A call for increased attention in evolutionary anthropological research

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne C Pisor ◽  
Martin Surbeck
Keyword(s):  
Foraging Ecology ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Behavioral Flexibility ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Intergroup Encounters ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Human Foraging ◽  
Group Member ◽  
Intergroup Behavior

Primate individuals use a variety of strategies in intergroup encounters, from aggression to tolerance; however, recent focus on the evolution of either warfare or peace has come at the cost of characterizing this variability. We identify evolutionary advantages that may incentivize tolerance toward extra-group individuals in humans and non-human primates, including enhanced benefits in the domains of transfer and mating, food acquisition, inclusive fitness, and repeated interactions with an extra-group member. We highlight the role these factors play in the plasticity of gorilla, chimpanzee, and bonobo behavior. Humans have an especially broad range of plastic intergroup behavior. We explore how the human foraging ecology, especially large geographic and temporal fluctuations in resource availability, may have selected for a greater reliance on between-community relationships – relationships reinforced by status acquisition and cultural institutions. We conclude by urging careful, theoretically-motivated study of behavioral flexibility in intergroup encounters in humans, gorillas, and bonobos.

scholarly journals Tolerance in intergroup encounters: Payoffs and plasticity in non-human primates and humans

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne C Pisor ◽  
Martin Surbeck
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Foraging Ecology ◽  
Great Ape ◽  
Selection Pressures ◽  
Local Resources ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Intergroup Encounters ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Human Foraging

Primate individuals use a variety of strategies in intergroup encounters, from aggression to tolerance; however, despite the prevalence of tolerance in humans, recent focus on the evolution of intergroup contest has come at the cost of characterizing the role of tolerance in human sociality. Can we use the selection pressures hypothesized to favor tolerance in intergroup encounters in the non-great ape primates to explain the prevalence and plasticity of tolerance in humans and our closest living relatives? In the present paper, we review these candidate ecological and social factors and conclude that additional selection pressures are required to explain the prevalence of tolerance in human intergroup encounters; we nominate the need to access non-local resources in the human foraging ecology as a candidate pressure. To better evaluate existing hypotheses, additional, targeted data are needed to document the prevalence and plasticity of tolerance during intergroup encounters in some great ape species.

scholarly journals Tolerance in intergroup encounters: Prevalence and plasticity in the non-human great apes and humans

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne C Pisor ◽  
Martin Surbeck
Keyword(s):  
Great Apes ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Foraging Niche ◽  
Intergroup Encounters ◽  
Group Relationships ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Human Foraging ◽  
Additional Explanation ◽  
Collection Strategies

Primate individuals use a variety of strategies in intergroup encounters, from aggression to tolerance; however, recent focus on the evolution of either warfare or peace has come at the cost of characterizing this variability. Drawing on insights from across the Primate order, with special focus on our closest living relatives, we identify candidate selection pressures that may favor tolerance toward extra-group individuals. While similar ecological and social factors appear to explain some of the plasticity in behavior toward extra-group individuals in both humans and the non-human great apes, the prevalence of extra-group tolerance in humans requires additional explanation. Evidence suggests that the human foraging niche often required reliance on resources not locally available, favoring higher levels of tolerance in humans that are reinforced by cultural institutions. We identify data collection strategies and social science literatures that can help us better characterize the role of extra-group relationships in human sociality.

scholarly journals Habitat-mediated population limitation in a colonial central-place forager: the sky is not the limit for the black-browed albatross

2014 ◽  
Vol 281 (1778) ◽  
pp. 20132883 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewan D. Wakefield ◽  
Richard A. Phillips ◽  
Jason Matthiopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Resource Availability ◽  
Net Primary Production ◽  
Strong Dependence ◽  
Resource Limitation ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Population Limitation ◽  
Animal Populations ◽  
Temporal Predictability ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
The Cost

Animal populations are frequently limited by the availability of food or of habitat. In central-place foragers, the cost of accessing these resources is distance-dependent rather than uniform in space. However, in seabirds, a widely studied exemplar of this paradigm, empirical population models have hitherto ignored this cost. In part, this is because non-independence among colonies makes it difficult to define population units. Here, we model the effects of both resource availability and accessibility on populations of a wide-ranging, pelagic seabird, the black-browed albatross Thalassarche melanophris . Adopting a multi-scale approach, we define regional populations objectively as spatial clusters of colonies. We consider two readily quantifiable proxies of resource availability: the extent of neritic waters (the preferred foraging habitat) and net primary production (NPP). We show that the size of regional albatross populations has a strong dependence, after weighting for accessibility, on habitat availability and to a lesser extent, NPP. Our results provide indirect support for the hypothesis that seabird populations are regulated from the bottom-up by food availability during the breeding season, and also suggest that the spatio-temporal predictability of food may be limiting. Moreover, we demonstrate a straightforward, widely applicable method for estimating resource limitation in populations of central-place foragers.

scholarly journals The Cost-Cutting Reforms of Higher Education in England

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Callender
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
British Government ◽  
Tuition Fees ◽  
Financial Responsibility ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cost Cutting ◽  
Threefold Increase ◽  
The Cost

The British government is introducing dramatic changes to the funding of higher education in England, including the withdrawal of most of its funding for teaching and a threefold increase in undergraduate tuition fees. These reforms herald the retreat of the federal state from financial responsibility for HE, boosting HE's private-good functions at the expense of the public-good function. Will this marketisation of British HE be at the expense of social equity and universities as public, civic, and cultural institutions?

Progress and Prospects for the Development of Computer-Generated Actors for Military Simulation: Part 2—Reasoning System Architectures and Human Behavior Modeling

2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 422-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila B. Banks ◽  
Martin R. Stytz
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Behavior Modeling ◽  
Material Management ◽  
System Architectures ◽  
Human Behavior Modeling ◽  
Reasoning System ◽  
Force Structure ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Made In

The development of computer-generated synthetic environments, also calleddistributed virtual environments (DVEs), relies heavily upon computer-generated actors (CGAs) to provide accurate behaviors at reasonable cost so that the synthetic environments are useful, affordable, complex, and realistic. Unfortunately, the pace of synthetic environment development and the level of desired CGA performance continue to rise at a much faster rate than CGA capability improvements. This insatiable demand for realism in CGAs for synthetic environments arises from the growing understanding of the significant role that modeling and simulation can play in a variety of uses. These uses include training, analysis, procurement decisions, mission rehearsal, doctrine development, force-level and task-level training, information assurance, cyberwarfare, force structure analysis, sustainability analysis, life cycle costs analysis, material management, infrastructure analysis, and many other uses. In these and other uses of military synthetic environments, computergenerated actors play a central role because they have the potential to increase the realism of the environment while also reducing the cost of operating the environment. The progress made in addressing the technical challenges that must be overcome to realize effective and realistic CGAs for military simulation environments and the technical areas that should be the focus of future work are the subject of this series of papers, which surveys the technologies and progress made in the construction and use of CGAs. In this, the second installment of three papers in the series, we present a discussion of CGA software architectures and a discussion of approaches to human behavior modeling.

Business Model Issues in Digitizing Cultural Content

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerry Wall
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Business Model ◽  
User Fees ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Content Sharing ◽  
User Demand ◽  
Cultural Content ◽  
The Cost

This paper examines business model aspects of digitizing cultural content. It is based in large part on a study conducted by the author and his colleagues for the Department of Canadian Heritage. Based on data collected from several cultural institutions regarding their efforts to digitize content, the study found that implications for the cost side have been significant, leading to explorations of facilities and content sharing programs, formalized budgeting, the need for better copyright expertise and improved mid to long term planning. On the revenue (funding) side, a clear need for more rigorous assessments of user demand emerged. In addition, the possibility of revisiting organizational mandates was identified, as well as various revenuegenerating opportunities including sponsorship, user-fees and private/public sector partnerships.

scholarly journals Internalizing cooperative norms in group-structured populations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erol Akçay ◽  
Jeremy Van Cleve
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Structured Populations ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Intrinsic Motivations ◽  
Preference Evolution

AbstractSocial norms play a crucial role in human behavior, especially in maintaining cooperation within human social groups. Social norms might be self-enforcing or be enforced by the threat of punishment. In many cases, however, social norms are internalized and individuals have intrinsic motivations to observe norms. Here, we present a model for how intrinsic preferences to adhere to cooperative norms can evolve with and without external enforcement of compliance. Using the methodology of preference evolution, we model how cooperative norms coevolve with the intrinsic motivations to follow them. We model intrinsic motivations as being provided by guilt, a kind of internal “punishment” that individuals feel for falling short of cooperative norms, and show that the shape of this internal punishment function plays a crucial role in determining whether and how much internalization can evolve. We find that internal punishment functions that eventually level off with the deviation from the norm can support internalization without external punishment. In contrast, internal punishment functions that keep escalating with the deviation from the norm require external punishment, but yield stronger norms and more cooperation when external punishment is present. By showing how different preference mechanisms can enhance or limit norms that stabilize cooperation, these results provide insights into how our species might have evolved the norm psychology that helps us maintain such complex social and cultural institutions.

scholarly journals Goffin's Cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana) Can Solve a Novel Problem After Conflicting Past Experiences

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Bobrowicz ◽  
Mark O'Hara ◽  
Chelsea Carminito ◽  
Alice M. I. Auersperg ◽  
Mathias Osvath
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Behavioral Flexibility ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Memory Functions ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Innovative Tool ◽  
Technical Innovations ◽  
Past Experiences

Novel problems often partially overlap with familiar ones. Some features match the qualities of previous situations stored in long-term memory and therefore trigger their retrieval. Using relevant, while inhibiting irrelevant, memories to solve novel problems is a hallmark of behavioral flexibility in humans and has recently been demonstrated in great apes. This capacity has been proposed to promote technical innovativeness and thus warrants investigations of such a mechanism in other innovative species. Here, we show that proficient tool—users among Goffin's cockatoos—an innovative tool—using species—could use a relevant previous experience to solve a novel, partially overlapping problem, even despite a conflicting, potentially misleading, experience. This suggests that selecting relevant experiences over irrelevant experiences guides problem solving at least in some Goffin's cockatoos. Our result supports the hypothesis that flexible memory functions may promote technical innovations.

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