Cosmides and Tooby with some amazing insights
The book of revelations as per Robert Trivers et all ...
'The results of these investigations were striking. People who ordinarily cannot detect violations of if-then rules can do so easily and accurately when that violation represents cheating in a situation of social exchange (Cosmides, 1985, 1989; Cosmides & Tooby, 1989; 1992). This is a situation in which one is entitled to a benefit only if one has fulfilled a requirement (e.g., "If you are to eat those cookies, then you must first fix your bed"; "If a man eats cassava root, then he must have a tattoo on his chest"; or, more generally, "If you take benefit B, then you must satisfy requirement R"). Cheating is accepting the benefit specified without satisfying the condition that provision of that benefit was made contingent upon (e.g., eating the cookies without having first fixed your bed).
When asked to look for violations of social contracts of this kind, the adaptively correct answer is immediately obvious to almost all subjects, who commonly experience a "pop out" effect. No formal training is needed. Whenever the content of a problem asks subjects to look for cheaters in a social exchange -- even when the situation described is culturally unfamiliar and even bizarre -- subjects experience the problem as simple to solve, and their performance jumps dramatically. In general, 65-80% of subjects get it right, the highest performance ever found for a task of this kind. They choose the "benefit accepted" card (e.g., "ate cassava root") and the "cost not paid" card (e.g., "no tattoo"), for any social conditional that can be interpreted as a social contract, and in which looking for violations can be interpreted as looking for cheaters.'
'The results of these investigations were striking. People who ordinarily cannot detect violations of if-then rules can do so easily and accurately when that violation represents cheating in a situation of social exchange (Cosmides, 1985, 1989; Cosmides & Tooby, 1989; 1992). This is a situation in which one is entitled to a benefit only if one has fulfilled a requirement (e.g., "If you are to eat those cookies, then you must first fix your bed"; "If a man eats cassava root, then he must have a tattoo on his chest"; or, more generally, "If you take benefit B, then you must satisfy requirement R"). Cheating is accepting the benefit specified without satisfying the condition that provision of that benefit was made contingent upon (e.g., eating the cookies without having first fixed your bed).
When asked to look for violations of social contracts of this kind, the adaptively correct answer is immediately obvious to almost all subjects, who commonly experience a "pop out" effect. No formal training is needed. Whenever the content of a problem asks subjects to look for cheaters in a social exchange -- even when the situation described is culturally unfamiliar and even bizarre -- subjects experience the problem as simple to solve, and their performance jumps dramatically. In general, 65-80% of subjects get it right, the highest performance ever found for a task of this kind. They choose the "benefit accepted" card (e.g., "ate cassava root") and the "cost not paid" card (e.g., "no tattoo"), for any social conditional that can be interpreted as a social contract, and in which looking for violations can be interpreted as looking for cheaters.'
posted by Edward Barker at 3:50 AM
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