In response to Chichi's third question: I was also wondering about the special situation of the apparent lack of reciprocal altruism in mated pairs. Often times the costs incurred by one significant other seem to out weigh the benefits they receive. Is this perceived unevenness in altruistic behaviors purely because observers do not get to see the exchange of all altruistic acts? Or maybe having a romantic relationship is similar to friendship in the manner that the expected future for altruistic acts to be repaid is so large that immediate costs and benefits of our actions don't register as much?
The book also mentioned that costly signaling was an honest indicator of altruism and one's quality as a potential ally. However I do not think it is too far of a stretch for someone to engage in acts of costly signaling to build an altruistic reputation for themselves only to switch over to "cheating" behavior once everyone has been fooled. I believe that in many situations the reputation of being a generous person would be worth the cost of costly signaling, if they could then take advantage of people who mistakenly entered into cooperational alliances.
I also would like to discuss the "every guy wants to sleep with his female friends" issue. I could see this being believable for acquaintances and not super close friends, but I don't see this as being true in super close friendships. Especially not in my own group of close guy friends, they call me Mom for goodness sake! Any guys have insight they are willing to share? Is there a level of closeness after which you wouldn't consider sleeping with a female friend, or are all female friends fair game given that the conditions allowed it? Or do you feel that you have female friends who you don't want to sleep with?
After reading about conflict with kin I am interested in how conflict plays a role in friendships. Why do fights with our friends occur? Are they rooted in one friend taking advantage of reciprocal altruism? We fight with kin often and usually get over the conflict quickly, but fights with friends are not as common and many times one fight is all it takes for a friendship to end. Is there a reason behind this more than "blood is thicker than water"? How are fights with friends resolved? Can altruism play a role in the resolution as well?
Is loyalty a mechanism to attract deep engagement friendships, or a byproduct in the way we interact in social contracts (i.e, consistently helping someone indicates that this person is someone you can trust to reciprocate in the future)?
Are there any studies on social contract theory/cooperative alliances with children? The five cognitive capacities outlined by Cosmides and Tooby suggest evolved mechanism to guard against cheaters. Is it possible that these are just learned from interacting with people that are not your kin? At what age do we begin to demonstrate that we have this evolved mechanism?
In response to Marisa's question, I think context is important regarding wanting to sleep with female friends. For me if the female friend is in a relationship with a male friend of mine, I wouldn't view her as a potential mate because she's already in this established thing, don't wanna be a bad friend, etc. Just the same as if I'm in a relationship or I'm interested in one person specifically, every other female friend may be "fair game" but that doesn't mean I'm interested in them in that fashion. If I have female friends I don't want to sleep with, for me it would be for the same reason I wouldn't want to sleep with them anyway: I don't think they're attractive, they're in a relationship, it may become a whole relationship-type ordeal that I want to avoid. For me at least knowing someone really well, if I view them positively, wouldn't negatively affect potential romantic interest. Basically I don't believe in the notion that if two people are "just friends", that there's something wrong with them potentially becoming an item, because from my perspective I'd like to know that person really well before pursuing them romantically. But I've never pursued short-term mating strategies, so maybe I'm different.
I find the concept of cooperation in terms of friendship interesting. I can understand how friendships might not be based on reciprocal exchange. Personally, I feel great when I am able to help a friend out. However, I also know that people do not forget when they lend people money or pay for things for others. Doesn't there come a time where one person is helping a friend out so much, that conflicts will arise eventually? I have some friends who I constantly offer to drive places, but it reached a point where they expect me to take them grocery shopping every week. If there does come a time where conflicts arise due to an imbalance in helping each other out, does that mean that friendships do not actually last forever? Is the likelihood of maintaining a friendship, from the time you meet someone for the rest of your life, very slim? Or is it more common than we might think?
From the lecture on Tuesday, I thought that it was interesting that people have an evolved mechanism that allows them to figure out if people are lying. I can understand that people have an evolved mechanism to determine lying because people are more apt to recognize social standing problems than logical issues. I just do not see how it is compelling that people are quite good at determining liars. I read that people are typically only able to determine a liar only 53% of the time and also many people claim to be good liars, but in actuality they are quite bad. Because of this, I see it hard to see how humans have an evolved mechanism that can help them spot a liar, when on the whole they are just so bad at it.
Do we really have an evolved mechanism that helps to determine a liar from a non-liar?
i know the prisoner's dilemma work is really well-established but i have a little skepticism. in Axelrod's tournament, every round is worth an equal amount of points, whereas real life situations vary widely in magnitude. considering marisa's second point above, one can easily imagine a cheater disguising as a reciprocator but then defecting in the most extreme, life-or-death circumstances. Tit for Tat may work best when every round is worth the same and the equivalent strategy in humans may work best in consistent environments with mild threat, but the EEA was much more volatile than the Axelrod tournament model.
Does altruism exist? It seems to me that it does not. I think the closest thing to altruism is the positive feelings people achieve when they help another person. Helping others makes us feel good about ourself. Doing selfless acts in order to achieve these positive feelings is the closest thing to true altruism, in my opinion. I think it's interesting that we like when people ask us to do things for them. I understand that asking for favors signifies that someone considers us a friend, which is why we view being asked for a favor as a positive thing. I wonder if the positive feelings we achieve from carrying out the favor also contribute to our pleasure with the situation.
If altruism does not exist due to it not being evolutionarily advantageous to be altruistic, then why do people still help others in life threatening situations? Of course it makes sense due Hamiltons law if the person in trouble is related to you but what if they are not related or even a friend of yours? Of course police and and firefighters risk their lives and receive social benefits from that but I was thinking about more rare circumstances. In wars and dangerous situations people will help strangers at risk to their own lives. Some historical examples would be during the underground railroad or the holocaust when people helped complete strangers putting their own lives at risk. There is no evolutionary mechanism to explain this phenomenon that we have considered. Would this be rare enough to be outliers or maybe this situation was less of an issue in the EEA and our ancestors would not have encountered this choice as often.
I have some insight on the "every guy wants to sleep with his female friends" issue. I live with two other guys and three girls, and we were all pretty close friends before we decided to live together. However, one of the guys has slept with two of the girls, in a fairly short time frame. This created quite the ****storm, but it clearly gives anecdotal evidence that this exists. On the other end of it, I generally prefer to become friends with girls before I consider whether or not I'd sleep with them, but there is certainly a point at which I no longer see it as an attractive option. For example, I used to have romantic feelings towards one of those two girls back in freshman year, but don't any longer. However, she evidently had similar feelings towards me, and still feels them, as she has blatantly suggested we have sex several times. Note that these blatant propositions were after the other guy in our house stopped sleeping with her.
And they all wonder why I spend so little time in the house. (also, if even if any of you happen to know who I live with, I'm not going to say who is who)
My own question I was thinking about is this: are there any particular reasons why we might form opposite-sex friendships with homosexual persons? I suppose we could still get information about the opposite sex, but that would really only benefit the heterosexual member of the friendship. Are there any unique benefits to opposite-sex friendships with homosexual friends?
-- Edited by asdinard on Wednesday 26th of March 2014 08:17:54 PM
I'm curious about how the social dynamics of cooperation have changed ever since electronic payment became popular. Using an app such as Venmo, any individual can charge or pay anyone else who also has the app. From here on I will refer to an individual who charges someone else on Venmo as person (A), and the individual who has to pay person A will be referred to as person (B). Sometimes, (B) may refuse to pay (A) back with the hope that (A) will forget that (B) is in their debt. The payments that are not immediately completed are held on record under the "pending payments" tab. (A) can also send a reminder to (B) just in case (B) forgets to complete the payment following the initial charge. Taking all of this into consideration, I believe that (B) will be less likely to defect because there is no chance that (A) will forget about the payment since it will always be on record. Therefore, is it possible that Venmo actually serves to enhance cooperation among the individuals who use it because payments will always be completed sooner or later?
Are people in a relationship more or less likely to have opposite-sex friends than single people? The book didn't really mention anything about how close opposite-sex friendships were, but wouldn't having opposite sex friends seem to be competition to your mate?
In class, we discussed how forgiveness is good approach if the other individual apologies for betrayal. However, sometimes people forgive friends' betrayals even if they don't apologize to keep the peace. Is there an evolutionary mechanism to forgive regardless of apologizing? Also, does forgiveness even after the other party apologizes still encourage the other party to repeat the betrayal? For example, if someone's spouse has an affair, will forgiving them in some sense make it seem ok for the spouse to cheat again after a cooling down period? And is there a mechanism for how experiencing multiple betrayals alter our expectations of other individuals and how strongly we react to similar betrayals later?
While I do agree that reciprocal altruism doesn't really exist among close friends, I feel as though if the friendship is unbalanced there will be resentment (a sense that a friend is cheating on the friendship). I'm also curious about the hierarchies that form in friend groups and how these hierarchies change depending on the crowd. Are the friends who give the most the more dominant figures in a group or is this hierarchy defined in different terms?
To Jackie: "Doing selfless acts in order to achieve these positive feelings is the closest thing to true altruism"
Anything we do is because we want to do it. How does receiving positive feelings from an action not make it altruistic?
To Marisa about continuing cooperative play:
An interesting conclusion in game theory is that if the prisoner's dilema game is going to be played a fixed number of times, the equilibrium strategy is to always rat the other person out.. However, if on each game you have a x% change of playing again, it becomes more beneficial to continue cooperating.
Also, I think that one reason for not having reciprical altruism in mating relationships might be a discrepency in the mate values of the people.
Why do certain people bond with members of their own gender, or of the opposite gender more? More specifically, what about a person would make them want/need to be friends with the opposite gender rather than with their own?
I'm mostly asking this question ignoring the theory that there are specific reasons why we are ever friends with the opposite sex, which I know might be silly.
