Citation

Hare B. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2016; 68: 155-186.

Affiliation

Department of Evolutionary Anthropology and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708; email: b.hare@duke.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Annual Reviews)

DOI

10.1146/annurev-psych-010416-044201

PMID

27732802

Abstract

The challenge of studying human cognitive evolution is identifying unique features of our intelligence while explaining the processes by which they arose. Comparisons with nonhuman apes point to our early-emerging cooperative-communicative abilities as crucial to the evolution of all forms of human cultural cognition, including language. The human selfdomestication hypothesis proposes that these early-emerging social skills evolved when natural selection favored increased in-group prosociality over aggression in late human evolution. As a by-product of this selection, humans are predicted to show traits of the domestication syndrome observed in other domestic animals. In reviewing comparative, developmental, neurobiological, and paleoanthropological research, compelling evidence emerges for the predicted relationship between unique human mentalizing abilities, tolerance, and the domestication syndrome in humans. This synthesis includes a review of the first a priori test of the self-domestication hypothesis as well as predictions for future tests. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology Volume 68 is January 03, 2017. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Language: en