Working relationships
Spontaneous categorization along competence in partner and leader evaluations
Alexander Bor
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Successful cooperation requires a partner both willing and capable of contributing to a joint endeavour. Accordingly, partner choice psychology should include mechanisms to distinguish between people with good and bad intentions, and between people who are competent and incompetent. While it is well established that intentions influence partner choice, the literature offers mixed evidence concerning people's ability to gauge competence in social interactions. Theoretical accounts in leadership-followership psychology and food-sharing imply that partner competence can influence the estimated future benefits from cooperation. The available empirical evidence, however, is limited to leadership evaluations in the political science literature. This paper thus investigates if people have dedicated cognitive mechanisms, which have evolved to categorize potential social partners on competence. It looks at competence both in regular social partnerships and leader-follower relations. In a series of four experiments relying on the memory confusion protocol, it demonstrates that people spontaneously distinguish between competent and incompetent social partners. This mental categorization is present equally in partner and leader evaluations. These results have interesting implications for partner choice literature and evolutionary leadership theories.
Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis Revisited: What Evolved Cognitive and Social Skills May Underlie Human Manipulation
Tamas Bereczkei
Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
In light of the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis, social intelligence resulted from the successful exploitation of rivals for personal benefits. In humans, natural selection might have fostered Machiavellian personalities because the skillful manipulation of others conferred an evolutionary advantage. However, some recent empirical findings contradict the expectations of the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis: People with high scores on Machiavellianism scales perform poorly in mindreading tasks and have a relatively low emotional intelligence. In this theoretical article, I provide supportive evidence arguing that Machiavellian people have cognitive and social skills that enable them to efficiently exploit others. They may have specific ("nomothetic") mentalization ability with which they are skilled at reading social situations and extracting information from interindividual commonalities. An above average capacity of working memory and advanced emotion manipulation ability are involved in their "rational" mode of thinking. Machiavellians are equipped with evolved algorithms - and underlying neural processes - that enable them to evaluate their social environment and make predictions about their future reward in a basically unpredictable environment. Compared with non-Machiavellians, they show high cognitive and neural skills in social activities such as reward-seeking, task-orientation, monitoring others, and inhibition of cooperative impulses. As a result of interaction among these algorithms, the core of Machiavellian strategy is behavioral flexibility possibly favored by evolutionary mechanisms such as frequency dependent selection akin to an evolutionary arms race. In accordance with recent studies using experimental games and brain imaging techniques, the exploitation of cooperators as potential victims may have selected for human Machiavellian intelligence.
Fibbing About Your Feelings: The Relationship between Emotional Misrepresentation and Trust
Emma Edelman Levine
University of Chicago Working Paper, February 2017
Abstract:
Across one pilot study and five experiments, I examine the relationship between emotional misrepresentation and trust. I find that emotional misrepresentation, unlike many other types of misrepresentation, can boost trust. Emotional misrepresentation is perceived to be a signal of self-control and competence. As a result, individuals who misrepresent their emotions often engender higher levels of cognitive trust and are more likely to be hired and promoted than individuals who express authentic emotions. Emotional misrepresentation can also signal concern for others and one's organization, and thus, increase affective trust. I explore these effects and their boundaries across a range of samples, manipulations, and emotions. This research unearths the circumstances in which self-expression helps versus harms interpersonal and workplace relationships, explores the antecedents and consequences of distinct dimensions of trust, and documents novel benefits of inauthenticity.
Life history strategy and human cooperation in economic games
Junhui Wu et al.
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across five studies using samples from both Japan and United States (N = 2345), we take a multi-method approach to test the prediction from life history theory that a slow, compared to fast, life history strategy promotes investment in cooperative relationships. Studies 1 and 2 examined how different measures as proxies for life history strategy (i.e., Mini-K and High-K Strategy Scale) relate to cooperation in various economic games. Studies 3 to 5 measured early childhood environments (i.e., childhood harshness and unpredictability), manipulated resource scarcity using previously validated methods, and then measured cooperation. Across our studies, we also examined four hypothesized psychological mechanisms that could explain the relation between life history strategy and cooperation: temporal discounting, concern for reputation, social value orientation, and trust in others. Overall, we found no support for the hypothesis that life history strategy predicts cooperation or that early childhood environments interact with current resource scarcity to predict cooperation. Thus, our initial findings imply that life history theory may not account for individual variation in cooperation with unknown others.