1949/01/01 by Brian Hare, Bernd F. Straub · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Chemistry · Environmental Science · Neuroscience · Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics · Psychology · #Aggression #Anthropology #Biochemistry #Biology #Chemical Reactions and Isotopes #Chemistry #Cognition #Cognitive psychology #Computer science #Developmental psychology #Domestication #Ecology #Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior #Evolutionary biology #Homo sapiens #Human evolution #Human-Animal Interaction Studies #Isotope #Isotope Analysis in Ecology #Metabolism and Genetic Disorders #Natural selection #Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior #Neuroscience #Physics #Psychology #Selection (genetic algorithm)
paper · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010416-044201
openalex publication_date 1949/01/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/04/28
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 self-domestication 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.