98% Chimp, But What A Difference 2% Makes

Michael Tomasello writes in the New York Times about the similarities and differences between people and our nearest relatives shown by recent studies comparing 2 year old and adult chimps and orangutangs:

[from Idea Lab - How Are Humans Unique? - Intelligence - Evolution - Idea Lab - NYTimes.com]

When you look at apes and children in situations requiring them to put their heads together, a subtle but significant difference emerges. We have observed that children, but not chimpanzees, expect and even demand that others who have committed themselves to a joint activity stay involved and not shirk their duties. When children want to opt out of an activity, they recognize the existence of an obligation to help the group — they know that they must, in their own way, “take leave” to make amends. Humans structure their collaborative actions with joint goals and shared commitments.

Another subtle but crucial difference can be seen in communication. The great apes — chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans — communicate almost exclusively for the purpose of getting others to do what they want. Human infants, in addition, gesture and talk in order to share information with others — they want to be helpful. They also share their emotions and attitudes freely — as when an infant points to a passing bird for its mother and squeals with glee. This unprompted sharing of information and attitudes can be seen as a forerunner of adult gossip, which ensures that members of a group can pool their knowledge and know who is or is not behaving cooperatively. The free sharing of information also creates the possibility of pedagogy — in which adults impart information by telling and showing, and children trust and use this information with confidence. Our nearest primate relatives do not teach and learn in this manner.

Finally, human infants, but not chimpanzees, put their heads together in pretense. This seemingly useless play activity is in fact a first baby step toward the creation of distinctively human social institutions. In social institutions, participants typically endow someone or something with special powers and obligations; they create roles like president or teacher or wife. Presidents and teachers and wives operate with special powers and obligations because, and only because, we all believe and act as if they fill these roles and have these powers. Two young children pretending together that a stick is a horse have thus taken their first step on the road not just to Oz but also toward inhabiting human institutional reality.

Human beings have evolved to coordinate complex activities, to gossip and to playact together. It is because they are adapted for such cultural activities — and not because of their cleverness as individuals — that human beings are able to do so many exceptionally complex and impressive things.

Of course, humans beings are not cooperating angels; they also put their heads together to do all kinds of heinous deeds. But such deeds are not usually done to those inside “the group.” Recent evolutionary models have demonstrated what politicians have long known: the best way to get people to collaborate and to think like a group is to identify an enemy and charge that “they” threaten “us.” The remarkable human capacity for cooperation thus seems to have evolved mainly for interactions within the group. Such group-mindedness is a major cause of strife and suffering in the world today. The solution — more easily said than done — is to find new ways to define the group.

It’s interesting to me that the natural tendency of children (and by extension, people in general) is to remain connected through the free transport of information that leads to the pooling and distribution of information, as well as our innate ability to create status and rank from our leanings toward play acting.

[The more time I spend studying people through cognitive psychology, linguistics, and anthropology, the more I am convinced that is my ‘work’. I am a webthropologist.]