Coalitional Psychology and the Evolution of Intelligence

IF 3.2 1区心理学 Q1 BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Evolution and Human Behavior Pub Date : 2026-05-01 Epub Date: 2026-02-10 DOI:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2026.106839

Jonathan Egeland , Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair , Thomas Haarklau Kleppestø

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

As evolutionary and behavioral scholars have long noted, humans are “uniquely unique,” partly due to our remarkable cognitive sophistication. Since Darwin, scientists have sought both proximate and ultimate explanations for how human thinking and information processing differ from those of other species, and why humans evolved such advanced cognitive skills. Research over the past few decades suggests that various aspects of human socioecology—such as large group sizes and intensified social competition driven by ecological dominance—have selected for greater intelligence. However, a clear account of how intelligence enables individuals to adaptively navigate the complex web of social interactions within human groups remains an unsatisfied desideratum. To address this issue, we synthesize insights from psychology, anthropology, cognitive science, and other evolutionarily informed fields to formulate the Coalitional Intelligence Hypothesis. This hypothesis posits that the behavioral manifestations of human intelligence function as honest signals of coalitional value, facilitating adaptive exchanges of status and cognitive–computational services. We derive five testable predictions from this hypothesis and evaluate them against core findings in the literature.

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联合心理学与智力进化

正如进化和行为学者长期以来所指出的，人类是“独一无二的”，部分原因在于我们非凡的认知复杂性。自达尔文以来，科学家们一直在寻找人类思维和信息处理与其他物种有何不同的近因和终极解释，以及人类为何进化出如此先进的认知技能。过去几十年的研究表明，人类社会生态学的各个方面——比如由生态优势驱动的大群体规模和激烈的社会竞争——都选择了更高的智力。然而，对于智力如何使个体能够自适应地驾驭人类群体中复杂的社会互动网络，一个清晰的解释仍然是一个未得到满足的愿望。为了解决这个问题，我们综合了心理学、人类学、认知科学和其他进化相关领域的见解，形成了联合智力假说。这一假设认为，人类智力的行为表现是联合价值的诚实信号，促进了地位和认知计算服务的适应性交换。我们从这一假设中得出五个可测试的预测，并根据文献中的核心发现对它们进行评估。

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来源期刊

Evolution and Human Behavior 生物-行为科学

CiteScore

8.30

自引率

9.80%

发文量

审稿时长

82 days

期刊介绍： Evolution and Human Behavior is an interdisciplinary journal, presenting research reports and theory in which evolutionary perspectives are brought to bear on the study of human behavior. It is primarily a scientific journal, but submissions from scholars in the humanities are also encouraged. Papers reporting on theoretical and empirical work on other species will be welcome if their relevance to the human animal is apparent.