The informational affective tie mechanism: on the role of uncertainty, context, and attention in caring

Based on the growing evidence on caring and enduring relationships displayed by species across the evolutionary ladder, the ubiquity and importance of environmental uncertainty faced by all organisms, and the adaptational principle that learning may involve preference learning besides instrumental reinforcement learning, this paper proposes a novel information theoretic model of affective bonding, focusing on humans. A special case of the proposed “informational affective tie mechanism” (iATM) turns out to be the model of Bault, Fahrenfort, Pelloux, Ridderinkhof, and van Winden: An affective social tie mechanism, Journal of Economic Psychology, 2017, 61, 152–175. In further contrast to the latter model, the iATM model allows for the role of multiple contexts and distributed attention. Moreover, it provides a dynamic, context related, endogenous representation of the well-known social value orientation construct, facilitating the propagation of caring as observed in the literature. Empirical support is provided along different dimensions. Although the model is not estimated in full detail, a necessary condition regarding its parameters is shown to be fulfilled. Furthermore, experimental findings concerning various well-known games can be tracked under plausible calibration. In addition, the mechanism can be linked to neurobiological evidence concerning maternal (and paternal) care – as the presumed primordial caregiving system – and the signaling role of oxytocin. Finally, the evidence concerning non-human species is addressed, as well as the role of norms and reciprocity.