IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0088534.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Content of Our Cooperation, Not the Color of Our Skin: An Alliance Detection System Regulates Categorization by Coalition and Race, but Not Sex

Author

Listed:
  • David Pietraszewski
  • Leda Cosmides
  • John Tooby

Abstract

Humans in all societies form and participate in cooperative alliances. To successfully navigate an alliance-laced world, the human mind needs to detect new coalitions and alliances as they emerge, and predict which of many potential alliance categories are currently organizing an interaction. We propose that evolution has equipped the mind with cognitive machinery that is specialized for performing these functions: an alliance detection system. In this view, racial categories do not exist because skin color is perceptually salient; they are constructed and regulated by the alliance system in environments where race predicts social alliances and divisions. Early tests using adversarial alliances showed that the mind spontaneously detects which individuals are cooperating against a common enemy, implicitly assigning people to rival alliance categories based on patterns of cooperation and competition. But is social antagonism necessary to trigger the categorization of people by alliance—that is, do we cognitively link A and B into an alliance category only because they are jointly in conflict with C and D? We report new studies demonstrating that peaceful cooperation can trigger the detection of new coalitional alliances and make race fade in relevance. Alliances did not need to be marked by team colors or other perceptually salient cues. When race did not predict the ongoing alliance structure, behavioral cues about cooperative activities up-regulated categorization by coalition and down-regulated categorization by race, sometimes eliminating it. Alliance cues that sensitively regulated categorization by coalition and race had no effect on categorization by sex, eliminating many alternative explanations for the results. The results support the hypothesis that categorizing people by their race is a reversible product of a cognitive system specialized for detecting alliance categories and regulating their use. Common enemies are not necessary to erase important social boundaries; peaceful cooperation can have the same effect.

Suggested Citation

  • David Pietraszewski & Leda Cosmides & John Tooby, 2014. "The Content of Our Cooperation, Not the Color of Our Skin: An Alliance Detection System Regulates Categorization by Coalition and Race, but Not Sex," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(2), pages 1-19, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0088534
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0088534
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0088534
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0088534&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0088534?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Tooby & Leda Cosmides & Michael E. Price, 2006. "Cognitive adaptations for n-person exchange: the evolutionary roots of organizational behavior," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(2-3), pages 103-129.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Matar Ferera & Anthea Pun & Andrew Scott Baron & Gil Diesendruck, 2021. "The effect of familiarity on infants’ social categorization capacity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(3), pages 1-18, March.
    2. Syed Mudasser Abbas & Liu Zhiqiang, 2020. "COVID19, mental wellbeing and work engagement: The psychological resilience of senescent workforce," International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 9(4), pages 356-365, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Varela-Neira, Concepción & Araujo, Marisa del Río & Sanmartín, Emilio Ruzo, 2018. "How and when a salesperson's perception of organizational politics relates to proactive performance," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 660-670.
    2. Dincer, Oguzhan C. & Fredriksson, Per G., 2018. "Corruption and environmental regulatory policy in the United States: Does trust matter?," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 212-225.
    3. Marie Ritter & Meng Wang & Johannes Pritz & Olaf Menssen & Margarete Boos, 2021. "How collective reward structure impedes group decision making: An experimental study using the HoneyComb paradigm," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(11), pages 1-20, November.
    4. Anne C Pisor & Michael Gurven, 2015. "Corruption and the Other(s): Scope of Superordinate Identity Matters for Corruption Permissibility," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(12), pages 1-24, December.
    5. Han Xiao & Cheng Ma & Hongwei Gao & Ye Gao & Yang Xue, 2022. "Green Transformation of Anti-Epidemic Supplies in the Post-Pandemic Era: An Evolutionary Approach," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(10), pages 1-26, May.
    6. Kyong-sun Jin & Fransisca Ting & Zijing He & Renée Baillargeon, 2024. "Infants expect some degree of positive and negative reciprocity between strangers," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-13, December.
    7. Arnaud Wolff, 2019. "On the Function of Beliefs in Strategic Social Interactions," Working Papers of BETA 2019-41, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    8. Saad, Gad & Vongas, John G., 2009. "The effect of conspicuous consumption on men's testosterone levels," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 80-92, November.
    9. Price, Michael E., 2006. "Judgments about cooperators and freeriders on a Shuar work team: An evolutionary psychological perspective," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 101(1), pages 20-35, September.
    10. Johnson, Dominic D.P. & Price, Michael E. & Van Vugt, Mark, 2013. "Darwin's invisible hand: Market competition, evolution and the firm," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 90(S), pages 128-140.
    11. Stefan Leenheer & Maurice Gesthuizen & Michael Savelkoul, 2021. "Two-Way, One-Way or Dead-End Streets? Financial and Social Causes and Consequences of Generalized Trust," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 155(3), pages 915-937, June.
    12. Rusch, Hannes, 2018. "Ancestral kinship patterns substantially reduce the negative effect of increasing group size on incentives for public goods provision," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 105-115.
    13. Benito Arruñada & Xosé H. Vázquez, 2009. "Behavioral assumptions and management ability," Economics Working Papers 1157, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Apr 2010.
    14. Nicolas Baumard, 2010. "Has punishment played a role in the evolution of cooperation? A critical review," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 9(2), pages 171-192, December.
    15. Zachary Garfield & Kristen Syme & Edward H. Hagen, 2020. "Universal and variable leadership dimensions across human societies," Post-Print hal-03162384, HAL.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0088534. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.