The Social Cognition of Social Foraging: Partner Selection by Underlying Valuation.

ABSTRACT: Humans and other animals have a variety of psychological abilities tailored to the demands of asocial foraging, that is, foraging without coordination or competition with other conspecifics. Human foraging, however, also includes a unique element, the creation of resource pooling systems. In this type of social foraging, individuals contribute when they have excess resources and receive provisioning when in need. Is this behavior produced by the same psychology as asocial foraging? If so, foraging partners should be judged by the same criteria used to judge asocial patches of resources: the net energetic benefits they provide. The logic of resource pooling speaks against this. Maintaining such a system requires the ability to judge others not on their short-term returns, but on the psychol

SUBMITTER: Delton AW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3498050 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature