Helping in humans and other animals: a fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue.

ABSTRACT: Humans are arguably unique in the extent and scale of cooperation with unrelated individuals. While pairwise interactions among non-relatives occur in some non-human species, there is scant evidence of the large-scale, often unconditional prosociality that characterizes human social behaviour. Consequently, one may ask whether research on cooperation in humans can offer general insights to researchers working on similar questions in non-human species, and whether research on humans should be published in biology journals. We contend that the answer to both of these questions is yes. Most importantly, social behaviour in humans and other species operates under the same evolutionary framework. Moreover, we highlight how an open dialogue between different fields can inspire studies on humans

SUBMITTER: Bshary R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5627196 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature