Social and Machiavellian intelligence

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Social and Machiavellian intelligence

• MSc EP module 2006/07
• EP Session 8

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Aims in this session

• How could we define social intelligence
• does it even exist?
• What does the evolution of intelligence in NHPs
  tell us about the evolutionary origins of human
  intelligence
• Is NHP social intelligence one thing, or several?
• Is g a domain-specific adaptation for reasoning
  about how to deal with one-off problems in the
  hominan EAA

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Chimps display social intelligence

• Two mother chimps have infants playing together
• Mums are relaxing and grooming one another in
  sunshine, dominant female asleep nearby
• Infants start to squabble. Mums must intervene
• but each knows that if she intervenes on side of
  her own baby, other will intervene to support the
  other and they will begin to fight instead of
  having a friendly rest together
• Solution one mum wakes up the dominant female
• the mum points out squabbling infants
• Boss sizes up situation and intervenes
  (even-handed)
• Neither mum needs to challenge Boss
• Infants stop, Boss goes to sleep, mums relax

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Why did intelligence evolve?

• Humphrey Nature, like Henry Ford, abhors waste
• Nature created primate intelligence for some
  purpose
• Physical environment not challenging enough
• Useful in social problem-solving
• Earlier ideas Jolly, Chance
• In a social environment in which only a few can
  reproduce maximally, success will depend on who
  you can enrol as ally and who you can exploit or
  outwit
• Humphrey in Growing points in Ethology (ed. by
  Bateson Hinde)

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Diverse recent views on the nature of NHP
intelligence

• Humphrey It evolved to solve social problems
• Byrne Whiten Machiavellian intelligence
• Social intelligence is linked to greater brain
  size
• Barrett Henzi Embodied, distributed cognition
• De Waal 'Daring interpretation' of evidence is
  plausible and worthwhile, but it is difficult to
  confirm a Machiavellian interpretation
• C. Hayes Little convincing evidence that NHPs
  are mentalists rather than behaviourists

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Commonplace social intelligence

• NHPs show triadic awareness and social knowledge
  (Perry et al, 2004, Animal Behaviour 67, 165-170)
• Longtail macaques understand kinship structure of
  group Vervets know mother-infant pairs baboons
  understand rank relationships in group Bonnet
  macaques solicit allies who outrank the opponent
• W-faced Capuchins focus appeals for support
• who is higher ranking than their opponents
• with whom have better social relations than
  with opponent
• Simulation methods to compare rule of thumb
  performance against chance

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Byrne Whiten Machiavellian Intelligence

• Machiavellian intelligence (in NHPs) quantified
  using measures of 'tactical deception'
  manipulating rivals, etc.
• Call for evidence from field observers (report
  anecdotes, etc.)
• 'Tactical deception'
• 250 accounts
• Retain 117 (49 from wild) when take most critical
  stance
• 4 Categories

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(1) Concealing something

• Subordinate chimp discovers hidden food
• Dominant nearby, so Sub ignores food (studiously
  avoids gazing at it)
• Otherwise Dom will see and take food itself
• Dominant may see through deception
• Can see it is being deceived about something
  worthwhile, but doesn't know what or where
• Dom goes off and hides waits for Sub to reveal
  what it has discovered and then takes it over

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(2) Creating an image

• Gorilla female F pretend nest-builds
• in 6 places slowly moving towards mumbaby
• Mother will object if F comes up to groom baby
• F manages to 'just happen' to end up next door
• Baboon female wants male's prey
• Pretends to want to groom him male relaxes
• Grooming under way, male off guard
• Female snatches meat and runs off with it

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(3) Distracting/Attracting attention

• Baboon is being chased
• Pretends to have seen predator
• Rival stops chase to scan for the danger, victim
  can sneak away
• Hiding the evidence
• Female baboon wants to groom young male
• Dominant will punish her for socialising
• Young male hidden behind rock, female sits
  'innocently' in Dom's view but with hands out of
  sight and on male, covertly grooming him

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(4) Using another animal as social tool

• Paul (young baboon) finds adult who has just dug
  up a corm important food but difficult for
  young baboons to dig up themselves
• Mum out of sight Paul looks around, then
  screams loudly as if under threat
• Mum runs up, sees female with food, pursues her
  female drops food and runs off
• When they have gone, Paul picks it up and eats it
  
• Used tactic 3 times over few weeks, but NEVER
  when mum was in sight of 'cause' of the scream

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Can't prove Machiavellian interpretation

• Always possible that there were earlier unseen
  opportunities for trial error learning
• Adding more to list of anecdotes doesn't make the
  anecdotes more scientific
• Bernstein "plural of anecdote is not data"
• Occam's razor (the Principle of Economy)
• Must exclude TE each time, to accept Mach
  Intell.
• Does an insightful solution imply no contribution
  at all from experience?
• Bennett argues that an insightful solution must
  reflect knowledge/experience, otherwise blind
  luck or miracle

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Embodied, distributed cognition

• Barrett Henzi (2005, PRSB 272, 1865-1875) argue
  that BWs linking of Machiavelli, manipulation,
  mind-reading is misleading
• Primates follow short-term goals
  opportunistic-ally read behaviour not minds
• Distributed, embodied primate cognition (cf. Andy
  Clark) so lab results differ because of lack of
  social scaffolding present in natural group
• Discuss this paper if time

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Social intelligence and brain size

• In Primates and Carnivores, greater group size
  (and hence complexity of social challenges)
  predicts greater neocortex ratio (brainpower)
• Amount of tactical deception in primates
  (corrected for hours of study of the species).
• Excess over expected value increases with the
  species neocortex ratio (r0.77, Byrne p.220,
  Barton in Mach II see also Byrne Corp, 2004,
  PRSB 271, 1693-1699)

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Human Social Intelligence

• Tromsø Social Intelligence Scale Italian version
  Gini (2006) J. Adolesc. 29, 307-312 has 3
  factors
• Social information processing (SP)
• Social skills (SS)
• Social awareness (SA)

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Social information processing (SP)

• I can predict other peoples behaviour
• I know how my actions will make others feel
• I understand other peoples feelings
• I understand others wishes
• I can often understand what other are trying to
  accomplish without the need for them to say
  anything
• I can predict how others will react to my
  behaviour
• I can often understand what others really mean
  through their expression, body language, etc.

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Social Skills (SS)

• I often feel uncertain around new people who I
  dont know
• I fit in easily in social situations
• I am good at entering new situations and meeting
  people for the first time
• I have a hard time getting along with other
  people
• It takes a long time for me to get to know others
  well
• I am good at getting on good terms with new
  people
• I frequently have problems in finding good
  conversation topics

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Social Awareness (SA)

• I often feel that it is difficult to understand
  others choices
• People often surprise me with the things they do
• Other people become angry with me without my
  being able to explain why
• It seems as though people are often angry or
  irritated with me when I say what I think
• I find people unpredictable
• I have often hurt others without realizing it
• I am often surprised by others reactions to what
  I do

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MT-MM approach to social intelligence

• Weis Suß (2007) PAID 42, 3-12
• Social understanding (verbal, pictorial, video)
• Social memory (verbal, pictorial, video)
• Social knowledge (verbal)
• Plus Academic intelligence
• Best model had 3 correlated factors (SU, SM, SK)
  plus a separate Verbal-methods factor
• Some overlap of social memory with academic
  memory factor, but unique common variance within
  SM

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Human social intelligence

• Matthews, Zeidner Roberts, 2002. Emotional
  Intelligence, p. 551
• However, these pioneering attempts to measure
  social intelligence were generally unsuccessful.
  In particular, researchers consistently
  discovered that tests designed to assess social
  intelligence loaded on factors defined by
  existing measures of verbal intelligence (e.g.
  Gresvenor, 1927 R. Thorndike Stein, 1937
  Woodrow, 1939)
• Consider Dunbars suggestion that social gossip
  glues groups together and drives the evolution of
  language,
• is it a problem if higher social intelligence is
  linked to better verbal ability?

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g as a domain-specific adaptation

• Kanazawa, 2004, Psych. Rev. 111, 512-523
• Dedicated vs. improvisational intelligence
• Tooby Cosmides see g as emergent from the
  special purpose modules evolved in EAA
• K thinks that g is a specialised module for
  thinking and reasoning to solve non-recurrent
  problems in EAA a dedicated intelligence for
  the sphere of evolutionary novelty

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Kanazawa (2)

• Hominans lived in EAA for millenia most
  problems were recurrent, and would be solved by
  evolved special modules (recognising faces, food,
  ideal mates, dangers, how to respond to children)
• Rare, one-off problems required different
  approach reasoning
• Nowadays, we live outside EAA most things
  (except men, women, boys, girls) are
  evolutionarily novel and require g.
• K predicts independence between g and the other
  evolved mechanisms eg cheat detection
• g predicts performance on the (hard) non-deontic
  version of Wason task, but not performance on
  deontic (cheat-detection) version
• g doesnt bring much advantage to marrying,
  parenting, interpersonal relations
• EI and Social I should be independent of General
  Intelligence

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References

• Humphrey (1976) in Growing points in ethology
  (ed. by Bateson Hinde), Chapter 9
• Whiten Byrne (1997) Machiavellian intelligence
  II. Ch. 1, 5
• Barrett Henzi (2005) The social nature of
  primate cognition. Proceedings of the Royal
  Society of London, Series B, 272, 1865-1875
• Kanazawa (2004) General intelligence as a
  domain-specific adaptation. Psychological
  Review, 111, 512-523
• Weis Suß (2007) Reviving the search for social
  intelligence A multitrait-multimethod study of
  its structure and construct validity. PAID, 42,
  3-12