The Evolution of Pro-social Concern

In an attempt to better understand evolution of altruism, there has been a recent surge in studies on pro-social behaviours like helping. Next to humans a variety of animals has been tested in experiments on pro-sociality, with however, rather inconsistent results within and between species and across context. This raises questions about the evolutionary pressures (e.g. aspects of social life) and motivations behind pro-social behaviour (e.g. need, sympathy). Therefore, the aim of the current proposal is two-fold: The first aim is to test two main hypotheses about the evolution of pro-social behaviour, namely the cooperative breeding hypothesis and the social bonding hypothesis, by making use of the comparative approach, including species with two distinct social features (cooperative breeding (CB) and social bonds (SB)). To control for effects of common ancestry, next to humans I will include two species per two phylogenetical different lineages (primates: common marmosets (CB) vs. long-tailed macaques (SB); and corvids: Iberian magpies (CB) vs. common ravens (SB)). The second aim of the proposal is to test underlying motivation of prosocial behaviour, by confronting all five species with a series of experiments that vary across necessity and costs of pro-social behaviour.

No additional funding sources recorded.