Human Evolution and Small Groups

9321461 Caporael大多数行为、社会和生物科学理论将个人作为分析的基本单位，并假设这些单位或多或少是理性的自私自利。Caporael博士在这项研究中的目标是质疑这一焦点和假设的充分性。她正在发展一种假设，即人类适应于小群体生活，导致了社交的适应性专业化，这种专业化可以而且已经扩展到构建、识别和解决新领域的问题。这些领域包括与大规模社会组织和非社会对象相关联的领域。这一观点预示着知识的社会建构和栖息地的谈判之间的紧张关系，前者促进群体内部的协调，后者需要与现实相适应。在这项研究中，Caporael博士正在综合进化生物学、心理学和人类学的理论和数据，以利用群体结构和心理功能之间的对应关系的证据，发展出一种社会性的一般理论。社会性理论为人类进化中的传统话题提供了可信的重新解释，也为民间心理学和进化民间心理学提供了可信的解释。Caporael博士还将该理论应用于科学、技术和社会(STS)研究中熟悉的主题(图灵测试、技术创新和科学组织)。这项研究的结果应该会引起心理学家、进化学家和STS研究人员的极大兴趣。***

9321461 Caporael Most behavioral, social and biological science theories use individuals as the basic unit of analysis and assume these units to be more or less rationally self-interested. The objective of Dr. Caporael in this research is to challenge the adequacy of that focus and assumption. She is developing an hypothesis that humans are adapted for small group living, resulting in adaptive specializations for sociality that can be and have been extended for constructing, identifying and solving problems in novel domains. These domains include those associated with large-scale social organization and nonsocial objects. This perspective predicts a tension between social construction of knowledge, which facilitates coordination within groups, and the negotiation of the habitat, which requires some correspondence with reality. In this research, Dr. Caporael is synthesizing theory and data in evolutionary biology, psychology, and anthropology to develop a general theory of sociality drawing on evidence for correspondences between group configuration and psychological functioning. Sociality theory provides a plausible reinterpretation of traditional topics in human evolution, as well as a plausible interpretation for folk psychology and evolutionary folk psychology. Dr. Caporael is also applying the theory to familiar topics (the Turing test, technological innovation, and scientific organization) in Science, Technology and Society (STS) research. The results of this study should be of great interest to psychologists, evolutionary scientists and STS researchers. ***