Proximate & ultimate distinctions sociality

• Proximate Hypothesis refers to the immediate motives causes and cognitive mechanisms that lead to a social behavior.
• Functional (Ultimate) Hypothesis: refers to the evolutionary explanations and adaptive significance behind a social behavior.
• Can we explain why female lions breed synchronously due to surrounding group pheromones, what hypothesis explains this

  Proximate Hypothesis: the causal chemical cues (pheromones) triggering immediate mechanisms to breed
• Can we explain why female lions breed synchronously due to survival, what hypothesis best explains this?

  Functional (Ultimate) Hypothesis because this behaviour is evolutionary adaptive increasing chances for better cub survival
• Proximate Causal cognitive mechanisms of teaching can be explain by: teacher must have theory of mind of their pupil
• Functional Adaptive (ultimate) significance of teaching can be explained by: any activity that has evolved to promote learning in the pupil.
• Functional Adaptive explanation argues that non-humans teach, but it must come under certain criteria to be considered teaching; what does this include?

  • Modification of teacher's behaviour by a naive observer
  • Teacher incurring cost no immediate benefits
  • Naive observer becomes knowledgable
• An example of a functional adaptive explanation of teaching in non-humans includes?

  Teacher tandem ant guides naive observer ant to a destination by tapping them as it comes under the criteria

  
• Functional adaptive hypotheses help to emphasise the importance of what?

  Ecology
• What species are we most likely to see evidence of teaching?

  Species with long periods of juvenile dependence, such as cheetahs, elephants, humans

  
• Tactical deception is the use of misleading signals or actions to trick others to the advantage of the deceiver.

  
• Functional (ultimate) definition to explain tactical deception includes?


  employing a signal or action to disadvantage or misinform a competitor to the benefit of the actor.
• The proximate hypothesis for tactical deception can be explained by cognitive motivations such as mentalising TOM knowning how to deceive the other individual
• An example of proximate hypothesis for tactical deception is for when dominant monkey is away the subordinate/ weaker monkey uses deception to get with the females, because the subordinate mentalises what the dominant is not able to see

  
• Empathy is a social behaviour for understanding and reflecting others' emotional states, and aiding their welfare.
• Inequity aversion: species have a resistance to unfair outcomes.a and have preference for fairness, we test this via "fairness test"
• Demonstrated in the study of capuchin monkeys. In the study, the monkeys showed aversion to receiving a cucumber (a less preferred food), while another monkey received a grape (a more preferred food), indicating a possible preference for fairness is this an example of inequity adversion
• An example Empathy is of freeing trapped conspecifics. One study found that rats free trapped conspecifics even when they are freed to a distal chamber, preventing social contact with the liberator, which could be seen as empathetic behavior.
• Group-level selection mechanisms include for the individua?

  • Altruism helping behaviour at a cost to self
  • Kinship selection= evolutionary mechanism
  • Hamiltion's rule= quantifying this process