Michael Tomasello Theory: What Makes Us Human?

Compared to other animals, human beings have built highly developed societies in terms of culture and technology. Historically this has been attributed to a hierarchical superiority of humans on a supposed evolutionary scale. For example, theories that the human brain is larger or simply superior are still in vogue today.

The investigations and theory of Michael Tomasello have been the most relevant recent contributions of Comparative Psychology to a classic question: what makes us human? That is, what differentiates us from other animals?

Michael Tomasello's theory

Michael Tomasello, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, is a psychologist who investigates the social cognition, that is, the way in which people process social information, social learning and communication.

Tomasello, whose perspective is situated in constructivism, argues that humans differ from other species by our ability to collaborate on activities when we share goals. Tomasello calls this "shared intentionality."

• Related article: What is constructivism in Psychology?

Comparative studies with children and chimpanzees

In recent years Tomasello has studied above all communication and shared intentionality. For it He has compared the cognitive processes of children and chimpanzees, since they are the closest animal to humans.

In his experiments, Tomasello analyzed, among other aspects, the way in which children and chimpanzees share rewards after carrying out a collaborative effort. For this he compared the results obtained in collaborative tasks carried out by pairs of children or chimpanzees.

Although the chimpanzees studied were able to work as a team, after achieving the reward, food in this case, the more dominant of the two got the entire prize. This tendency to individualism causes non-human primates to have difficulties in maintaining cooperative relationships in a sustained way over time.

Instead the children shared the reward more or less fairly after collaborating to obtain it. Even if they argued or tried to keep all the food before, there was a kind of negotiation that usually ended with each of the children taking half the prize.

In another of the experiments, one of the members of the couple obtained the award before the other. In the case of children, the first to obtain the reward continued to collaborate with the other until the latter also obtained his. In contrast, the chimpanzee that got the food in the first place was unconcerned about his mate.

• Related article: "Comparative psychology: the animal part of psychology"

Differences between human and chimpanzee societies

Tomasello affirms from his experiments and observations that the societies formed by great apes are much more individualistic than those of humans. He attributes this to the greater capacity of people, even when they are very young, for collaboration and to attribute intentions to others.

This ability to "Read minds", or imagine the emotions and thoughts of others and understand that they can be different from their own, it is known as “Theory of mind”. Great apes and other animals, such as crows or parrots, are also considered to possess this ability, but it is much less developed than in humans.

Tomasello says that great apes often use theory of mind to compete, for example to get sexual partners. They can also carry out altruistic behaviors or prosocial to help other individuals, but they only tend to do so if there is no competition for resources and minimal effort.

According to Tomasello, the groups of chimpanzees rely heavily on dominance and individual activity; for example, the gathering of food or the care of the young is carried out by a single individual.

In contrast, among humans social relationships and hierarchies are not determined only by selfishness and domination, but collaboration is more important. Tomasello argues that non-cooperative people (parasites or “free riders”) tend to be left out of cooperative activities.

The development of culture and morality

Another fundamental difference between us and other primates is that we humans create social norms and institutions. According to Tomasello, these are a consequence of our ability to exchange information with other members of our group and transmitting the culture from generation to generation, which allows us to progressively complicate our societies.

The degree of collaboration and interdependence also increases as societies develop. Human groups tend to get bigger and bigger: in a few thousand years, a very small period of time in the context From evolution, we have gone from being part of small tribes of hunters and gatherers to the globalized world of today. This progress would have been unthinkable without the development of language and the cumulative progress of culture and technology.

According to Tomasello, children are instinctively cooperative But as they grow up and are influenced by the culture that surrounds them, they learn to discriminate with whom they collaborate, mainly so as not to be exploited by free riders.

Human children internalize the norms constructed by their society to such an extent that they self-organizes the responsibility to make others follow them, even if it is not harmful to the contrary to nobody. Tomasello argues that human culture encourages us to do things "the right way", that is, as most of the group we are part of does, and that those who do not comply with social norms get a bad reputation and they are viewed with suspicion.

• Related article: "What is morality? Discovering the development of ethics in childhood"

Human intelligence and animal intelligences

Historically it has been considered that human intelligence is quantitatively superior to that of animals because our brain is more developed. However, according to the studies of Tomasello children outperform chimpanzees in social intelligence but they have a level of physical intelligence, for example spatial or bodily, equivalent to theirs.

Tomasello and other authors have proven that great apes have cognitive abilities that until recently we would have attributed exclusively to humans. Among other things, they know that objects continue to exist even if they disappear from their sight (Piagetian object permanence) and they can mentally differentiate quantities.

Chimpanzee chicks are also adept at communicative gestures, but their variety and complexity are rare. Another ape the gorilla Koko has been trained in the use of sign language by Francine Patterson. Koko has even created complex concepts by combining several words. There are also examples that non-human animals can pass on culture from generation to generation: for example, in a group of chimpanzees in the Ivory Coast, young people are taught to use stones as hammers to open fruits dry.

Cooperation makes us human

According to the constructivist Tomasello, people learn language by cumulative cultural transmission, which has allowed our verbal communication to be very complex. What's more our body is perfectly adapted to language, from the speaking organs to specific areas of the brain. Just as marine animals have adapted to an aquatic context, we have adapted to a social context.

Humans need culture to develop. Without social interaction and language, not only would we not reach our full potential as a species, but our cognitive and social capacities would be very similar to those of other primates. The wild children, like Victor of Aveyron, serve as an example of this: without contact with other people, humans lose what makes us special.

• Related article: "What makes the human brain so special?”

Bibliographic references:

• Herrmann, E.; Call, J.; Hernández-Lloreda, M. V.; Hare, B. & Tomasello, M. (2007). "Humans Have Evolved Specialized Skills of Social Cognition: The Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis". Science, 317(5843): 1360–1366.

• Tomasello, M.; Carpenter, M.; Call, J.; Behne, T. & Moll, H. (2005). "Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition". Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28: 675-735.

• Warneken, F.; Hare, B.; Melis, A. P.; Hanus, D. & Tomasello, M. (2007). "Spontaneous Altruism by Chimpanzees and Young Children." PLoS Biology, 5: 1414–1420.