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The evolutionary origin of theory of mind remains obscure, though the predominant theory has been the functionalist idea that domain-general social intelligence gave way to domain-specific modules including a Theory of Mind Module (TOMM).

While many theories make claims about its role in the development of human language and social cognition few of them specify in detail any evolutionary neurophysiological precursors. A recent theory claims that Theory of Mind has its roots in two defensive reactions, namely immobilization stress and tonic immobility, which are implicated in the handling of stressful encounters and also figure prominently in mammalian childrearing practices. Their combined effect seems capable of producing many of the hallmarks of theory of mind, e.g., eye-contact, gaze-following, inhibitory control and intentional attributions.”

There are at least two hypotheses regarding the evolutionary timeline of ToM based on evidence from existing monkey and ape species, and from “cognitive archaeology,” including artifacts such as tools and cave paintings. The first of these hypotheses is the “6 million years hypothesis” on the basis that monkeys do not possess ToM, but apes appear to possess rudimentary ToM capacities. The second is the “40,000-years-hypothesis” on the basis that it has been difficult to obtain experimental or natural evidence of robust ToM abilities in modern apes. Archaeological evidence of fictional art representing impossible entities (such as mythological figures) from around 30-40,000 y/a suggests humans probably possessed solid ToM abilities by this time, since artists were able to represent their own imaginary thoughts. Moreover, burials from roughly 28,000 y/a in which the dead were adorned with jewelry suggest that people cared about how others perceived them, suggesting robust ToM capacities.

Prosociality

The predominant theory explaining the evolutionary origins of ToM has been the functionalist idea that domain-general social intelligence gave way to domain-specific modules including an evolved Theory of Mind Module (TOMM), a processing mechanism whose task is to understand behavior in relation to mental states.

“According to this hypothesis, as hominid and ape groups evolved increasingly complex social orders, selective pressures associated with intraspecific competition and the formation of cooperative alliances favored those individuals who could successfully control sexual, aggressive, and other affectively based behavioral impulses. These selective pressures also favored those individuals that could successfully engage in effective social calculation, including deception and anticipation of the behaviors of other group members [i.e. the basic capacities of ToM]”.

The functional capacities underlying ToM are crucial for several complex human social interactions such as intentional communication ; teaching ; pretending ; reputation-management, cooperation , leadership , and even war.

Cooperative Breeding Hypothesis

Sarah Hrdy argues that children depend on a wider social network than evolutionary scientists have traditionally assumed, with the implications that that infants must “appeal to potential caretakers in a way that other apes didn’t have to.” Thus, Darwinian selection would favor infants better at understanding others and soliciting their care. To support this theory, she notes that chimpanzees reared by mothers plus (human) others tend to be better at reading and using social cues. She also points out that modern human infants are more interested in others (e.g. faces, eye gaze, expressions) than chimpanzees, and she highlights the human infant growth spurt in pre-frontal white matter at 6 months, coinciding with the emergence of attention-grabbing babbling. All of this supports the notion that being raised (in part) by alloparents may have been the evolutionary impetus for the development of prosocial capacities, including ToM.

Language

Challenging popular ideas that self-awareness or pretense were the main drivers underlying the development of ToM, Peter K. Smith argues that language “has a crucial role to play in this debate and that… it is a precondition for explicit mind-reading skills to develop and evolve.” He goes on to argue that “it would help an individual ontogenetically by helping them label intervening variables/mental states of themselves and others; and it would help phylogenetically, by the process of developing within a community of adults linguistically communicating about such sates. It is not so clear that this phylogenetic scaffolding could be created by a community of creatures busy being self-aware or busy carrying out pretend simulations. Self-awareness and pretense of this kind are intrinsically solitary, whereas we need a social context for the evolution of mind-reading. Language seems to be the right candidate”

Others contest this idea and contend that ToM must have preceded the evolutionary origins of language: “[ToM] must have preceded any ability to use language in the communicative way in which it is used today” ; and “Without theory of mind, there would be no language in the form we know it”.

Predators/Prey

Ioannis Tsoukalas proposed that two defensive reactions, tonic immobility & immobilization stress, drove the evolution of ToM capacities in humans. He focuses on the visual components underlying ToM and its reliance on the perceptual processing of the human face. According to this theory, ToM descended from these defensive reactions which facilitated the development of many of the predominant features of ToM, including eye contact, gaze following, inhibitory control, and intentional attributions.

Moreover, “direct interactions with prey, as well as predators, may have shaped mechanisms for detection of animate agents and predictive inferences about their behavior, including mechanisms of “mindreading,” or “theory of mind.” For example, from infancy humans, like many other animals, are attuned to interactions of chasing and pursuit, which capture attention and generate strong intuitions about goals and outcomes... Indeed, it is possible that predator-prey interactions were an important, nonsocial source of selection on mechanisms of mindreading…. given the ancient origins of predator-prey interactions, which in vertebrates evolutionarily predate some forms of within-species social interaction such as parental care and cooperation”.

Cultural Evolution

ToM capacities also require adequate enculturation in a robust socio-cultural environment: “Enculturation in a ToM community is not sufficient for mind-reading. But is very likely to be necessary… if we could imagine child being reared by chimpanzees, it might not develop an explicit theory of mind because of deficient enculturation.”.

Furthermore, given evidence for cultural variation in understandings of ToM, ToM may also be shaped by forces of cultural evolution in addition to the more biological evolutionary approaches discussed above.

Cultural Variation

So far, six cultural variations of ToM have been articulated.

The Euro-American Modern Secular Theory (W.E.I.R.D. secular) holds that the mind is bounded inside our heads so that entities in the world do not enter the mind, and the contents of the mind do not exit it or have real effect on the world. The assertion that either of these things happen is considered a symptom of mental illness. However, the contents of the mind are understood as causally important, and therefore, others’ minds can (and should) be inferred, even if they cannot be directly known. .

The Euro-American Modern Supernatural Theory (W.E.I.R.D. spiritual) is similar to the secular theory except that the mind is viewed as porous and accessible to various spiritual entities such as God, spirits, ghosts, etc..

In the Opacity of Mind Theory (South Pacific, Melanesia), other-regarding and mentalizing capacities are discouraged because it is understood to be both impolite and near-impossible to understand another’s mind.

In the Transparency of Language Theory (Central America), language is understood to align with the world rather than to express interior states, so that beliefs that happen to be false but are not understood as false by the speaker are still identified as “lying”.

The Mind Control Theory (Thailand, Asia) emphasizes the need for a calm, concentrated mind since harmful emotions can have direct impacts on others and the world at large, and can make one’s own mind more open to the influence of potentially dangerous forces.

Under Perspectivism (Amazon), the mind can migrate from one body to another and the reality of the world depends on one’s perspective, so that, for instance, a human could become a jaguar and vice versa, and as a human, blood may appear to be blood, but as a jaguar, blood may appear to be beer.

There are varying perspectives regarding how much influence culture has on ToM capacities. Some hold that culture has a definite and fairly strong influence. Others contend that ToM is mutually influenced by biological and cultural evolution, and argue that the influence of culture of ToM is less robust. (Bloch (2013)).

References