ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Affiliation, empathy, and the origins of theory of mind.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed.
- The functional architecture of mother-infant communication, and the development of infant social expressiveness in the first two months.Scientific reports · 2016Trial
- On the nature of grief: uncovering the evolutionary roots of loss across the animal realm.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Review
- How Do Similarity Cues Shape Children's Social Preference Inferences?Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Reduced Affiliative Behavior in Autism Reflects Greater Dependence on Perceived Similarity.Research square · 2026Article
- Loneliness and self-concept in the relations between Theory of Mind and social anhedonia in adolescents.Journal of research on adolescence : the official journal of the Society for Research on Adolescence · 2025Article
- The relationship of coping style and social support variation to glucocorticoid metabolites in wild olive baboons (Papio anubis).Primates; journal of primatology · 2025Article
- Evaluating large language models in theory of mind tasks.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Main Biological Models of Resilience.Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2024Review
- Aggressive Mimicry and the Evolution of the Human Cognitive Niche.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2023Article
- The robotic mentalist - On the influences of robots' mentalizing abilities and external manipulative intent on people's credibility attributions.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Five Breakthroughs: A First Approximation of Brain Evolution From Early Bilaterians to Humans.Frontiers in neuroanatomy · 2021Article
- Mirror replication of sexual facial expressions increases the success of sexual contacts in bonobos.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- On the Enjoyment of Sad Music: Pleasurable Compassion Theory and the Role of Trait Empathy.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- Persistence in gestural communication predicts sociality in wild chimpanzees.Animal cognition · 2019Article
- Sulcal organization in the medial frontal cortex provides insights into primate brain evolution.Nature communications · 2019Article
- Article
- Dissociating Empathy From Perspective-Taking: Evidence From Intra- and Inter-Individual Differences Research.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2019Review
- How does cognition shape social relationships?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Review
- Convergence and divergence in gesture repertoires as an adaptive mechanism for social bonding in primates.Royal Society open science · 2017Article
- Acquisition and Generalization of Complex Empathetic Responses Among Children with Autism.Behavior analysis in practice · 2017Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
To understand the evolution of a Theory of Mind, we need to understand the selective factors that might have jumpstarted its initial evolution. We argue that a subconscious, reflexive appreciation of others' intentions, emotions, and perspectives is at the roots of even the most complex forms of Theory of Mind and that these abilities may have evolved because natural selection has favored individuals that are motivated to empathize with others and attend to their social interactions. These skills are adaptive because they are essential to forming strong, enduring social bonds, which in turn enhance reproductive success. We first review evidence from both humans and other animals indicating that reflexive and reflective mental state attributions are inextricably linked and play a crucial role in promoting affiliative social bonds. We next describe results from free-ranging female baboons showing that individuals who show high rates of affiliative behavior form stronger social bonds with other females. These bonds, in turn, are linked to fitness. We then provide data from three different types of social challenges (male immigration, changes in grooming behavior after the death of a close relative, and responses during playback experiments), suggesting that females who manifest high rates of affiliative behavior may also be more motivated to anticipate challenges, react adaptively to setbacks, and respond appropriately to social interactions.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.