Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Santos, Laurie
Abstract
Social evaluation refers to the process of using observed social behavior to determine who will be a suitable social partner. While this phenomenon is well-documented in this human species, less is known regarding how we acquired the cognitive abilities needed to make this assessment of with whom we should affiliate. To better understand the evolutionary origins of social evaluation abilities in the human species, researchers have explored nonhuman animals’ capacities for social evaluation. In this dissertation, I present three experiments designed to explore whether domestic dogs, a species who evolved alongside humans and who share our social environment demonstrate human-like evaluations on two key dimensions of social perception: prosociality, one’s helpfulness or kindness, and competence, one’s ability or skillfulness. The results of the experiments presented in this dissertation suggest that domestic dogs share some components of human social evaluation in the domain of prosociality but potentially not in the domain of competence. When contextualized in the broader social evaluation and person perception literature, these data support the hypothesis that, compared to competence, prosociality may be the primary and more evolutionary salient dimension of social evaluation.
Recommended Citation
Silver, Zachary A., "The Evolutionary Origins of Social Evaluation" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1076.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1076
