4 ms·

It's thought to be very adaptive from an evolutionary standpoint. If you have a partner, significant other, or a child, if they do 10 nice things, that 11th one

• bglazer 10y ago
  One perspective on this comes from game theory and the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. In some cases the optimal strategy is "tit-for-tat". If your opponent defects and sells you out, then the best strategy for the next round is to retaliate and defect in response. [0] Obviously this is simplified, but it shows how a mechanism for identifying opposition could be advantageous. In the social environment of early humans, maybe this made sense evolutionarily, but is now inconvenient in the different situations in which most people live now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma#The_iterated_prisoner.27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma#The_iterate...
• tonyarkles 10y ago
  From a survival point of view, a false positive (identifying something as threatening) is way less threatening than a false negative (misidentifying something threatening as non-threatening). See a shadow move in the trees? Acting as if there might be a tiger is better for your survival than assuming it's just the wind.
• toor2 10y ago
  Organisms adapt to reproduce, not to foster positive social relationships