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The evolution of self-control.

Evan L MacLean1, Brian Hare2, Charles L Nunn3

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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Absolute brain volume, not body size, best predicts cognitive self-control across species. Dietary breadth also strongly influences self-control, revealing key evolutionary links in cognitive development.

Keywords:
behaviorcomparative methodsexecutive functioninhibitory controlpsychology

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Comparative psychology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Cognitive evolution is a major challenge, with brain size and social/dietary factors proposed as explanations.
  • Previous studies often used brain size as a proxy for cognitive abilities, lacking integrated experimental and phylogenetic approaches.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To experimentally test evolutionary explanations for cognitive differences using a phylogenetic approach.
  • To investigate the roles of absolute brain volume, relative brain volume, social complexity, and dietary breadth in self-control.

Main Methods:

  • Compared cognitive performance (self-control) in 567 individuals from 36 species using two problem-solving tasks.
  • Employed phylogenetic analysis to correlate cognitive performance with brain volume metrics and ecological factors.

Main Results:

  • Absolute brain volume was the strongest predictor of self-control performance across species.
  • Dietary breadth, but not social group size, significantly predicted self-control differences within primates.
  • Absolute brain volume explained more variance than brain volume adjusted for body mass.

Conclusions:

  • Absolute brain volume is a critical factor in cognitive evolution and self-control.
  • Dietary breadth and absolute brain volume are robustly linked to enhanced self-control.
  • These findings advance the quantitative understanding of the primate cognitive phenome and cognitive evolution.