ABSTRACT
Social cognition is defined as ‘knowledge about conspecifics,’ and includes aspects of cognition that can be attributed to natural selection acting within the domain of conspecific interactions (Seyfarth & Cheney, 2015). Such cognitive abilities are not limited to our species alone and, by comparing across species, one can begin to develop hypotheses about the selective pressures that have shaped the evolution of social cognition. Furthermore, researchers may be able to uncover building blocks that were involved in the evolution of our own sense of morality (Pretot & Brosnan, 2015). It is now widely accepted that our species is not wholly unique in our tendency to cooperate, share, and consider fairness and equity. Because social living comes with benefits-access to mates, protection from predators, accumulated knowledge about the environment-many social animals have evolved behavioral and cognitive strategies to facilitate their ability to live socially. The goal of this volume is to evaluate continuity and change in social cognition at the phylogenetic and ontogenetic levels. This chapter narrows in on two aspects of social cognition that may facilitate group living: prosociality and inequity aversion. In order to answer the question of whether certain aspects of social cognition are unique to humans or shared with other species, this chapter focuses primarily on species with which we share the most common ancestry, the other primates.
