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Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis (MITEC)

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        <b>Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis</b>
      
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        The Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis takes several forms, but all stem from the 
        proposition that the advanced cognitive processes of primates are primarily adaptations to 
      
      
        <i>the special complexities of their social lives,</i>
      
      
         rather than to nonsocial environmental problems such as finding food, which were 
        traditionally thought to be the province of intelligence. The new "social" explanation for 
        the evolution of 
      
      
        <u>INTELLIGENCE <sternberg.html></u>
      
      
         arose in the context of proliferating field studies of primate societies in the 1960s and 
        1970s. The paper generally recognized as pivotal in launching this wave of studies was 
        Nicholas Humphrey's "The Social Function of Intellect" (1976), the first to spell out the 
        idea explicitly, although important insights were offered by earlier writers, notably 
        Alison Jolly (see Whiten and Byrne 1988a for a review). By 1988 the idea had inspired 
        sufficient interesting empirical work to produce the volume 
      
      
        <i>Machiavellian Intelligence</i>
      
      
         (Byrne and Whiten 1988; now see also Whiten and Byrne 1997), which christened the area. 
      
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        <b>See also</b>
      
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        <u>COGNITIVE ETHOLOGY <ristau.html></u>
      
      
         
      
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        <u>MODULARITY OF MIND <karmiloff-smith.html></u>
      
      
         
      
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        <u>PRIMATE COGNITION <hauser.html></u>
      
      
         
      
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        <u>SOCIAL COGNITION <gilbertd.html></u>
      
      
         
      
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        <b>Additional links</b>
      
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        <u>Before the surge of field studies in the 1950s and 1960s, researchers had little 
        appreciation for the degree of so-ciality and 
        <http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/anthro/origins/machiavellian.html></u>
      
      
         
      
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        <u>SEXUAL SELECTION, MACHIEVELLIAN INTELLIGENCE, 
        <http://www.expatient.org/sexualselection.htm></u>
      
      
         
      
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        -- Andrew Whiten 
      
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