Publications [#340136] of Michael Tomasello

Journal Articles

1. Melis, A; Grocke, P; Kalbitz, J; Tomasello, M, One for you, one for me: Humans' unique turn-taking skills, Psychological Science, vol. 27 no. 7 (July, 2016), pp. 987-996, Association for Psychological Science [doi]
   (last updated on 2025/06/16)

   Abstract:
   Long-term collaborative relationships require that any jointly produced resources be shared in mutually satisfactory ways. Prototypically, this sharing involves partners dividing up simultaneously available resources, but sometimes the collaboration makes a resource available to only one individual, and any sharing of resources must take place across repeated instances over time. Here, we show that beginning at 5 years of age, human children stabilize cooperation in such cases by taking turns across instances of obtaining a resource. In contrast, chimpanzees do not take turns in this way, and so their collaboration tends to disintegrate over time. Alternating turns in obtaining a collaboratively produced resource does not necessarily require a prosocial concern for the other, but rather requires only a strategic judgment that partners need incentives to continue collaborating. These results suggest that human beings are adapted for thinking strategically in ways that sustain long-term cooperative relationships and that are absent in their nearest primate relatives.