Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding our Origins and Rediscovering our Common Humanity ↑

Cooperative communication

What allowed us to thrive while other humans went extinct was a kind of cognitive superpower: a particular type of friendliness called cooperative communication. We are experts at working together with other people, even strangers. We can communicate with someone we’ve never met about a shared goal and work together to accomplish it.

Hare, Brian, Woods and Vanessa, 2020, from the book Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding our Origins and Rediscovering our Common Humanity