A new study claims that shared intentions and collaboration among humans evolved as a survival mechanism.

Everyone in a society has some level of shared intention - from basic bonding like “let’s go out to dinner together”, to links with far-reaching consequences like “we must form an alliance to defeat our common enemy”.

Australian researchers now say they have one of the first plausible theories for how and when early man developed the ability to collaborate.

Using ‘game theory’ modelling, a team from the University of Sydney and Monash University have formally outlined the evolution of humans’ ability to form shared intentions, the basis of collaboration.

Their work has been published in the journal Computational Biology, in a paper titled ‘Emergence of Shared Intentionality is Coupled to the Advance of Cumulative Culture’.

The team contends that the ability to share intentions is likely to have evolved at a time when technological and cultural progress offered particularly high benefits to survival.

An example of such a time might be a period of significant environmental change, such as a global warming or cooling event.

Previously, it was thought that the sharing of intentions was a uniquely ‘human’ ability that distinguishes us from related animals like great apes, but the new findings tweak that idea somewhat.

“There is a strong hypothesis suggesting that this ability to collaborate was a key part of developing humanity’s advanced mental abilities,” said study author Dr Simon Angus.

“In other words, rather than 'we are smart and so we collaborate', it may be 'we collaborate and so we are smart'.

“To date, there has been no mechanism proposed of how our ability to collaborate became wide-spread in the human population. Our model provides just such a mechanism,” he said.

The experts say their study contributes to the knowledge of how humanity got the way it is.

“It may not change the way we sleep, eat our breakfast or work or any of the other activities we engage in. But it may change the way we think about ourselves and our special place in the order of nature,” Dr Angus explained.

The research may also serve to reinforce the hypothesis that modern notions like ‘team work’ are actually a key part of what it means to be human.

The finding is discussed in the video below.