Humans as a species are social eaters: we often share meals with family, loved ones, friends, and other members of our group or community. This is likely the produce of the fact that humans are incredibly cooperative—it is our evolutionary superpower. Humans will often cooperative with others, even complete strangers, to the degree that they are suitable cooperation partners—individuals willing to work together, and who can trust each other. Though it may seem like a good idea to freeload, or to take advantage of others, often the best approach, especially over time, is to contribute one’s fair share, and to keep their commitments—to be an altruistic, and trustworthy cooperation partner:
[Humans] depend for their survival and welfare on frequent and varied cooperation with others. In the short run, it would often be advantageous to cheat, that is, to take the benefits of cooperation without paying the costs. Cheating however may seriously compromise one's reputation and one's chances of being able to benefit from future cooperation. In the long run, cooperators who can be relied upon to act in a mutually beneficial manner are likely to do better in what may be called the ‘cooperation market’1.
Though humans cooperate with each other—indeed, they must to survive—they are also on the lookout for free riders and predators, those individuals who would take advantage of others, and then leave without contributing anything in return. One approach to dealing with this problem, especially in relatively small tribes and groups, is to track the reputations of others over time. Indeed, humans highly value a good reputation likely due to the social implications and how it affords them cooperation partners. A study from 2018 even found that,
[Maintaining] a moral reputation is one of people’s most important values … people reported preferring jail time, amputation of limbs, and death to various forms of reputation damage (i.e., becoming known as a criminal, Nazi, or child molester)2.
How does this relate to refrigerators? Refrigerators are a modern solution to an age-old problem: preserving edible, nutritious food for when one needs and/or wants it. And before refrigerators, we had iceboxes: insulated boxes that allowed cold air from the ice compartment through the box to keep food and medicine relatively cold until the ice melted and had to be replaced. These devices didn’t require electricity, but they did rely on insulation technology and an ice distribution system. Here’s an example of a higher-end model from the early 1900s:
Ice boxes, and the ice distribution system needed to fill them, was the focus of a Three Stooges bit. Here is a clip from one of their comedic shorts:
These boxes offered a form of refrigeration without electricity—at least in some cases—but that is not the kind of refrigeration without electricity that I am alluding to here. I am instead referring to reputation-based cooperation, and keeping track of who helped whom and when, within the confines of social eating and sharing food.
Here’s the connection: in a functional sense, reputation-based cooperation—where people agree to cooperate with each other based on their long-term reputation—allowed for refrigeration before electricity. How? Easy. Consider the process of social eating among groups and tribes members that mutually track reputations. This social arrangement is not the technological equivalent to refrigeration, but it is in terms of functionality. Consider first why we want refrigerators: it mostly isn’t about keeping food cold per se, and more about using the cold to help preserve the food.
And why do we want the food preserved until a later time? Because later that food will do us more nutritional good than it would in the present with full bellies. If one has too much food — but lacks the technology to preserve it — then it will often spoil. One way to ‘preserve food’ — meaning to secure food in the future when one will be hungry again, and require calories—is to share the extra food with others. And in a reputation-based cooperative system, one’s reputation for sharing extra food will often, though not always, be reciprocated by others sharing their extra food down the line. This is because, over time, it becomes increasingly clear who is willing to give and take, based on reputation. And those who give regularly will likely, based on their reputation, receive regularly. That’s one reason among many that it is better to give than receive—it is a form of refrigeration, in a sense.
Dan Sperber and Nicholas Baumard (2012). Moral Reputation: An Evolutionary and Cognitive Perspective. Mind & Language 27(5), 495–518, p. 495.
Andrew J. Vonash et. al., (2018). Death Before Dishonor: Incurring Costs to Protect Moral Reputation. Social Psychological and Personality Science 9 (5): 604-613, p. 604.