Exploring human uniqueness encounters fundamental challenges because we can approach this endeavour only from within our uniquely human perspective. The intrinsic presumptions that this involves may entail two types of anthropocentric, ethnocentric, and egocentric biases, which can influence research on both epistemological and methodological levels. Their impact may be particularly pronounced if quests for the origins of human sociality are based only on our knowledge about humans. Tomasello's (2019) research demonstrates that the comparative study of humans and nonhuman species offers unique opportunities to explore forms of social cooperation, underlying cognitive and meta‐cognitive abilities as well as pathways in their ontological and (possible) phylogenetic development. It also shows that comparative approaches are essential to unravel the ways in which humans are indeed unique. But species comparisons are challenged by the need to consider inherent trade‐offs between achieving operational comparability in empirical studies and establishing ecological validity for the species compared—challenges, which analogously occur in comparisons across human cultures as well. This shows that comparative research can also contribute meaningfully to methodology development in psychology.

中文翻译：

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从独特的人类视角探索人类的独特性：认识论和方法论挑战

探索人类的独特性面临根本的挑战，因为我们只能从人类独特的角度出发进行这项工作。其中涉及的内在假设可能需要两种类型的人类中心偏见，民族中心偏见和自我中心偏见，这可能会影响认识论和方法论层面的研究。如果对人类社会起源的追求仅基于我们对人类的了解，那么它们的影响就会特别明显。Tomasello（2019）的研究表明，对人类和非人类物种的比较研究为探索社会合作形式，潜在的认知和元认知能力以及其本体论和（可能）系统发育途径提供了独特的机会。它还表明，比较方法对于弄清人类确实具有独特性的方式至关重要。但是，物种比较面临挑战，需要考虑在经验研究中实现操作可比性与确定所比较物种的生态有效性之间的内在取舍，这一挑战同样存在于人类文化的比较中。这表明比较研究也可以为心理学方法论的发展做出有意义的贡献。