Intro Mind Notes, Week 12: Social Alliance and Conflict
(HMW, Ch. 7)

A. Relatives

1. According to the theory of natural selection, an organism has an interest in promoting its genes. Since those genes are found it its relatives, the theory predicts that animals should act for the good of others to the degree they are genetically related.
   
2. The idea is supported in humans by the large difference in murder rates suffered by children compared to step children.
   
   

B. Children

1. Sibling rivalry and parent's attempts to control it can be explained as follows. As parents devote more resources to a younger child, the older one competes for what remains. Parents however, have an equal interest in the survival of both children, and usually need to devote more resources to a younger rather than an older child.
   
2. Since children are partly related, however, there is some evolutionary pressure on the older child to care for the younger. On the theory siblings should display both competitive and caring behavior.
   
3. There is little point in investing resources in a child who will not survive. Infanticide in the case of weak or deformed infants, especially in hard times is practiced by many societies (including Victorian England). Nevertheless, the theory predicts that mothers will morn such a loss since it amounts to a failure to reproduce.
   
   

C. Males and Females

1. Males differ from females in their best strategy for passing on their genes. Conception and pregnancy is a major cost to the female in energy and resources, while there is no such cost to the male. It can be part of the male's strategy to invest resources in his children to insure their survival, however since his reproductive cost is low, a better strategy is to mate as often as possible, and to devote fewer resources to his children than females would. 2. This helps explain why males are more interested in multiple partners than women are. The differences help explain why cultures that allow males to marry many women are common, while those that allow women to marry many men are rare.
   
2. This also helps explain differences in what males and females seek in a partner. It is important to the female that the male help defray her cost of reproduction. So the ideal mate from the female point of view is one with lots of disposable resources who is willing to share them. For the male, however, the ideal mate is one who is likely to reproduce. Therefore females should prefer males with resources (money and social status), while males should be more interested in signs of reproductive ability: youth, health, and feminine body characteristics.
   
3. Both males and females have an interest in selecting a mate with "good" genes that code for features that best allow survival. Signs of good genes include health, symmetry, and features near the average of the population. These features correlate well with what people in all cultures find attractive in a mate.
   
4. Males and females have different motives for abandoning their partner. Males have an interest in impregnating anyone they can. For females, the motive to cheat would be less strong, since she can only have so many children in a lifetime. However, a female who can become pregnant by someone with better genes than her steady partner has can count on both the benefits of the support of her partner and a child with better genes. The male partner who is cuckolded in this way suffers a serious loss, for he spends resources on a child that lacks his genes entirely.
   
5. Jealousy is an emotion designed to eliminate cheating between partners. Jealousy at being cuckolded should be especially strong in the male, and the history of violence against women in fits of jealousy bears this out. Females should also be jealous, but for different reasons. What females should fear about cheating is abandonment by her partner.
   
   

D. Status

1. It is an advantage to an animal to display its status, that is, its power to either help or harm others. In case of conflict, it is in the best interest of both parties not to let matters get to a physical fight, since both parties might be hurt. It would be better to develop signs of power which would allow the potential combatants to predict the likely outcome, so that the weaker one will know to back down. Displays of status such as roaring voices and manes are common in the animal kingdom. Given these markers of status, pecking orders develop that allow each animal to know its place in a hierarchy.
   
2. We find similar features in human societies. Human status displays include height, reputation for toughness (honor), and conspicuous consumption of wealth. Since male sexual attractiveness depends on display of potential resources, status is especially important to males. A lot of violence is related to the male's need to establish status. A bar room fight may start over the slightest insult. Such violence results from the need for the combatants to win a dominant place in the pecking order.
   
3. Since establishment of of status is especially important to the young and to those who lack it, it can be predicted that violence would be most common among males of low status.
   
   

E. Cooperation

1. Obviously cooperation can be good for both parties involved. However, cooperation depends on trust - the assurance that neither side will cheat. The problem is that cheating is often in the interest of the parties involved.
   
2. The Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma is a game that attempts to model the general features of cooperation. Two players secretly decide whether to cooperate or cheat. They are then assigned scores so that if both cooperate each gets 3 points. If one cheats, the cheater gets 5 points and the cooperator gets 0. If both cheat, each gets 1 point. The two players repeatedly play this game, say 20 or 100 times, and whoever has the highest score wins. What is the best strategy for winning the game? It turns out that it is Tit For Tat , that is, do what your opponent did last time. So if your opponent cooperates, your best strategy is not to cheat. This suggests that limited forms of cooperation can be in your long range interest, even when cheating is possible.
   
3. Garson mentioned some more optimistic results on the iterated prisoner's dilemma not discussed in the book. In one experiment "noise" was introduced into the game, so that the players do not have completely accurate information about what their opponent did. In another, players are assigned to positions on a grid, and play with their near neighbors. Players with lowest scores are replaced with higher scoring neighbors from time to time. Under these more realistic conditions, more generous strategies turn out to be best, for example strategies like Tit For Tat with the exception that about 1/3 of the time the player cooperates even if the opponent's last move was to cheat. These results suggest that there would be selection pressure for emotions causing us to care for each other (regardless of whether they are our relatives).
   
4. Some people think that people are naturally cooperative, and that sharing is in our genes. Pinker replies that by the theory of natural selection we should prefer to share with our relatives, and to share those things (such as meat for hunter gathers) which take luck to acquire. But it cannot be expected that we will share (for example) what can be reliably obtained with hard work. This may help explain the reasoning some people use in determining welfare policy. In cases of poverty due to bad luck we are wiling to be charitable, but not in cases of poverty due to laziness.
   
5. Friendship is an emotional bond based on the value of cooperation. In the case of friendship one does not "take stock" . A true friend is there for the other even when the other one is no longer able to contribute. Emotions of gratitude and feelings of trust developed in friendship are important contributers to its success. Friendship may serve as an insurance policy for both parties against the loss of resources and or status, for the true friend will help his friend though even the toughest disasters. Since such trusting cooperation has value for both parties, one can expect that the emotions that make it possible would evolve.
   
6. Garson presented another hypothesis about possible sources of altruistic behavior. There is a debate between two different theories of the mechanisms that explain our abilities at mind reading. The Theory Theory says that mind reading can be explained by the assuming that humans have stored in their brains a theory about the psychology of other humans. This theory operates by applying laws of psychology to the situations other people are in. Simulation Theory presents a different explanation of mind reading. Instead of knowing psychological laws, humans manage mind reading by simulation - putting themselves into the other person's shoes. If you want to understand and predict my emotional response at winning the LOTTO, you need only imagine that you have won the LOTTO, and then take note of how you are feeling. It is a good bet that your feelings during the process of imagining what happened to me are like the feelings I actually have (though perhaps not as intense). And what you imagine what you would do in my situation is likely to be a lot like what I really will do.
   
7. If simulation theory is right, then empathic abilities are crucial to mind reading, for mind reading involves putting yourself in my place. It would follow that empathy is essential for the important task of explaining and predicting the actions of others. So if Mother Nature wanted to create a social creature capable of mind reading her best bet (according to simulationists) would be to install in us empathic abilities. On this view, charitable emotions did not evolve primarily to promote cooperation or to head off cheating. Their real function was to contribute to the mechanism that allows us to understand the actions of others.
   
   

F. War

1. All cultures feel hate against other groups and wage war on them. The warring group has an advantage provided the cost is not too high compared to the goods that can be captured. Pinker thinks that one of the most important such goods is the opportunity to mate, either through rape or enslavement of women in the conquered group. If this is right, warfare can be expected to be the province of men, since it is men not women who mainly receive reproductive advantages from it. Garson countered that there are other obvious goods (food, status, land?) that fuel warfare.
   
2. So natural selection should favor the development of emotions (such as patriotism, hate, and revenge) that support warfare. Humans have strong identification with gangs and other groups (even when those groups are formed randomly). In most cultures, membership in groups is central to male status. Males especially seem irrationally willing to engage in conflict to defend groups they belong to.
   
3. Warfare depends on altruism, the willingness of some to pay heavy costs for the the good of the group. If any soldier can reliably predict his own death, the emotions that make sacrifice possible are likely to be overridden by fear of being wounded or killed. This is why it is important for morale that soldiers not be able to predict who will die.
   
   

G. Moral Consequences

1. Some of the above information about human cooperation and conflict is depressing. It looks as if humans (especially the males) are by nature prone to cheating, rape, aggressiveness, wasteful consumption and war. Men are slime but they can't help themselves.
   
2. Pinker makes it clear that even if it could be proven that these negative traits are part of our biological nature, that does nothing to excuse them. What is morally acceptable and what natural selection happens to have produced are very different matters.
   
3. Those concerned with what is politically correct many feel threatened by evidence that men are slime. However, this knowledge does not argue for acceptance of the status quo. It is crucial information needed for understanding and improving on the human situation. If we ever hope to understand how to live moral lives, an understanding of the forces that lead to immorality can help us overcome them.
   
   

H. Status and Cultural Evolution

1. Garson argued that we should be very careful of natural selection arguments for social traits of the kind that Pinker offers. He illustrated the pitfalls by discussing status. The reasons we have an interest in status in may lie in a reproductive advantage humans had by being higher in the pecking order as Pinker claims. However, Garson suggested that the advantages of status are difficult to untangle, since status also contributes to security, comfort, and pleasures. Although these motivations for status are at root the product of natural selection they have taken on a life of their own and no longer have any selection advantages. For example wealth, which is one of the major determiners of status in today's culture, is negatively correlated with reproductive potential. So arguments about the function of status and its evolutionary roots face the problem that the situation is too complicated to make and firm conclusions.
   
2. Another complication is the influence of culture. Garson argued that culture, not natural selection has been responsible for the most massive change on Earth, the invention of agriculture which has allow massive growth in the human population. Natural selection could not have been involved in this change, which occurred in 5-10 thousand years at most.
   
3. Cultures display some of the properties of organisms. They compete for resources and reproduce through education.
   
4. Agricultural cultures wiped out hunter gather cultures though a process of survival of the fittest. Since agricultural societies can support 10 times as many people per acre of (arable) land, they can simply out breed hunter-gatherers. Furthermore since cultural transmission is by education rather than genetics, cultures can win by converting members of other cultures to their practices. 5. Cultures can affect the emotional and cognitive properties of their individuals by a process of "domestication". For example, individuals belonging to a warlike culture, have a selective advantage if they have emotions that contribute to warfare. Therefore we can expect variation in the emotional and cognitive properties of people in different cultures that are the result of cultural influence on the gene pool.
   
5. One hypothesis about status is that status is the product of cultural evolution not natural selection. Cultures select for status-conscious individuals because individuals in such cultures will sacrifice their own interests to seek money to improve their status. They become the kind of work-a-holics that contribute to the culture's economic strength, and so to its survival in competition with other cultures. This hypothesis may be no better than Pinker's, but it does illustrate the fact that we should at least consider the possibility that culture should play a predominant role in explaining human social behavior.