5. Social Processes, Conflicts, Cooperation

The size of the human brain allows for a highly complex social matrix. In this section we’re going to examine the psychological makeup of this dynamic. Because resources are finite, there is always conflict, which presents itself in different ways. However, cooperation can significantly aid the process of resource acquisition. 

Many species, including humans, organize themselves according to dominance hierarchies. Those at the top have greater access to resources, which, as we’ve learned, includes mates. Frequently, dominant individuals have superior social skills and are physically attractive, intelligent, athletic, and courageous, though it’s also possible to achieve command through a specialized skill. Increased dominance correlates with higher testosterone, even in women. These individuals often have a lower pitched voice. (The presidential candidate who is taller with a deeper voice usually wins.) An increase in dominance is likely to foster helping behavior, while a decrease can lead to social anxiety. We are designed to please the biggest threat, making ourselves invaluable to them, so that they have something to lose through harming us. The function of embarrassment is submission. 

Those closer to the top of the hierarchy enjoy greater status, a concept crucial to human psychology. Your reputation is of great importance within the community. Humans have adaptations that can reliably determine the hierarchy of a group within minutes. It is, however, not completely static; there are measurable changes to the nervous system as status changes. What others think of you is far from meaningless. It determines your worth within the community and whether people will choose you for social alliances or coalitions. Those low in status face the risk of ostracism—a survival and resource disaster. We are designed to seek esteem from others and find ways to signal and display our value to the village. Status is something we go to great lengths to protect. 

Have you ever wondered how in an educated society many hold factually untrue beliefs? This is because status is sometimes more important than truth with regard to survival and reproduction. If it protects your reputation to go along with a falsehood, then that’s what’s in your best interest. You don’t necessarily realize this is what you are doing because it’s more effective that way. 

At the same time, humans have an innate sense of morality, a type of fairness-accounting system—just ask any kid who gets less candy than this brother does! We have instincts for punishment, justice, and respect for authority. These adaptations are useful for, among many things, trade. Our propensity to gossip is also essential in this domain, as is the resulting information concerning the status processes in the village. 

As Doug Lisle says, if there’s an instant of human behavior that seems confusing, look for potential gains or losses in status, and you’ll often find your explanation. The esteem that comes from others has a value proportionate to that of the bestower. This is a fundamental contributor to human happiness. It’s been proposed that self-esteem is a way to track how the community feels about you, but I think Lisle’s description is more accurate: self-esteem is the result of your internal assessment of personal effort. In many ways, only you can know how hard you’re trying. Your internal audience rewards effort, not only results. This kind of system makes sense because from a fitness standpoint you cannot afford to leave chips on the table. In his words, that would cede victory to your genetic equal. The idea that you’re being watched—either in self-reflection or by others—may be an adaptation that supports keeping you honest for trade and upholding your reputation. (If this is not enough, you could always come up with an omniscient being who keeps an eye on you. You could call this being God.)

In young children you can observe social behavior before cognitive skills. Humans understand problems best when they frame them as social exchanges (as opposed to logic/symbols/numbers) because these processes are essential to survival and reproduction. However, they can result in significant conflict. We know that parents love and invest in their children because they carry fifty percent of their genes, and because children have their own reproductive value—they can keep passing the genes forward. However, the parent carries one hundred percent of their own genes, meaning there are going to be conflicts of interest when it comes to resource allocation. The parent needs to invest in themselves for the purpose of survival and future reproduction. (If you think that genes don’t matter and that a parent will love a child no matter what, consider this: a stepparent is forty times more likely to abuse a stepchild than a parent is to abuse their biological child.) Furthermore, not all children have the same reproductive return—some are fitter and more likely to reproduce. A parent needs to determine the child’s ability to convert resources into fitness. A weaker offspring may benefit more from investment, but it’s in the parent’s interest to favor the child who has the suspected higher reproductive return. Siblings also engage in fierce competition for the same parental resources, while simultaneously being protective of the fifty percent of their own genes in their brother or sister’s bodies. 

There is also conflict between men and women, often due to a difference in mating strategy. As we’ve seen earlier, the man can afford more sexual variety and has more to gain by initiating sex sooner than the woman generally would. Mate retention can lead to problems for both sexes. Sexual jealousy is a mechanism that works to solve this problem and can lead to vigilance, violence, manipulation, or deceit. Men worry more about sexual infidelity, whereas women are concerned about wavering emotional commitment. 

Conflict among men is more likely to involve physical violence, whereas women have a propensity to insult each other’s appearance or insinuate promiscuity. Aggression in general is more typical of the man. They are about eighteen percent bigger than the woman, which you often see in the sex with higher reproductive variance because they are willing to take more risks. High reproductive variance means that not all men will get a chance to mate, whereas some will have many opportunities. In this capacity, the men are more expendable. (As you can see, much of the male–female dynamic and human psychology in general stems from the unequal reproductive capacities of the sexes.) In terms of conflict, there is evidence of a homicide mechanism—killing is a strategy that evolution supports. Killers are often unemployed and unmarried, indicating a severe resource deficiency in need of drastic correction. Anger, essentially a threat, is a signal to others that someone has treated you unfairly and that a recalibration needs to take place. 

Conflict does not only occur between individuals; it can take place within an individual nervous system between mechanisms. Even survival and reproduction do not always align; the male peacock’s tail attracts females but makes fleeing from predators harder. This is where the cost-benefit analysis, as discussed previously, comes into play. 

Although it can result in adaptations, conflict is not an adaptation in itself, but a by-product. Early in hunter-gatherer societies, evolution selected for cooperation, from which stem some fascinating mechanisms. One of these is altruistic behavior, defined as an action that has a cost to the actor and a benefit to the recipient. The thing is, genes that encourage behavior that continuously incur cost do not survive across time. Nature is too competitive. Yet altruistic behavior is observed. What’s happening here? We’ll see that there are actually four ways in which evolution can support it. Whether you still call it altruistic is up to you. 

One of the ways altruism can occur is among genetic relatives. This is referred to as inclusive fitness, and is described by Hamilton’s rule, a crucial component of evolutionary theory. Relatives have different percentages of your genes inside of them—your parents, siblings, and children have fifty percent each; grandparents, aunt or uncles, and half-siblings twenty-five percent; and first cousins 12.5 percent. Hamilton’s rule states that if all else is equal, your willingness to help your relatives is related to what proportion of your genes is inside them. This can be described with the equation, c<rb. Altruistic behavior will occur if the cost to the actor is less than the benefit to the recipient multiplied by the degree of genetic relatedness. A simple way to understand this is to imagine you are considering saving the life of a sibling, but this will result in your death. The cost to you would be one hundred percent of your genes, but your sibling only has fifty percent of your genes, so that’s not worth it. If you sacrifice your life to save two siblings, now you break even genetically, because two times fifty equals your one hundred. However, if you save three siblings, the cost to your genes is now less than the benefit times the relatedness, so now it is worth it—your one hundred is less than three times fifty. It doesn’t have to be life of death—it could be food distribution or any other resource. Not every action will follow the equation; rather, the formula predicts what will happen on average to preserve genes for helping if they surface in the gene pool. Many factors come into play, especially age; the young have greater reproductive potential. How do organisms recognize the degree of genetic relatedness? Resemblance, proximity, smell, or in the case of humans, the verbal categorization. 

Cooperation also occurs among nonrelatives. In this case, it’s referred to as reciprocal altruism. This is when humans—or other animals—engage in helping behavior at a cost to themselves with the expectation of a future return. This is why humans form friendships. Borrowing the phrase of Doug Lisle, friends are insurance policies, and if you’ve paid the premiums, you should be able to cash in during hard times. Friends are also good for testing information, and having accurate information is crucial to sound decision-making. 

The problem with a future return is that it opens the door for cheaters. Cheaters have an advantage—they reap benefits without cost—so in response, we’ve evolved the capacity to detect and the inclination to punish cheaters. (Think back to innate morality.) We have memories and can share them with other individuals. (Think back to status and reputation.) Evolution has showed us that cheating is not a great long-term strategy. We can simulate this on a computer (for more information, look up the prisoner’s dilemma). The basic choices upon encountering someone is to cooperate (at a cost to you) or defect (cheat, and reap an immediate benefit), but there are many strategies in between (for example you could start by cooperating and then switch to defecting). If you enter numerical values for gains or losses and run many strategies through the computer, you can observe which strategy yields the most points. The strategy that results in the biggest gain for everyone is called tit-for-tat. You cooperate on the first move, and thereafter, you copy what your opponent does. If they continue cooperating, so do you. If they defect, so do you. This behavior supports reciprocal altruism. 

You might be thinking of examples of altruism without being able to place them in these categories. There are reasons an individual may engage in an act with no expectation of return. This is called indirect reciprocity. The gain is to your reputation; it increases your value to the village. The other is costly signaling. It’s a fitness indicator, signaling that you have such excellent genetic quality that you can afford to give away resources with no cost to yourself. Volunteer work is an example of costly signaling. So is throwing a party. (The ability to waste energy is displayed through gift giving as well; wandering all over the valley picking flowers and locating rare stones during hunter-gatherer times indicated not only fitness but also commitment to the recipient. Flowers and jewelry remain appreciated gifts.)

It’s important to remember that mechanisms work on average, over deep time. They are engaged by input and so can be manipulated, overridden, or activated under alternative circumstances. Philosopher Peter Singer talks about the expanding circle of compassion; the empathy we are designed to feel for the in-group—kin, friends, coalitions—can be further extended, for example to include animals. 

So far, we have talked about mechanisms, which is what we have in common. Evolution makes us similar because we face the same adaptive problems. In the next section we’re going to look at behavioral genetics, which describes individual differences.  

*The information from this section is primarily from Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind by David Buss, and various talks and podcasts by Douglas Lisle