Kindness in a Cruel World: The Evolution of Altruism

421 Pages·2004·3.4 MB·English

by  Nigel Barber

Acknowledgments 7
Introduction 9
PART 1: ALTRUISM IN MAN AND BEAST
Chapter 1: Altruism: Birds Do It, Bees Do It, People Do It 19
Chapter 2: Evolution and Ethics 43
Chapter 3: Sterile Castes of Priests and Nuns 69
PART 2: GROWING UP TO BE GOOD
Chapter 4: Why Do People Grow Up to Be Altruists? 99
Chapter 5: Altruism among Thieves 133
PART 3: THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF KINDNESS
Chapter 6: Kindness and Health 161
Chapter 7: Kindness among Strangers 203
Chapter 8: Conformity as Altruism 233
Chapter 9: When Altruism Fails 267
PART 4: KINDNESS AND POLITICS
Chapter 10: Tapping Human Altruism 303
Chapter 11: Saving the World 333
Chapter 12: Where Have All the Villains Gone? 357
Notes 381
Index 407

Acknowledgments
am grateful for the help received from many people at various stages in
the conception, planning, and writing of this book. My editor at Prometheus
Books, Linda Regan, influenced the content of the book and provided many
helpful and thoughtful comments on the manuscript. My research was aided by
the work of the Interlibrary Loan Department at the Portland Public Library,
Maine, including Rita Gorham, Eileen MacAdam, and Anne Ball. Schadijah
Camp of the Library of Congress helped with illustrations.
Trudy Callaghan provided informal editorial assistance. I am grateful for her
counsel and support. David Barber-Callaghan also helped by providing clever
analogies.
I am thankful to many friends and colleagues in research whose important
ideas and findings in the evolutionary study of altruism put evolutionary
psychology on the intellectual map. Many are, or were, members of the Human
Behavior and Evolution Society. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the online
community of evolutionary psychologists whose challenging ideas promote
intellectual fitness. We all mourn the passing of Linda Mealey, who contributed
generously to my previous book, The Science of Romance, during her final
illness.
Introduction
aking the case that people are naturally helpful to others seems
a hard sell in a world preoccupied with global terrorism, corporate swindlers,
and pedophile priests. Yet, none of these manifestations of evil minimizes the
altruistic motive that springs eternal in the human breast. Kindness exists, but it
struggles to stay afloat on an ocean of cruelty that is the default condition for
organisms competing for existence on this planet.
This book describes actions rather than philosophies. It is also more
concerned with concrete examples of helpful behavior than with the computer
models many scholars use to decode them. Altruism is defined as actions that
help another individual at some cost to the altruist. The main advantage of this
approach is that it allows us to discuss human altruism in terms of the
evolutionary ideas that account for altruism in other species.
The biological definition of altruism is sometimes criticized as defining
altruism out of existence by implying that apparent acts of selflessness are really
only selfishness in disguise. The argument goes that such acts are undertaken to
(1) make the altruist feel better, (2) increase the reproductive success of the
altruist, or (3) increase the prevalence of genes for altruistic behavior. Yet,
altruism is real, in the sense that it is predicated on evolved moral emotions like
empathy and shame. Moreover, it is possible for humans and other species to
engage in altruistic actions that have no ulterior motive, except whatever
pleasure comes from the action itself, and no delayed benefit of any kind. (The
only requirement for altruistic tendencies to evolve is that they should generally
increase the biological success of individuals expressing them, not that every
altruistic act should have a reproductive payoff.)
There is nothing pie-eyed about the case for altruism as an animal adaptation.
The simplest, and most prevalent, type is parental care that happens to be well
developed in female mammals, some male fishes, and birds of both sexes. Such
altruism is easily explained in terms of kin selection, or the promotion of one's
genes through reproduction by close relatives. It is predictable, obligatory, and
thus not very interesting, except when it fails, as in the case of parents who
abuse or abandon their children.
The farther one moves from nuclear families, the more interesting, and more
fragile, altruism becomes. Solitary altruists cannot exist in a group of
nonaltruists. Altruism is thus a property of groups, or social contexts, as much as
it is a property of individuals. Our ancestors survived the uncertainty of hunting
large animals by pooling their kill in a prehistoric insurance system that was to
the benefit of all. Relying on meat alone, the average solitary hunter might be
successful in bringing home a large game animal once a month, which is far too
infrequent to enable survival. It makes more sense to share the meat while it is
fresh, rather than leaving it to rot in a few days, because sharing entitles the
donor to a steady supply of fresh food from other kills.
With some excitement, animal behaviorists discovered a similar form of
cooperation among vampire bats. These bats can survive for only a few days if
deprived of a blood meal. Sated animals regurgitate food to sustain their
famished friends. Such altruism is remarkable among animals that are not close
relatives, but it is not automatic, or unconditional. If a bat refuses to share with
her hungry friend, she is liable to be kicked out of their shared roost site and may
starve. Our human ancestors were similarly protected against cheats by emotions
such as anger and indignation that helped keep other members of their
community in line. Without such checks and balances, any altruistic relationship
among nonrelatives would inevitably collapse as cheats prospered at the expense
of cooperators.

Food-sharing altruism promoted survival among our huntergatherer
ancestors, but the sense of community of interest clearly did not stop at the
cooking fire: it extended to cooperative childcare, medicine, entertainment, and
so on. Cooperative behavior and the many psychological adaptations necessary
to maintain it did not go away when our ancestors shifted to agricultural food
production. In settled communities, people helped each other to survive the
uncertainties of agricultural production, with its droughts, fires, damaging
storms, and pests.
In the earliest urban civilizations, people cooperated to build colossal
irrigation systems and cereal storage facilities that finally took much of the
uncertainty out of agriculture. In the modern world of highly centralized
governments, the initial impulse for centralization came from military threat, but
large government is maintained by altruistic social programs, including welfare,
education, and security for seniors. Adaptations for altruism that arose from a
huntergatherer way of life can thus be expressed in very different ecologies.
Even so, some aspects of urban living, particularly anonymity, decrease the level
of interpersonal altruism and increase crime.
There is a qualitative difference between everyday food sharing, for example,
and the more costly forms of heroic self-sacrifice, such as death while fighting in
a war. Sharing lunch is one thing, giving up one's life is another. Yet, this book
makes the case that both types of altruism are founded on the same adaptations
for mutual support. Many of the combatants in wars have not chosen to be
present, of course. They were pushed into service by their governments, their
tribes, their families, or, even, by the desire to impress their girlfriends. In many
cases, there has been wholesale manipulation based on social class and ethnicity,
with those on the bottom bearing the brunt of military service while the elite
either bribe their way out of combat situations entirely, or purchase military rank
that keeps them out of the most dangerous engagements. In the Vietnam War, for
example, more African Americans from southern states served than would be
predicted from their proportion of the population.

Despite such evidence of manipulation, military service is altruistic, in the
sense that the combatants sacrifice their personal welfare for the good of others.
Throughout recorded history, families have been willing to send their young men
into battle to preserve a power structure that favored the survivors. In return for
their risky service, surviving soldiers used to be rewarded with high social status
that made them more attractive to women. There was thus some potential for
personal gain, although hardly enough to account for the great risks undertaken.
One of the toughest conclusions of this book is that in-group altruism can
translate into out-group aggression. A soldier supports his own nation by killing
the sons of an enemy nation. This irony is all the more remarkable given that
group allegiances can be so easily, and so arbitrarily, formed. Just about any
distinguishing feature of a group, such as wearing red buttons rather than blue,