This is the version originally
submitted. It was edited prior to publication.
A caretaker from Essex made international news by
donating one of his kidneys to a young girl he had never met, in an
(as it turned out) vain attempt to save her life. Why did he do it?
Why do people ever go to extreme lengths to help each other when
there appears to be nothing in it for them? Or should I say - when
there is nothing in it for their genes?
Evolutionary accounts of altruism have recently
become popular, with such readable books as Ridley’s The Origins of
Virtue and Wright’s The Moral Animal. They have in common an
infectious enthusiasm for the idea that the ultimate causes of human
motivation can be found in the selfish gene. With theories of kin
selection, reciprocal altruism and game theory, apparent altruism
can be explained as the kind of behaviour which - if our ancestors
had carried it out - would have benefited the replication of their
genes. In this way an extraordinarily wide range of human
cooperative behaviours can make sense - but there is no real
altruism.
Unto Others is not like this. Sober and Wilson take
apart the usual assumptions in a systematic onslaught with which
they claim to be “tearing down the edifice of individualism” (p
330). First they clearly distinguish between the concepts of
evolutionary and psychological altruism. The former is concerned
with behaviours that affect survival, reproduction and fitness
regardless of how an organism thinks or feels about what it is
doing; the latter is concerned far more with motivations and
beliefs. Having made sure the reader understands why these are
logically distinct - Sober and Wilson begin their task of building
the case for true altruism of both kinds.
Their evolutionary argument hangs entirely on the
status of “group selection” - among the most troublesome and
controversial notions in evolutionary biology. Most biologists have
learned, almost as an article of faith, that group selection does
not occur. In other words, there is no evolution “for the good of
the species”, only competition between selfish genes. The original
reason for this dogma was sound enough. In the 1950s and 1960s
biologists often invoked “the good of the group” as an evolutionary
argument when there was no conceivable mechanism to make it work. In
1966 G.C. Williams exposed all the confusion, and group selection
was out. But, say Sober and Wilson, group selection can be an
important force in evolution, not just in sex ratios and parasites,
but in human groups too. This is because what happens at the group
level can be quite different from what happens at the level of the
individual.
A weird example that helped me think about this is
an illustration of “Simpson’s paradox”. In the 1970s the University
of California was suspected of discrimination against women because
the percentage of successful women applicants was significantly
lower than that for men. However, every single department operated
their admissions fairly and did not discriminate. The paradox was
resolved by the discovery that women tended to apply far more often
to the departments that were hardest to get into. So overall fewer
of them succeeded.
To understand this example you have to think at the
level of the group, and this is true in evolution too - whenever
there is selection between groups. So when one faction goes to war
and kills another, or when an agricultural society sweeps away a
nomadic culture, there is selection between groups, and this means
that features of those groups - like how much they help each other -
can be a powerful force. No wonder human societies, as Sober and
Wilson illustrate with a random survey of ethnographies, are
characterised by strongly enforced social norms and behaviours that
benefit the group.
They then turn to the question of psychological
altruism. They overview the concepts of hedonism, egoism and
altruism, and explore the importance of understanding motives as
proximate mechanisms for producing adaptive behaviours.
Unfortunately the main example they use is that of parental care,
which seems the least peculiar kind of human caring, and the one
most easily explained by the usual evolutionary arguments. In a last
look at human uniqueness they conclude that cultural variation has
produced adaptations that have nothing to do with genes, and their
final conclusion is a pluralist view of human motivation. With group
selection reinstated, they argue, humans can sometimes be selfish
and egotistical, but sometimes truly altruistic.
Sober and Wilson have seriously infuriated
biologists their with views on group selection. I doubt they will
have as much impact on psychology, but they have certainly broken
the usual mould of evolutionary psychology. Maybe altruism does not
always have to be explained away as selfishness in disguise.
