The neuroscience of fair play: why we (usually) follow the Golden Rule

Cooperation: the new human nature

Donald W. Pfaff, 2007

New York, Dana Press

$20.95 (hbk), 234 pp.

ISBN 978‐1‐932594‐27‐0

Moral sentiments and material interests: the foundations of cooperation in economic life

Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd and Ernst Fehr (Eds), 2009

Cambridge, MA, MIT Press

$55.00 (hbk), 404 pp.

ISBN 0‐262‐07252‐1

The genial gene: deconstructing Darwinian selfishness

Joan Roughgarden, 2009

Berkeley, CA, University of California Press

$24.95 (hbk), 255 pp.

ISBN 978‐0‐520‐25826‐6

Mothers and others: the evolutionary origins of mutual understanding

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, 2009

Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press

$29.95 (hbk), 422 pp.

ISBN 978‐0‐674‐03299‐6

Books about evolution are growing exponentially, especially those that are concerned with morality. Here four books are briefly described. All are recommended for a well‐rounded understanding of the issues and the empirical evidence that derive from work in biology, anthropology, economics and neuroscience.

The neuroscience of fair play, by neuroscientist Donald W. Pfaff, argues that ethics is innate. Pfaff presents a brain‐based model as a neurobiological explanation of behaviour that conforms to the Golden Rule. He suggests there are four mechanisms that have evolved and can be mapped in brain functions. In the first step, the individual considers an action in regard to another person (e.g. hit and grab toy or share cake), representing the action in the nervous system. The second step is to envision the candidate (person) of the action through the activation of mirror neurons. The third step is to blur the identity between the self and the other person, which involves various brain systems including those related to empathy. The fourth step is to decide on whether to take the envisioned action. For those who commit evil against others, the step that falters is typically number three (similar to the ‘moral disengagement’ that Albert Bandura has pointed out).

Pfaff's book is helpful for learning the general aspects of the physiology of emotional reactions (e.g. fear and memory of fear), including their development during sensitive periods (e.g. perinatally and during puberty). Although sometimes difficult for a non‐neuroscientist to make sense of, Pfaff does not write densely but lightly, presenting a large body of research findings relevant to prosocial and antisocial behaviour, all of which is good for moral developmental theorists and researchers to know. For example, Pfaff presents brain studies of friendship, aggression and the effects of maternal care on temperament.

Those sensitive to language suggestive of reductionism will have to hold it in check while reading this book. As in biological publications, it is a convention in neuroscience publications to speak of systems reacting to stimuli or even ‘controlling’ or ‘activating/limiting’ other processes or actions. Such ways of speaking about brain functions imply to some readers that humans are not agents but passive bystanders of such brain activity. Authors typically do not mean to imply this, but assume the reader does not take the language literally.

Let me just mention that for a broad overview of the arguments about human moral evolution within evolutionary psychology over the last 30 years, the reader might consider Richard Joyce's (2006) Evolution of morality. He discusses the pros and cons of different hypotheses about the evolution of moral capacities, including reciprocity and altruism. However, he fails to define ‘selfishness’ (best defined as self‐interest at the expense of another), a common problem in discussions of evolved tendencies. Although he covers a lot of ground, he turns out to be a sceptic himself and does not advocate any clear position, rather, intending to raise doubt about all positions.

Whereas sociologists and anthropologists typically consider cooperation to be part of human nature, they describe it as a subordination of personal interests to the needs of the group. On the other hand, biologists and economists typically assume selfish agents who cooperate in order to maximise personal material interests. In Moral sentiments and material interests, Herbert Gintis and his co‐editors discuss an alternative view of human evolution that they call ‘strong reciprocity’ (conditional cooperation and altruistic punishment). When a group has strong reciprocators, who behave according to cultural norms of cooperation, and altruistic punishers, who sanction those who behave selfishly, the social group demonstrates strong reciprocity and will be more fit, more likely to survive, than competitor groups. Gintis et al. support their view with a series of chapters by collaborators who describe not only evolutionary theory but also laboratory data on how people actually act in conditions resembling everyday life cooperation. Not only do their contributors describe behavioural ecology of strong reciprocity, but there are several chapters on how to model and test strong reciprocity and several on the implications for social policy.

There are additional challenges to the received view of humans as individualistic, competitive, aggressive and selfish. First, biologist Joan Roughgarden, in The genial gene, presents a compelling alternative thesis to what Dawkins called the ‘selfish gene’. She raises multiple insightful questions about the received view, pointing out how scientists have few firm definitions of things like what an individual is (‘What does survival of the fittest mean when we can't say exactly who it refers to—the fittest tree trunk or the fittest grove of trees?’ p. 8), or how to categorise an organism by sex or to type them at all (‘nature abhors a category’, p. 7). Evolutionary biology has rejected the typologies used elsewhere in other disciplines like psychology and medicine. Roughgarden then marshals evidence to argue that the biological world is filled with cooperation more so than competition. Individual fitness increases through cooperative teamwork with others with similar and dissimilar genes. Thus, self‐interest and cooperation go hand in hand.

In Mothers and others, anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy also provides a more cooperative view of evolution, specifically through the evolution of offspring co‐rearing. Her book is packed with descriptions of alloparenting (caregiving to offspring by someone other than the mother) across hundreds of species, but with an emphasis on the presumed aetiology of human alloparenting and its adaptiveness for human survival. Her thesis is that ‘cooperative breeding’ brought about human social capacities such as the ability to read the thoughts and intentions of others. Such mind reading is adaptive both for mother and for child, increasing their coordination and signalling and the child's chances of survival. The child's mind‐reading skills helps woo potential alloparents and determine who will provision food and care. The importance of cooperative breeding is well substantiated by numerous studies showing an increased survival rate for offspring who have multiple caregivers (three seems to be ideal for humans), as well as their superior social skills.

Hrdy's topic, multiple alloparents, is one of the characteristics that anthropologists have identified to be part of the ‘environment of evolutionary adaptedness’ (EEA, so named by Bowlby, 1951), which represents the type of environment that human children need for optimal development. The other EEA characteristics include prompt responses to fusses and cries, breast feeding for two to five years, nearly constant touch in the first years of life, multi‐age (free) play groups (Hewlett & Lamb, 2005). At the end of a thorough and compelling set of evidence and arguments about the critical adaptive utility of cooperative breeding, Hrdy raises the frightening question about whether humans are losing the art of nurture. From the list of EEA characteristics that have become less common in many advanced societies, this appears to be the case. The cooperative nature of humanity, the theme common to all these books, may be a capacity in peril.

All four books offer unique perspectives on how humans' moral sense evolved. Scientists are still figuring out these issues but these books offer encouraging signs that alternatives to the received view are plausible.

© 2010, Darcia Narvaez