Many scientists of the “selfish gene” persuasion get bothered by instances of altruistic behavior by humans and other animals. For example, Damon Centola forwarded these links:
I’m puzzled about the puzzlement
Kids (and, as far as I know, chimpanzees) spend a lot of time playing. And they don’t like to feel frustrated, so it makes sense to me that they’d like to be helpful to others. It just doesn’t seem so baffling to me. What’s the point of being selfish? Playing at a day-care center or a science lab is hardly a no-space-left-in-the-lifeboat scenario. I mean, I have no problem with people doing research in this area (some of my own research is much more obscure, I’m sure); I just can’t see what they’re all getting excited about.
Altruism and selfiishness, and things that feel like altruism and selfishness
FInally, altruism and selfishness can be defined in different ways. For example, consider a person who volunteers weekly at a soup kitchen, doesn’t particularly enjoy the volunteering (it’s ok but feels like “work”) but does it to help other people get fed. I would consider this altruistic. For another example, consider a “selfish” player in a pickup basketball game who always shoots, never passes, whenever he has the ball. Psychologically, this seems like selfishness to me (compared to a more “selfless” player who passes more), even though the cost-benefit calculation isn’t so clear. (Similarly, people feel “guilty” after eating that second slice of chocolate cake, even though the only crime is to their own waistline–they’re both crimiinal and victim on this one.)
I’m not quite sure how the evolutionary psychologists would characterize “ball-hogging” in a pickup basketball game. In an instrumental sense it’s not selfish, but it certainly feels that way. (And then there are those people who just bounce the ball right back over the net in volleyball without even trying to set it up. I think that’s mostly ignorance, not selfishness, though.)
The point is (I think) that evolutionary
time scales can be very long; even actions
with tiny costs (i.e., a small selective disadvantage)
will disappear from the population over
thousands of generations. If being just that
little bit nicer means that the other guy
gets more food, then it is an individual-level
selective disadvantage.
Group selection groups
with more altruistic individuals do better
can work under some circumstances — —
but various forms of social pressure and
control (criticism or ostracism in a
pick-up basketball setting, pressure from
a coach in a school or professional
setting) are much stronger.
Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" is very much about altruism. It is not that evolutionists would be surprised about it, it is that many altruistic acts are actually selfish from the point of view of a gene. The whole punchline of evolutionary altruism is that "locally altruistic" often means "globally selfish".
An evolutionist looking at the above two papers would get the following impressions: a) A 15-month old human baby (or chimp baby for that matter) doesn't hang around total strangers to be altruistic with them. b) In a zero-sum game, helping your competitors at no cost hurts you in the end.
In evolutionary biology, "selfish" and "altruistic" have very specific meanings: they refer to fitness trade-offs. Check Selfish Gene for the definitions, or Segerstråle's book (I think it has a glossary).
With my (British) evolutionary biologist's hat on, my reaction to this is like yours: "so what"? THe behaviours could be explained by reciprocal altruism, group selection, or kin selection.
I worry about these sorts of studies that a behaviour could be genetic, but it's being expressed in an artificial environment, so who knows what the pressures on it were as it evolved?
If anyone wants some real reading along these lines, try the Bill Hamilton "Narrow Roads of Geneland" collections.
Bob
I've always wondered whether Dawkins would be less distressed to find out that his wife had slept with his brother as opposed to an unrelated stranger.