This may be of interest to those recently discussing free-riders.
Brent
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Unto Others
BY MICHAEL SHERMER
It is the oldest and most universally recognized moral principle that was
codified over two millennia ago by the Jewish sage Hillel the Elder:
“Whatsoever thou wouldst that men should not do to thee, do not do that to
them. This is the whole Law. The rest is only explanation.” That explanation
has been the subject of intense theological and philosophical disputation
for millennia, and recently scientists are weighing in with naturalistic
accounts of morality, such as the two books under review here.
Paul J. Zak is an economist and pioneer in the new science of
neuroeconomics who built his reputation on research that identified the
hormone oxytocin as a biological proxy for trust. As Zak documents,
countries whose citizens trust one another have higher average GDPs, and
trust is built through mutually-beneficial exchanges that result in higher
levels of oxytocin as measured in blood draws of subjects in economic
exchange games as well as real-world in situ encounters. The Moral Molecule
is an engaging and enlightening popular account of Zak’s decade of intense
research into how this molecule evolved for one purpose—pair bonding and
attachment in social mammals—and was co-opted for trust between strangers.
The problem to be solved here is why strangers would be nice to one
another. Evolutionary “selfish gene” theory well accounts for why we would
be nice to our kin and kind—they share our genes so being altruistic and
moral has an evolutionary payoff in our genes being indirectly propagated
into future generations. The theory of kin selection explains how this
works, and the theory of reciprocal altruism—I’ll scratch your back if
you’ll scratch mine—goes a long way toward explaining why unrelated people
in a social group would be kind to one another: my generosity to you today
when my fortunes are sound will pay off down the road when life is good to
you and my luck has run out. What Zak has so brilliantly done is to identify
the precise biological pathways that explain the mechanics of how this
system evolved and operates today.
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The Moral Molecule is loaded with first-person accounts of how Zak got his
data, starting with a wedding he attended in the English countryside to draw
the blood and measure the oxytocin levels of the bride, groom, and
accompanying parents before and after the vows. The half-life of oxytocin is
measured in minutes, so Zak had to draw 24 blood samples in under ten
minutes that then had to be frozen and shipped back to his lab for analysis,
the results of which “could be mapped out like the solar system, with the
bride as the sun,” he vividly recalls. The bride’s oxytocin level shot up by
28 percent after vows were spoken, “and for each of the other people tested,
the increase in oxytocin was in direct proportion to the likely intensity of
emotional engagement in the event.” Bride’s mother: up 24 percent. Groom’s
father: up 19 percent. The groom: up only 13 percent. Why? It turns out that
testosterone interferes with the release of oxytocin, and Zak measured a 100
percent increase in the groom’s testosterone level after his vows were
pronounced! How far will Zak go to get his data? In the western highlands of
Papua New Guinea he set up a make-shift lab to draw the blood from tribal
warriors before and after they performed a ritual dance, discovering that
the “band of brothers” phenomena has a molecular basis in oxytocin.
The Moral Molecule aims to explain “the source of love and prosperity,”
which Zak identifies in a causal chain from oxytocin to empathy to morality
to trust to prosperity. Numerous experiments he has conducted in this lab
that are detailed in the book demonstrate that subjects who are cooperative
and generous in a trust game have higher levels of oxytocin, and infusing
subjects with oxytocin through a nose spray causes their generosity and
cooperativeness to increase. Zak concludes his book with a thoughtful
discussion of how liberal democracies and free markets produce the types of
social systems that best enable people to interact in a way that puts them
on the oxytocin-empathy-morality-trust-prosperity positive feedback loop.
Every corporate CEO and congressman should read this book before making
important decisions.
In Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame the USC
evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Boehm tackles head-on the
“free-rider” problem in explaining the origins of morality. Kin selection
and reciprocal altruism only go so far in explaining why we would have
evolved the propensity to be nice to our fellow group members, because big
bullies and Machiavellian manipulators could easily take advantage of
naively engendered trust. Before long, free-riders operating on the goodwill
of other groups members would gain an evolutionary reproductive advantage
and swamp the gene pool with psychopaths lacking any pretense of real
morality and thereby reduce humanity to an inhumane Lord of the Flies. But
that did not happen and Boehm explains why: we evolved the social technology
of shaming and shunning free riders who violated social norms, along with
the desire to punish those who attempted to unfairly gain an upper hand
against naïve group members or those who could be exploited by powerful
alpha-male bullies. This explains why we not only practice but often even
enjoy “moralistic punishment” against those who cheated or bullied us. It’s
a powerful emotion based in evolutionary logic that I felt the full visceral
effect of during the revenge scene from the film The Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo that followed the pornographically brutal rape scene of the central
character Lisbeth Salander. There’s a deep emotional satisfaction that comes
from seeing a bully get his comeuppance. It’s an evolved moral emotion
necessary to deal with the realities of a social life that includes bullies
and cheaters.
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Boehm’s data comes from his direct observations of primate groups and
indigenous populations over many decades, which he extrapolates back into
our Paleolithic past of hunter-gatherers on the plains of Africa. Hunting
wild game is a dangerous enterprise for a puny bipedal primate, so
collaborative hunting through social bonding evolved. The free-rider problem
of individuals shirking their responsibilities, laying back during risky
moments, or taking more than their fair share of the hunt, were vigorously
punished through shame and shunning, and even expulsion and capital
punishment. Knowing that there are consequences to cheating the system,
humans evolved a moral emotion of guilt and shame that enabled our ancestors
to learn to control their impulses to do the wrong thing and to be
reinforced for and feel good about doing the right thing.
Boehm estimates that this system evolved over the last 50,000 years as
human groups became vigilantly egalitarian, and yet our psychology contains
much older selfish moral emotions that are often in conflict with these
newer sentiments. This goes a long way toward explaining why we often feel
selfish and strongly desire to first take care of ourselves and our kin,
while also feeling tribal and bonded with our fellow group members,
especially when we are collectively threatened by other tribes. As Boehm
notes in a moving epilogue reflection on humanity’s moral future, “people in
a band are basically economic equals, whereas our world of nations is very
far from being egalitarian in this way. This economic inequality can be seen
as a special engine that helps to drive international conflict, and it
stands in the way of creating a more effective international order.” We
can’t go back, but we can go forward armed with the knowledge that
deep-thinking scientists such as Christopher Boehm provide in such important
contributions to humanity’s prospects as Moral Origins.
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"We have geared the machines and locked all together into interdependence;
we have built the great cities; now there is no escape. We have gathered
vast populations incapable of free survival, insulated From the strong
earth, each person in himself helpless, on all dependent. The circle is
closed, and the net Is being hauled in."
~ From The Purse Seine, Robinson Jeffers, 1937
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