Science overturns view of humans as naturally 'nasty'

[FarCenter]

AFP - Biological research increasingly debunks the view of humanity as competitive, aggressive and brutish, a leading specialist in primate behavior told a major science conference.

"Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies," Frans de Waal, a biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

New research on higher animals from primates and elephants to mice shows there is a biological basis for behavior such as cooperation, said de Waal, author of "The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society."

Until just 12 years ago, the common view among scientists was that humans were "nasty" at the core but had developed a veneer of morality -- albeit a thin one, de Waal told scientists and journalists from some 50 countries.

But human children -- and most higher animals -- are "moral" in a scientific sense, because they need to cooperate with each other to reproduce and pass on their genes, he said.

http://www.france24.com/en/20120221-science-overturns-view-humans-naturally-nasty-0

On the other hand, the doctrine of original sin may be a more practical and safer working assumption when meeting new people until you have individual evidence to the contrary.

[pansypoo53219]

1. did they study grover norquist, ayne rand and her followers.

nt

[MarkCharles]

2. They probably only studied Democrats, and...

left out any Republicans or Libertarians.

[Jim__]

3. I agree that humans are naturally sociable within their in-group.

We can try to extend the in-group to be all of humanity, and that may even work in times of plenty. But, in times of scarcity, I expect that people will break off into small groups and fight other groups savagely for those scarce resources.

[iris27]

4. Sure, extreme aggression is bad for group cohesion, and we have never been the sort of organisms who

could survive well on their own, like tigers. The "right" amount of aggression for the passage of genes is that which lets you live in harmony with your in-group, particularly family members that will be passing on similar genes to your own...but lets you compete to the death with the out-group to make sure your group dominates the resources.

I don't think this is "new" research...I was learning about kin selection and other genetic benefits of altruistic behavior in my undergrad classes 10+ years ago.

[Silent3]

5. "Overturns" suggests that humans being "nasty" is the established view

It's long been known that humans have both competitive and cooperative natures, aggressive and empathetic.

This story might reveal more details about the cooperative and empathetic side of human nature, but it's not "overturning" anything.

[GliderGuider]

6. The common view of paleolithic life still echoes Hobbes.

It's in the interest of the Power Elite to support his characterization ("solitary, nasty, brutish and short&quot , because it makes a couple of knock-on conclusions self-evident:

First, that the modern consumption-based lifestyle is essential if we are to avoid falling back into that benighted state;
Second, that strong hierarchies increase the opportunities for consumption, and so are inevitable in human affairs. So somebody has to be at the top and the rest of you get to haul stones for the pyramids.

Of course we are also empathic, altruistic and cooperative. The mix of traits we collectively express depends almost entirely on the dominant cultural narrative, which is why the global Power Elite tends to support the Hobbesian view, and leaves the altruism to "ineffectual do-gooders".

[Silent3]

7. Paleolithic life did suck

That's a different matter from how people treated each other during their short, deprived and disease-ridden lives. Cooperation was one effective tactic, among others not so benign, in surviving those harsh conditions.

As for "...in the interest of the Power Elite...", most scientists are not in the "Power Elite", anthropology and evolutionary biology have come a long way in the past couple of centuries, and if you're peddling some conspiratorial crap that the only reason humans are depicted as having a brutish past is to sell more iPhones and SUVs, I'm not buying.

[GliderGuider]

8. Two questions:

Paleolithic life did suck

1. According to what standards?
2. How do you know?

Marshall Sahlins and other anthropologists disagree whole-heartedly.

Yes, paleolithic humans cooperated to improve their survivability, especially among in-groups - as do we. That's what inclusive fitness is all about. But the human experience is driven by much more than just evolutionary biology. Overlaid on our genetics are thick layers of culture that largely determine how our more instinctual capabilities express themselves.

Scientists are most assuredly not in the power elite. Those places are already spoken for by politicians and CEOs around the world - evidence-based boat-rockers need not apply.

I don't see the current situation as a conspiracy, but as a "convergence of mutual self-interest" on the part of those who have a lot of money and power and desire still more. If we can be convinced to buy more iPhones and three-ply Kleenex, they make more money. This is our culture's improvement on tithing to support a religious power elite. Instead of getting "pie in the sky when we die by and by", we get a second helping of it here on earth - as long as we can pay for it. Same shit, different millenium.

You don't need to buy my world-view, it already has plenty of support. Just ask OWS.

[Silent3]

9. Human remains from the past...

Last edited Sat Feb 25, 2012, 03:58 PM - Edit history (1)

...typically indicate fairly short life spans, as well as signs of diseases and severe injuries other than cause of death. In fact, it's because we've seen signs of ancient people surviving for years with crippling conditions that we know they must have had the help of their families and communities in order to survive.

Besides, we don't have to go back into the paleolithic past to see the huge improvements modern medicine, sanitation, and increased food supplies have created. Just go back a couple of hundred years, or to parts of the world still not experiencing all of the benefits of modern life, and you'd see shorter lifespans, high infant and child mortality, people suffering from diseases and injuries that are now easily treated or cured.

I sure hope you don't believe in some naive fantasy about humans living in beautiful harmony with nature until capitalism (or some other villainy) came along and ruined paradise. Perhaps some people have exaggerated the harshness of living in nature without the aid of modern technology, but others have also excessively romanticized and idealized it.

Scientists are most assuredly not in the power elite. Those places are already spoken for by politicians and CEOs around the world - evidence-based boat-rockers need not apply.

The OP is a science story. Even if it doesn't come out and literally use the words, "Until this ground-breaking study, scientists thought humans were basically nasty," that was the implication. The implication was not, "Until this ground-breaking study, politicians and CEOs thought humans were basically nasty."

Many politicians and CEOs probably do hold an unremittingly dim view of human nature. That's not my point, and I think that should be clear. I think the OP mischaracterized modern science. That's what my reply was intended to address.

You don't need to buy my world-view, it already has plenty of support. Just ask OWS.

Argumentum ad populum? Impressive!

Besides, which members of OWS should I ask? It's a pretty diverse group. Further, recognizing the existence of the inequalities in modern life (which I certainly do myself) is far from being the same as buying into anyone's supposed explanation for those inequalities.

[GliderGuider]

10. Not really arg ad pop.

Just a colloquial way of saying that I'm comfortable with my viewpoint, and I really don't care about "selling" it to you personally. After all, I don't profit if you buy it. Quite the contrary - the fact that you disagree gives us a chance to put both positions out on public display so that others can think about them too. If we agreed we would hardly spend as much effort as we do in the debate.

[Silent3]

12. Well, as long as you put it that way...

..."thank you for sharing!"

[GliderGuider]

13. You're welcome.

[GliderGuider]

11. We also don't need to go back to the paleolithic to see evidence of short, nasty brutish lives.

Despite modern medicine and sanitation available today, there is a substantial proportion of the world population that doesn't benefit. 700 million people (10% of the world's population) lives in nations whose average life expectancy is below 55 years.

My position on the question of "life sucks" tends to count happiness higher than longevity. As far as I can tell, happiness is pretty much endemic to the human condition, regardless of the physical circumstances.

And no, I'm not an anarcho-primitivist any more. I tried it on for size a few years ago, but the rose-coloured glasses didn't fit. I just don't think that there is anything particularly sacred about materialism, and that a devolution/dissolution of this cycle of civilization wouldn't entail as much suffering as someone driving to Denny's might fear.

[Silent3]

14. That the benefits of modern life aren't enjoyed by many people today...

...only speaks to continued brutishness of life, it doesn't make the past less brutish.

If you want to make happiness itself the metric of the quality of life, how do you measure that? Especially historically? Even more so, prehistorically?

While I'll admit that measuring happiness itself is difficult to do, my answer to that difficulty is not simply to accept without evidence that there's an endemic level of human happiness that is unchanging no matter what we do, a level that's impervious to material conditions.

This isn't just about Xboxes and Doritos. It's about, among many other things, not having it be a common things for parents to endure the deaths of infants and children. It's about not spending nearly so much time cold and hungry and in pain. And while some people might believe that "ignorance is bliss", I consider the knowledge we have gained over time and the great access so many of us have to that knowledge to be a thing of great value.

Whether you consider that knowledge, and/or many of the other "mere" conveniences and luxuries of modern life, as contributors to happiness or not, many of them are probably going to come along for the ride with along with those other critical advances. I don't think we could have created a world with abundant food and modern medicines where, at the same time, people go home from the hospital to till their fields behind ox-drawn plows and wash their clothes by beating them against rocks by the river.

Why should we as Democrats and liberals and progressives care about the politics of medical care if we don't think a lot of happiness and sadness hinges on it?

[GliderGuider]

15. I don't know if it's possible to "measure" happiness historically

It's hard enough to do that with existing populations.

We can infer the presence of happiness in all cultures that left any record of art or festivals (paintings, musical instruments, decorations, special festive clothing etc.) That means all the way back to the earliest cabe paintings, and probably to the discovery of a 100,000 year old ochre paint factory in South African cave.

Most happiness doesn't come from stuff - it comes from things like family and community connections and shared celebrations. Whether there was less or more happiness in some given place in the past than in some given place in the present isn't really the core issue. To me the crucial recognition is that suffering and happiness have both been standard features of the human experience for at least the last 50,000 years. Are people in favelas in Rio today more or less happy than people living in Neolithic Syria 10,000 years ago? We have no way of knowing. What we do know is that there was happiness and suffering in both those places and times. That's why I say that happiness is endemic to the human condition: it's "natural to or characteristic of" all people, independent of the amount.

Knowledge is a thing of great value, and speaking as a son who watched his parents lose their daughter far too young, I have no problem with making that experience less common. However, the idea that if infant mortality rose to more historically traditional levels it would mark the re-entry of evil into the world or somehow make happiness less possible, is IMO a notion based more on fear and suffering than on realism

The questions for me are, if we accept these things (technology, medicine, cars, the Internet and even Doritos) as boons that we wish to have more of, what price are we paying for them, and what price are we willing to pay? None of this progress is free, after all. And while we may wish to elevate the downtrodden to our level of "happiness" and help all 7 billion of us live to the ripe old age of 99, what does that cost in terms of resources, pollution, social disruption, and ecological damage to the very systems we depend on to furnish the raw materials to be turned into human happiness?

Knowledge is wonderful, but turning that knowledge into wisdom is priceless.

[Silent3]

16. Presence of happiness?

Let's try to stick closer to the OP topic. There's nothing in the OP about whether happiness is or is not, was or was not, present in humanity. A short, brutish existence can still have its fleeting moments of happiness. Brutish people, whether their brutality defines them or is merely one aspect of them, couldn't easily extinguish every last glimmer of happiness.

So when you talk about signs that people have found happiness throughout the ages, I can only say, "No shit, Sherlock!".

If you don't care to try to apply any sense of scale or magnitude to questions of happiness and suffering, then you have no basis to be very concerned about much of anything humanity does or doesn't do. Why worry what the "Power Elite" does? Unless they utterly destroy all of humanity (TOTAL annihilation of the human race it's much more difficult than people think), there will still be some happiness somewhere, so why should you care?

[GliderGuider]

17. Why should I care?

I care more about the quality of life of my loved ones and immediate friends than about the potential annihilation of the human race, as you might expect.

Do you understand the difference between "not caring" and the Buddhist concept of "non-attachment to outcomes"? I care very deeply about what is happening - so I will do my best to make the outcome good - but I'm not attached to any specific outcome. Things could easily turn out differently than I would have preferred, and they probably will.

To go back to the OP, what I think has happened is that we have begun to tell ourselves a very dysfunctional cultural narrative. It's based on competition, hierarchy and the accumulation of wealth and power at the expense of others. IMO those traits are being "sold" do us as positive, essential, and even inevitable.

I think we need to start telling ourselves new stories about who we are as a country, a civilization and a species. It would be a good idea if those stories were based around altruism, empathy and cooperation. If we do that at the grass-roots level while trying as besdt we can to block the excesses of the dominator culture we have created, there's a chance that we can turn the ship away from the iceberg.

If we don't manage to turn it away, bad shit will happen. OTOH bad shit has always happened in human history, from wars to ice ages, and we have survived. All we can do is our best.

[Silent3]

18. You've neutralized any possible standards for what constitutes a "good outcome"

As for stories we tell ourselves... I want the true story. Not a story designed to manipulate people into particular patterns of behavior, good or bad.

Competition, hierarchy, and a desire to accumulate "wealth" of a sort -- resources and territory necessary for survival, are facts of nature, not mere "narrative". You can't understand how biology and evolution work without understanding that. Cooperation and altruism exist is nature too. They are also facts of nature, not mere narrative, necessary for understanding the living world.

We can make intelligent decisions about how much we want those aspects of nature to control our individual lives or the destiny of our species without mythologizing either.

[GliderGuider]

19. "True" myths

Every story about who we are, what we're doing here, and the proper relationship between us and the rest of the natural world contains value judgments. And these narratives are always mythic in at least this sense: they are stories or traditions associated with a particular group (or humanity as a whole) arising naturally or deliberately fostered, that support a collective belief or justify a social institution.

Myths in this sense can be either true or false, and may be understood by the society as either true or false. I use the term in the sense of a story about our perceived reality that we believe to be true. This may not be the usage that comes immediately to mind on this board, where "mythology" is usually used as a pejorative reference to fabricated religious stories, but it's a common usage nonetheless.

Most people believe there is an objective truth that it's possible to discover. However, from my POV that belief is simply another element of our cultural story. Since there is no "absolute truth" there can by definition be no "true story", but the stories that we take as being true can have a profound influence on our behaviour. Examples of stories we take to be true include, "My children will be better off than I am", "We are clever enough to figure out how to stop global warming" and "America is a meritocracy."

Cooperation and altruism are naturally occurring behaviours, as are competition and selfishness. Like other animals we are capable of all of them, but we tend to behave in ways we have been taught are appropriate, in accordance with beliefs we have been taught are appropriate. The guidelines for appropriate behaviour and beliefs come straight out of our cultural narratives - out of our mythology.

If we want to change our behaviour, we need to change our beliefs. And to change our beliefs we need to change our story about ourselves. We need new mythologies. Those are actually coming into being right now, in the environmental and social justice movements.

The nice thing about the research reported in the OP is that it confirms yet again that we are not a broken species that is doomed to self-destruction through fouling our own nest and beggaring our neighbours. So if we can figure out how to shift our beliefs more towards altruism and cooperation and take the institutions of our civilization along for the ride, there is enormous hope that we will get out of our deepening social, ecological and economic messes.

[Silent3]

20. I can only go along with that to the extent that the word "belief"...

...is used in the sense one might say, for example, "I believe in free speech", which is not a statement about the existence of free speech, but its worthiness as a value to promote and protect.

As for your examples of "stories" like, "My children will be better off than I am", "We are clever enough to figure out how to stop global warming" and "America is a meritocracy" anyone who actually believes in those as facts of life, not ideals to be pursued that come with no guarantees of success, is a fool. No future for our children is certain. We might be clever enough, we might not. There is some meritocracy, but not enough.

To the extent that playing around with stories like these is important to our future that simply depresses me more about human nature, that we need to dumb down our understanding of life into oversimplified narratives in order to achieve our goals.

I certainly don't want to see the scientific study of human behavior dumbed down by either positive or negative narratives. Perfect objectivity might not be possible, but one can strive for it as best as we can.

[GliderGuider]

21. If we want scientific evidence to make a difference to our behaviour

Last edited Sat Feb 25, 2012, 11:01 PM - Edit history (1)

We have to translate it into something that moves people emotionally. Intellectual understanding alone is a very poor motivator. You may not like the idea of stories, but they perform that essential translation function.

Cultural narratives usually present ideals, which is why I call them myths. "I believe" that the ideal America is a meritocracy, that in an ideal world my children will be better off than me. The emotional content of the myth is what motivates people to work toward realizing the ideal.

[pink-o]

22. I agree that expanding our empathy to include all humanity

...is where our evolution needs to go in order to survive as a species. Anthropology and Sociology show that we need altruism to exist--our offspring are dependent far longer than the progeny of most other animals. It's the Big Brain that takes so long to develop, so we needed communities to protect the children from other carnivores and the savage elements.

But psychologists will tell you this: altruism and empathy are not traits humans are born with. They need to be learned--and there's only a small window of opportunity to teach them--between the ages of two and four. I swear, one of the reasons you see these self-absorbed, must-have-instant-gratification-it's-all-about-me idiots is because harassed, hardworking parents don't have time to guide their toddlers during that period of MINE MINE MINE, so many people never learn to share. In extreme circumstances, this creates a sociopathic personality, a human with no conscience and no regard for anything outside of his/her needs.

To raise children without the vital lesson of empathy is tearing at the very fabric of our humanity, I am convinced. And of COURSE the corporate overlords who dictate our social structure just love all that greed. More $$$$ for them!

So if we don't think a single person can make a difference, just know that if you're a parent of a toddler, you can make a major impact on society by teaching him/her how to care for others. It's a lot of work, but the rewards will be felt for years to come.