Science of Good and Evil

by Michael Shermer

  Gossip and the Enmityville Horror

  Morality evolved in these tiny bands of 100 to 200 people as a form of conflict resolution, social control, and group cohesion. In this social mode of religion and morality, amity is promoted over enmity. Without a system to reinforce cooperation and altruism and to punish excessive competitiveness and selfishness, Amityville becomes Enmityville. One means of accomplishing this social control is through what is known as reciprocal altruism, or “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine.” But, as Lincoln noted, men are not angels. There are cheaters. Individuals defect from informal agreements and social contracts. Reciprocal altruism, in the long run, only works when you know who will cooperate and who will defect. In small groups, cooperation is regulated through a complex feedback loop of communication between members of the community. (This also helps to explain why people in big cities can get away with being rude, inconsiderate, and uncooperative—they are anonymous and thus are not subject to the normal checks and balances that come with seeing the same people every day.)

  Figure 4. The Relationship Between Group Size, Brain Size, and Evolutionary History

  Humans evolved as hierarchical social primate species living in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers. These groups grew larger over the past three million years, as hominid brains grew larger (top). Psychologist Robin Dunbar has identified a powerful relationship between group size in primates as a function of the ratio of their neocortex (defined as neocortex volume divided by volume of the entire brain), which is the seat of higher learning and memory (bottom). Dunbar theorizes that in order to live in large, complex social groups, primates need more memory and mental power to keep track of various relationships and social hierarchies. (From Robin Dunbar, “Brain on Two Legs,” in Tree of Origin)

  In order to play the game of reciprocation you need to know whose back needs scratching and who you will trust to scratch yours. This information is gathered through telling stories about other people, more commonly known as gossip. Gossip is a tool of social control through communicating cultural norms, as anthropologist Jerome Barkow observed: “Reputation is determined by gossip, and the casual conversations of others affect one’s relative standing and one’s acceptability as a mate or as a partner in social exchange. In Euro-American society, gossiping may at times be publicly disvalued and disowned, but it remains a favorite pastime, as it no doubt is in all human societies.”24 This theory is well illustrated in figure 5, a 2003 Crock cartoon by Bill Rechin and Don Wilder, where the main character doesn’t gossip; he transmits “pertinent data via a verbal mode.” Well spoken.

  Figure 5. Gossip as the Transmission of Data Via a Verbal Mode

  (Courtesy of Bill Rechin and Don Wilder)

  The etymology of the word gossip, in fact, is enlightening. The root stem is “godsib,” or “god” and “sib,” and means “akin or related.” Its early use, as traced through the Oxford English Dictionary, included “one who has contracted spiritual affinity with another,” “a godfather or godmother,” “a sponsor,” and “applied to a woman’s female friends invited to be present at a birth” (where they would gossip). (In one of its earliest uses in 1386, for example, Chaucer wrote: “A womman may in no lasse synne assemblen with hire godsib, than with hire owene flesshly brother.”) The word then mutated into talk surrounding those who are akin or related to us, and eventually to “one who delights in idle talk,” as we employ it today.

  Not surprisingly, we are especially interested in gossiping about the activities of others that most affect our inclusive fitness, that is, our reproductive success, the reproductive success of our relatives, and the reciprocation of those around us. Normal gossip is about relatives, close friends, and those in our immediate sphere of influence in the community, plus members of the community or society that are high ranking or have high social status. It is here where we find our favorite subjects of gossip—sex, generosity, cheating, aggression, violence, social status and standings, births and deaths, political and religious commitments, physical and psychological health, and the various nuances of human relations, particularly friendships and alliances. Gossip is the stuff of which not only soap operas but also grand operas are made.

  My colleague Kari Konkola, a scholar researching the psychology of religious reinforcement and punishment of moral and immoral behavior, upon reading my initial theoretical foray into the connection between religion and morality (in How We Believe), made these important observations:

  The Protestants of early modern England knew very well the habit to gossip and regarded it as a personality trait that absolutely had to be eliminated. Indeed, the commandment “thou shalt not give false witness” was believed to be specifically a prohibition of gossiping. (In early modern religious terminology gossiping was called “backbiting.”) The early modern interest in the roots of sin produced quite a bit of “research” on what today would be called the psychology of backbiting. The desire to talk about others was believed to be produced by envy, because the destructive competitiveness of envious people made them eager to spread rumors that would damage the reputation of those whom they envied. The competitiveness of proud people mostly manifested itself in efforts to surpass their peers, which made them less destructive to people around them than the envious. The desire to get ahead of others, however, made the proud an eager audience for malicious gossip, because they loved to hear disparaging news about their competitors.

  In early modern England, gossiping thus was a grave sin—a breach of one of the Ten Commandments. The strict religious prohibition against these behaviors is likely to have been quite effective, because a trained observer could easily notice them. Indeed, one commonly recommended method to detect hypocrisy was to observe people’s favorite subjects of discussion: if a person liked to talk and hear about the flaws of others, this signified envy, pride and hypocrisy. On the other hand, an eagerness to dwell on one’s own faults and to disparage one’s achievements was a sign of humility and true religiosity. Normative evidence from early modern England leaves no doubt that at least some religions have been very emphatic about—and possibly also quite effective in—rooting the habit to gossip out of human nature.25

  What is the relationship between gossip, morality, and ethics? Moral sentiments and behaviors were initially codified into ethical systems by religion. That is, long before there were such institutions as states and governments, or such concepts as laws and rights, religion emerged as the social structure to enforce the rules of human interactions. The history of the modern nation-state with constitutional rights and protection of basic human freedoms can be measured in mere centuries, whereas the history of organized religion can be measured in millennia, and the history of the evolution of moral sentiments can be measured in tens of millennia. When bands and tribes gave way to chiefdoms and states, religion developed as the principal social institution to facilitate cooperation and goodwill. It did so by encouraging altruism and selflessness, discouraging excessive greed and selfishness, promoting cooperation over competition, and revealing the level of commitment to the group through social events and religious rituals. If I see you every week in church, mosque, or synagogue, consistently participating in our religion’s activities and following the prescribed rituals and customs, it is a positive indication that you can be trusted and you are a reliable member of our group that I can count on. As an organization with codified moral rules, with a hierarchical structure so well suited for hierarchical social primates like humans, and with a higher power to enforce the rules and punish their transgressors, religion responded to a need. In this social and moral mode I define religion as a social institution that evolved as an integral mechanism of human culture to encourage altruism and reciprocal altruism, to discourage selfishness and greed, and to reveal the level of commitment to cooperate and reciprocate among members of the community.

  The divinity evolved along a parallel track. As bands and tribes coalesced into chiefdoms and states, animistic spirits gave
way to anthropomorphic and polytheistic gods, and in the eastern Mediterranean the anthropomorphic gods of the pastoral people there lost out to the monotheistic God of Abraham. In addition to serving as an explanation for the creation of our universe, our world, and ourselves, God became the ultimate enforcer of the rules, the final arbiter of moral dilemmas, and the pinnacle object of commitment. God, religion, and morality were inseparable. People believe in God because we are pattern-seeking, storytelling, mythmaking, religious, moral animals.26

  The Bio-Cultural Evolutionary Pyramid: A Model for the Origins of Morality

  The Bio-Cultural Evolutionary (BCE) Pyramid in figure 6 depicts how morality evolved in small bands and tribes as individuals cooperated and competed with one another to meet their needs. Individuals belonged to families, families to extended families, extended families to communities, and, in the last several millennia (in parallel with the rise of chiefdoms and states), communities to societies. This natural progression is now in its latest evolutionary stages: perceiving societies as part of the species, and the species as part of the biosphere.

  The BCE Pyramid is a hybrid of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Peter Singer’s expanding circle of ethical sentiments. It depicts the 1.5 million years over which moral sentiments evolved among social primates primarily under biogenetic control. Around 35,000 years ago a transition took place, and sociocultural factors increasingly assumed control in shaping our moral behavior and ethical systems. Keep in mind that this is a continuous process. There was no point at which an Upper Paleolithic Moses descended from a glacier-covered mountain and proclaimed to his fellow Cro-Magnons, “I’ve just invented culture. We no longer have to obey our genes like those stupid Neanderthals. From now on we obey THE LAW!”

  The “bio-cultural transitional boundary” marks the shift from mostly biological control to mostly cultural control. It divides time and the dominant source of influence. In the early phases of our evolution, the individual, family, extended family, and Paleolithic communities were primarily molded by natural selection. In the later phases, Neolithic communities and modern societies were and are primarily shaped by cultural selection. Starting at the bottom of the BCE Pyramid, the individual’s need for survival and genetic propagation (through food, drink, safety, and sex) is met through the family, extended family, and the community. The nuclear family is the foundation. Despite recent claims that the traditional family is going the way of the Neanderthals, it remains the most common social unit around the world. Even within extremes of cultural deprivation—slavery, prison, communes—the structure of two-parents-with-children emerges: (1) African slave families that were broken up retained their structure for generations through the oral tradition; (2) in women’s prisons pseudofamilies self-organize, with a sexually active couple acting as “husband” and “wife” and others playing “brothers” and “sisters”; (3) even when communal collective parenting is the norm (for example, kibbutzim), many mothers switch to the two-parent arrangement and the raising of their own offspring. 27 Our evolutionary history is too strong to overcome this foundational social structure. Conservatives need not bemoan the decline of families. They will be around as long as our species survives.

  Figure 6. The Bio-Cultural Evolutionary Pyramid

  The Bio-Cultural Evolutionary Pyramid models the origin and evolution of moral sentiments and ethical systems. The pyramid depicts the 1.5 million years over which moral sentiments evolved biogenetically among social primates and the transition about 35,000 years ago when sociocultural factors increasingly assumed control in shaping Homo sapiens’ moral behavior and ethical systems. The “transitional boundary” shows the time range during which social groups grew larger and cultural selection began to take precedence over natural selection. In early Homo sapiens (the bottom of the pyramid), the individual’s need for survival and genetic propagation is met through the family, extended family, and the community. Over time, basic psychological and social needs evolved that aided and reinforced cooperation, altruism, and, subsequently, genetic propagation through children. This inclusive fitness applies to anyone who is genetically related to us. In larger communities and societies, where there is no genetic relationship, reciprocal altruism and indirectlblind altruism supplement kin altruism. The natural progression leads to species altruism and bioaltruism . (Rendered by Pat Linse)

  Moving up the BCE Pyramid, basic psychological and social needs such as security, bonding, socialization, affiliation, acceptance, and affection evolved to aid and reinforce cooperation and altruism, all of which facilitate genetic propagation through children. Kin altruism works indirectly—siblings and half siblings, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, cousins and half cousins, nieces and nephews, all carry portions of our genes.28 This inclusive fitness applies to anyone who is genetically related to us. In larger communities and societies, where there is no genetic relationship, reciprocal altruism and indirectlblind altruism (if you scratch my back now, I may scratch yours much later) supplements kin altruism. Inclusive fitness gives way to what we might call exclusive fitness. The natural progression of exclusive fitness may be the adoption of species altruism and bioaltruism (we will prevent extinction and destruction now for a long-term payoff), which Ed Wilson argues in Biophilia, may even have a genetic basis.29 But, Wilson confesses, this should probably still be grounded in self-interest arguments—my children will be better off in a future with abundant biodiversity and a healthy biosphere—since inclusive fitness is more powerful than exclusive fitness.

  The width of the BCE Pyramid at any point indicates the strength of ethical sentiment and the degree to which it is under evolutionary control. The height of the BCE Pyramid at any point indicates the degree to which that ethical sentiment extends beyond our own genome (ourselves). But the pyramid also shows that these two sets of sentiments are inversely related. The more a sentiment reaches beyond ourselves, the further it goes in the direction of helping someone genetically less related, and the less support it receives from underlying evolutionary mechanisms. This relationship is grounded in the aphorism that blood is thicker than water, as visualized in figure 7.

  Figure 7. The Expanding Circle of Inclusiveness

  Blood is thicker than water. According to evolutionary psychology theory, the percentage of genes (on average) shared by various degrees of kinship should predict the amount of benefits received from a given individual. The right side of the diagram shows relatives resulting from monogamy; the left side, polygyny. The assumption behind the theory is that organisms (including humans) act to enhance their inclusive fitness, that is, to increase the frequency and distribution of their genes in future generations. (Rendered by Pat Linse, adapted from Richard D. Alexander, Darwinism and Human Affairs)

  Group Selection and the Evolution of Morality

  Since I first began work a decade ago on a theory to explain the origins of morality, new research has emerged that leads me to think that there might be an additional force at work in the evolution of morality, and that is group selection. Natural selection is believed by most evolutionary biologists to operate strictly on the organism level: the individual organism is the primary target of selection because it is the only thing that nature “sees.” Genotypes, or genes, are simply code for phenotypes, or bodies. Nature cannot see genes, but it can see bodies running around and can select for or against those individuals based on their characteristics. In group selection, a group of individuals is the target of selection as a group of individuals competes against another group of individuals. When one succeeds and the other fails, the successful group passes along the genes of the individuals more than the unsuccessful group.

  Among evolutionary theorists this is a volatile subject because group selection has, for the past thirty years, been next to creationism as the doctrine strict Darwinians most love to hate. There is some irony in this because the first person to propose group selection was none other than Charles Darwin. In The Descent of Man Darwin began by makin
g a case against applying his own theory of natural selection at the individual level, noting that in trying to explain the origins of morality, “It is extremely doubtful whether the offspring of the more sympathetic and benevolent parents, or of those who were the most faithful to their comrades, would be reared in greater number than the children of selfish and treacherous parents of the same tribe. He who was ready to sacrifice his life, as many a savage has been, rather than betray his comrades, would often leave no offspring to inherit his noble nature … .” Darwin concluded that “it seems scarcely possible (bearing in mind that we are not here speaking of one tribe being victorious over another) that the number of men gifted with such virtues, or that the standard of their excellence, would be increased through natural selection, that is, by survival of the fittest.”30Within a group, Darwin argued, natural selection would not foster cooperation and virtue. From whence did it come? It came from competition between groups, Darwin concluded:

  It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. There can be no doubt that a tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection. At all times throughout the world tribes have supplanted other tribes; and as morality is one important element in their success, the standard of morality and the number of well-endowed men will thus everywhere tend to rise and increase.31