The Age of Empathy

by Frans de Waal

  Hunting Hare or Stag?

  That we differ from apes in our attitude toward social hierarchy struck me most acutely when chimpanzees failed to react to events that cracked me up.

  The first time occurred when a powerful alpha male, Yeroen, was in the midst of an intimidation display with all of his hair on end. This is nothing to make fun of. All other apes watch with trepidation, knowing that a male in this testosterone-filled state is keen to make his point: He is the boss. Anyone who gets in the way risks a serious beating. Moving like a furry steam locomotive that would flatten everybody and everything, Yeroen went with heavy steps up a leaning tree trunk that he often stamped on in a steady rhythm until the whole thing would shake and creak to amplify his message of strength and stamina. Every alpha male comes up with his own special effects. It had rained, however, and the trunk was slippery, which explains why at the peak of this spectacle the mighty leader slipped and fell. He held on to the trunk for a second, then dropped to the grass, where he sat looking around, disoriented. With a “the show must go on” attitude, he then wrapped up his performance by running straight at a group of onlookers, scattering them amid screams of fear.

  Even though Yeroen’s plunge made me laugh out loud, as far as I could tell none of the chimps saw anything remotely comical. They kept their eyes on him as if this was all part of the same show, even though, clearly, it was not how Yeroen had intended things to go. A similar incident happened in a different colony, when the alpha male picked up a hard plastic ball during his display. He often threw this ball up in the air with as much force as possible—the higher the better—after which it would come down somewhere with a loud thud. This time, however, he threw the ball up and checked around with a puzzled expression because the ball had miraculously disappeared. He didn’t know that it was returning to earth by the same trajectory he had launched it on, landing with a smack on his own back. This startled him, and he broke off his display. Again, I found this a rather amusing sight, but none of the chimps showed any reaction that I could tell. Had they been human, they’d have been rolling around, holding their bellies with laughter, or—if fear kept them from doing so—they’d have been pinching one another, turning purple in an attempt to control themselves.

  Attributed to St. Bonaventura, a thirteenth-century theologian, the saying “The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of its behind” illustrates what we think of higher-ups. In fact, the saying applies better to humans than monkeys. My own reactions fit this mold in that I perceived the incongruity of a top individual making a fool of himself during a show of pomp and power, the same way that we can’t suppress a laugh when political leaders make embarrassing gaffes or find themselves in their underpants attached to a dancing pole at a strip club. The Australian politician to whom the latter happened during a police raid said it had taught him two lessons: “Don’t let anyone handcuff you to a post and make sure you always wear clean underwear.”

  Our species has a distinctly subversive streak that ensures that, however much we look up to those in power, we’re always happy to bring them down a peg. Present-day egalitarians, who range from hunter-gatherers to horticulturalists, show the same tendency. They emphasize sharing and suppress distinctions of wealth and power. The would-be chief who gets it into his head that he can order others around is openly told how amusing he is. People laugh in his face as well as behind his back. Christopher Boehm, an American anthropologist interested in how tribal communities level the hierarchy, has found that leaders who become bullies, are self-aggrandizing, fail to redistribute goods, or deal with outsiders to their own advantage quickly lose respect and support. The weapons against them are ridicule, gossip, and disobedience, but egalitarians are not beyond more drastic measures. A chief who appropriates the livestock of other men or forces their wives into sexual relations risks death.

  Social hierarchies may have been out of fashion when our ancestors lived in small-scale societies, but they surely made a comeback with agricultural settlement and the accumulation of wealth. But the tendency to subvert these vertical arrangements never left us. We’re born revolutionaries. Even Sigmund Freud recognized this unconscious desire, speculating that human history began when frustrated sons banded together to eliminate their imperious father, who kept all women away from them. The sexual connotations of Freud’s origin story may serve as metaphor for all of our political and economic dealings, a connection confirmed by brain research. Wanting to see how humans make financial decisions, economists found that while weighing monetary risks, the same areas in men’s brains light up as when they’re watching titillating sexual images. In fact, after having seen such images, men throw all caution overboard and gamble more money than they normally would. In the words of one neuroeconomist, “The link between sex and greed goes back hundreds of thousands of years, to men’s evolutionary role as provider or resource gatherer to attract women.”

  This doesn’t sound much like the rational profit maximizers that economists make us out to be. Traditional economic models don’t consider the human sense of fairness, even though it demonstrably affects economic decisions. They also ignore human emotions in general, even though the brain of Homo economicus barely distinguishes sex from money. Advertisers know this all too well, which is why they often pair expensive items, such as cars or watches, with attractive women. But economists prefer to imagine a hypothetical world driven by market forces and rational choice rooted in self-interest. This world does fit some members of the human race, who act purely selfishly and take advantage of others without compunction. In most experiments, however, such people are in the minority. The majority is altruistic, cooperative, sensitive to fairness, and oriented toward community goals. The level of trust and cooperation among them exceeds predictions from economic models.

  We obviously have a problem if assumptions are out of whack with actual human behavior. The danger of thinking that we are nothing but calculating opportunists is that it pushes us precisely toward such behavior. It undermines trust in others, thus making us cautious rather than generous. As explained by American economist Robert Frank,

  What we think about ourselves and our possibilities determines what we aspire to become…. The pernicious effects of the self-interest theory have been most disturbing. By encouraging us to expect the worst in others it brings out the worst in us: dreading the role of the chump, we are often loath to heed our nobler instincts.

  Frank believes that a purely selfish outlook is, ironically, not in our own best interest. It narrows our view to the point that we’re reluctant to engage in the long-term emotional commitments that have served our lineage so well for millions of years. If we truly were the cunning schemers that economists say we are, we’d forever be hunting hare, whereas our prey could be stag.

  The latter refers to a dilemma, first posited by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in A Discourse on Inequality, that is gaining popularity among game theorists. It’s the choice between the small rewards of individualism and the large rewards of collective action. Two hunters need to decide between each going off alone after hare or both sticking together and bringing home stag—much bigger game even if halved. In our societies, we have successfully formalized layers of trust (allowing us to pay with credit cards, for example, not because the shop owner trusts us, but because he trusts the card company, which in turn trusts us), which means that we engage in complex stag hunts. But we don’t do so unconditionally. With some people we embark on cooperative ventures more willingly than with others. Productive partnerships require a history of give-and-take and proven loyalty. Only then do we accomplish goals larger than ourselves.

  The difference is dramatic. In 1953, eight mountaineers got into trouble on K2, one of the highest and most dangerous peaks in the world. In –40º Celsius temperatures, one member of the team developed a blood clot in his leg. Even though it was life-threatening for the others to descend with an incapacitated comrade, no one considered leaving him behind. The solidarity of this group has
gone down in history as legendary. Contrast this with the recent drama, in 2008, in which eleven mountaineers perished on K2 after having abandoned their common cause. One survivor lamented the drive for self-preservation: “Everybody was fighting for himself, and I still don’t understand why everybody were [sic] leaving each other.”

  The first team was hunting stag, the second hare.

  Eye-Poking Trust

  What is a company retreat nowadays without a trust-boosting game? One man stands on a table with his back toward his colleagues, who are ready to catch him when he drops backward into their arms. Or one woman verbally guides a blindfolded co-worker through an open area with scattered objects that represent a minefield. Trust-building breaks down barriers between individuals, instilling faith in one another, which in turn prepares them for joint enterprises. Everyone learns to help everyone else.

  These games are nothing, however, compared to those of capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica. In fact, humans would never be allowed to play the monkeys’ games; any lawyer would counsel against them. What these little monkeys do high up in the trees is so absurd that I couldn’t believe it until I saw the videos that Susan Perry, an American primatologist, shows nervously empathetic audiences. Two typical games are “hand-sniffing” and “eyeball poking.”

  In the first, two monkeys sit opposite each other on a branch, both inserting a finger ever deeper into the other’s nostril until the finger vanishes up to the first knuckle. Swaying gently, they sit like this with expressions on their faces described as “trancelike.” The monkeys are normally hyperactive and sociable, but hand-sniffers sit apart from the group, concentrating on each other for up to half an hour.

  Even more curious is the second game, in which one monkey inserts almost a whole finger between the other’s eyelid and eyeball. Monkey fingers are tiny, but relative to their eyes and noses they aren’t any smaller than ours. Also, their fingers have nails, which obviously aren’t particularly clean, so this behavior potentially scratches the cornea or causes infections. Now, the monkeys really need to sit still; otherwise someone may lose an eye. These games are most painful to watch! The pair keeps its posture for minutes, while the one whose eye is being poked may stick a finger into the other’s nostril.

  What purpose these weird games serve is unclear, but one idea is that the monkeys are testing their bonds. This explanation has also been offered with respect to human rituals in which we make ourselves vulnerable. Tongue-kissing, for example, carries the risk of disease transmission. Intimate kissing is either pleasurable or totally disgusting depending on the partner: Engaging in it thus says a lot about how we perceive the relationship. In couples, kissing is thought to test the love, enthusiasm, even faithfulness of the partner. Perhaps capuchin monkeys, too, are trying to find out how much they really like each other, which may then help them decide who can be trusted to support them during confrontations within the group. A second explanation is that these games help the monkeys reduce stress, of which they have no shortage. Their group life is full of drama. During eye-poking or hand-sniffing, they seem to enter an unusually calm, dreamy state. Are they exploring the borderline between pain and pleasure, perhaps releasing endorphins in the process?

  I speak of “trust games” because at the very least a high level of trust is needed before you’d let anyone poke your eye. Exposing yourself to risk on the assumption that others won’t take advantage is the deepest trust there is. What these monkeys seem to be telling each other—similar to humans when they drop backward into the arms of others—is that based on what they know about each other, they have faith that all will end well. This is obviously a wonderful feeling, one we mostly appreciate with friends and family.

  Animals develop such relationships quite readily, also between species. As pets, they do so with us, so that we can hold them upside down or stuff them under our sweater—scary moves that they won’t accept from strangers. Or, conversely, we stick an arm into the mouth of a large dog—a carnivore designed to take a chunk out of it. But animals also learn to trust one another. In an old-fashioned zoo, a monkey kept in the same enclosure as a hippopotamus acted as dental cleaner. After the hippo had eaten its fill of cucumbers and heads of salad, the little monkey would approach and tap the hippo’s mouth, which would open wide. It was obvious that they had done this before. Like a mechanic under the hood of a car, the monkey would lean in and systematically pull food remains from between the hippo’s teeth, consuming whatever he pulled out. The hippo seemed to enjoy the service, because he’d keep his mouth open as long as the monkey was busy.

  The risk the monkey took wasn’t as great as it might seem. A hippo may have a huge mouth with dangerous teeth, but it’s hardly a carnivore. It’s much trickier to perform such a job on an actual predator, but this too happens. Cleaner wrasses are small marine fish that feed on the ectoparasites of much larger fish. Each cleaner owns a “station” on a reef with a clientele, which come to spread their pectoral fins and adopt postures that offer the cleaner a chance to perform its trade. Sometimes cleaners are so busy that clients wait in line. It’s a perfect mutualism. The cleaner nibbles the parasites off the client’s body surface, gills, and even the inside of its mouth.

  In a sign of mutual trust, a monkey at a zoo cleans a hippo’s mouth.

  The cleaner fish trusts that it will be allowed to nibble parasites and that the big fish won’t cut his career short. But the big fish needs trust, too, because not all cleaners do an honest job. They sometimes take a quick bite out of the client, feeding on healthy skin. This causes the large fish to jolt or swim away. According to Swiss biologist Redouan Bshary, who has followed these interactions in the Red Sea, cleaners hurry to repair damaged relationships and lure back their clients. They offer a “tactile massage” by moving around the big fish, tickling its belly with their dorsal fins. The other likes this so much that he becomes paralyzed: He starts drifting around motionlessly, bumping into the reef. The massage seems to restore trust, because the big fish usually stays around for further cleaning.

  The only fish that cleaners never cheat are the large predators. With them, they wisely adopt what Bshary calls an “unconditionally cooperative strategy.” How do those little fish know which clients might eat them? They are unlikely to know this from firsthand experience, which by definition is terminal. Is it because they have seen those fish eat others, or—like Little Red Riding Hood—have they noticed what big teeth they have? We usually don’t assume much knowledge in fish, but this is only because we underestimate them, as we do most animals.

  Trust is defined as reliance on the other’s truthfulness or cooperation, or at least the expectation that the other won’t dupe you. This seems a perfectly fine characterization of how cleaner fish must relate to their hosts when they enter their gills or mouth, or the basis on which capuchin monkeys decide with whom to play their eye-poking games. Trust is the lubricant that makes a society run smoothly. If we had to test everyone all the time before doing something together, we’d never achieve anything. We use past experiences to decide whom to trust, and sometimes rely on generalized experience with members of our society.

  In one experiment, two persons each received a small amount of money. If one gave up its amount, the other’s money would be doubled. The partner was in the same situation. So the best would be for both to give up their money, because then both would gain. These people didn’t know each other, however, and weren’t allowed to talk. Moreover, the game was played only once. Under these circumstances, it seems smarter to just keep what you have, because you can’t count on the other. Yet some people gave up their money anyway, and if both members of a pair did so they obviously had a better income than the rest. The main message of this study, and many others, is that our species is more trusting than predicted by rational-choice theory.

  Confidence in others may be fine in a one-shot game with little money, but in the long run we need to be more careful. The problem with any cooperative system is that there a
re those who try to get more out of it than they put in. The whole system will collapse if we don’t put a halt to freeloading, which is why humans are naturally cautious when they deal with others.

  Strange things happen if this caution is lacking. A tiny proportion of humans is born with a genetic defect that makes them open and trusting to anyone. These are patients with Williams syndrome, a condition caused by the nonexpression of a relatively small number of genes on the seventh chromosome. Williams syndrome patients are infectiously friendly, highly gregarious, and incredibly verbose. Ask a teen with autism or Down syndrome “What if you were a bird?” and you may not get much of an answer, but the Williams child will say, “Good question! I’d fly through the air being free. If I saw a boy I’d land on his head and chirp.”

  Even though it is hard to resist these charming children, they lack friends. The reason is that they trust everyone indiscriminately and love the whole world equally. We withdraw from such people since we don’t know whether we can count on them. Will they be grateful for received favors, will they support us if we get into a fight, will they help us achieve our goals? Probably none of the above, which means that they don’t have anything that we’re looking for in a friend. They also lack the basic social skill of detecting the intentions of others: They never assume wrong intentions.

  Williams syndrome is an unfortunate experiment of nature that shows that just being friendly and trusting, which is what these patients excel at, is not sufficient for lasting ties: We expect people to be discriminating. That a small number of genes can cause such a deficit tells us that the normal tendency to be circumspect is inborn. Our species carefully chooses between trust and distrust, as do many other species.