Altruism an evolutionary pathway.a review on the evolution of altruistic behavior

AutorThiago Perez Bernardes de Moraes/Felipe dos Santos Millani
CargoThe author is political scientist and researcher in the area of social psychology by Universidad Argentina John F. Kennedy/The author is a biologist and master in philosophy of mind by Pontifíca Univerdidade Católica do Paraná
Páginas65-82

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I Introduction

The matter of altruism has been object of scrutiny in biology since 1872 when Charles Darwin used his theory of evolution, based on natural and sexual selection, to explain what he called “moral sense” in his own words “'Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual power had become as well developed, or nearby as well developed, as in man' (Darwin, 2002, pg. 121).

Since that time this subject has been scrutinized by biologist and psychologists alike with a perspective centered on evolution, physiology and genetics among other biological sciences. This perspective generated different theories during the XIX and XX centuries to explain the subject of altruism, theories such as parental selection and reciprocal altruism, but until today researchers in evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics are still trying to bring some light to the subject of altruism and a lot of knowledge has been produced in the comprehension of our altruistic behavior.

This article is a historical review on the biological perspective of the origin and function of altruistic behavior as it is a closer look in the recent research done by the evolutionary psychologists on the subject. This article is divided in four parts being part one this introduction, on the second part we show how a behavior can be the result of an adaptive trait, in the third part we show how kin selection, reciprocal altruism and indication of suitability are adaptive traits that can lead to altruistic behavior, and finally in the fourth part we make the final analysis on those themes and conclude the article.

II Altruistic adaptive behavior in animals and Humans

For most part of social scientists culture is something limited to human beings and sometimes to other primates. But, for what we have seen nowadays, it’s a limited and hasted view, and if we are to understand culture as a system of patterns, preferences and behaviors regarding animal activities socially transmitted, we have precedent to start questioning current views on the matter. In the case of social animals the development of patterns in the behavior which includes altruistic decisions and what we call “moral sense” gives them some adaptive advantages in their own social environment, and sometimes, among other groups or tribes. Within the field of ethology this is common Knowledge, Insects such as ants and bees, all sorts of mammals, some birds, display some kind of altruistic behavior, be it to parents, or to their social group. Still nowadays to be common place for social scientists to display all kinds of

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reservation that moral sense and cultures are disseminated all over animal kingdom (Jablonka & Lamb, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008).

In human beings, which are social mammals12, the same pattern is easily observed. The social team work during hunt, war or environment exploring was paramount for the adaptation of early hominids. This kind of behavior diminished in group fighting, sexual disputes and facilitated food sharing. The efforts to keep group cohesion went from the sense of reciprocity to punishing among partners of different social contracts. In that context we can say that human beings developed cognitive adaptations to process social information3. We are mentally adapted to solve the adaptive problems faced by our ancestors and that our minds were architected by hundreds of thousands of years of environment pressure through natural and sexual selection during our evolutionary journey. (Cosmides, Tobby, 1997; Miller, 2000; Kanazawa, 2008).

III Altruism an adaptive solution

A biological approach for the matter of altruism is result of the work of Charles Darwin whom in his work The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex in which Darwin already talked about the evolution of a moral sense, he argued that a proto moral sense is already perceptible in some social insects. And some vertebrate animals.

Many of these animals help each other in many important ways, being the most common to warn each other about possible danger by a set of being able to depend on the senses of all members in the group…… like when a sentinel in a group of apes sends a warning cry about the presence of a

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predator other animals get deeper involvement with their own group, like wolves who hunt in packs or pelicans that fish in groups or apes that take care of infant from another ape in their own group (Darwin 2002, pg. 124)

In this context humans aren’t a singular species it is a deep characteristic of our nature the fact that we not only cooperate with each other but we also build strong social networks, in which we depend (Stanovich & West, 2003; Okasha, 2006; Cohen, 2012; Apicella, Azevedo, Fowler & Christakis, 2013; Moffett, 2013). It is important to consider that social changes, technological development, environmental changes changed the landscape of the species environment. However there are patterns that remained in every culture which suggests that natural selection may have had an important rollin the development of cooperation between individuals. For us to analyze about the adaptive value of cooperation and altruism we should take a good hint is to observe modern hunter gatherers tribes which live in the same way as our ancestors, in every single one of them cooperation and altruism is easily observed what shows the basic valor of such an adaptation.(Apicella, Marlowe, Fowler & Christakis, 2012).

Altruism is a traceable trait in most animals but in most cases this kind of behavior is restricted to family, some species go beyond that, but human beings extend this behavior to most other humans. In which bases did this extension of altruistic behavior to a large number of individuals was built on? To answer that is always good to remember that human societies have complex relations based on the division of labor. Historians and economists argue that such division started a few centuries ago, however archeology and paleontology findings tell another history and it probably goes back to at least 10 thousand years ago and maybe all the way toa 75 thousand years ago when we were already biologically identical to what we are today. About that time it seems that individuals had specialized functions and already divided labor. For example, during hunt one individual might have been a arrow maker, while another was a good spear thrower while yet another was a good strategist, it seems that since man are man we divide labor. Some other hints go even further and suggest that there was a sexual division of labor as well with different specialization regarded do gender (Ridley, 2000, p.50-61).

To argue about altruism and moral behavior considering the behaviors of other animals enriched our perception of such a phenomena, since we can observe such similarities between our and their moral behavior, especially in regard to the 3 pillars in which altruistic behavior are based in all animal kingdom including human altruistic behavior, and these three pillars are:

  1. Kin selection

  2. Reciprocal altruism

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  3. Fitness indicator

    [VER PDF ADJUNTO]

    The graph that we generate with Google Ngram Viewer shows that these three theories have gained greater importance in literature from the late 1970 and the decades following it is observed a movement of consolidation of this vide that there's a constancy as the frequency of publications.

    We will analyze these three characteristics of moral sense always resorting to parallels within the rest of the animal kingdom, ranging from social insects to primates and try to understand how this behaviors are the result of neural structure of these animals and this structure subsequently being the result of specie evolution.

III 1. Kin selection

The main idea behind this theory is that we have an innate tendency to favor our kin, according to modern biology it happens because we share a larger portion of our genome with them therefore favoring them would be favoring our own characteristics. The theory of kin selection was initially proposed in1964 by W. D. Hamilton. The term kin selection suggests that Darwinian selection may affect not only the individual level but also family, but In fact what it shows is that the natural selection occurs at the gene level and therefore favoring our family we are favoring the same entities we favor acting selfishly which are our own genes(Wright, 1996, 2010).

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This idea of natural selection occurring at the gene level and allowing the development of altruism towards family was made popular by Richard Dawkins classic “The Selfish gene” where he masterfully exposed the concept.

According to Dawkins that occurs because in the beginning of life evolution there were only self-replicating molecules (DNA – RNA) which competed for survival. These molecules, as time passed by, developed new methods of survival and replication leading to replicating inside cells and finally living as colonies which we call organisms. In this perspective we are the vehicles for the real “units of selection”: the genes. In this view when we improve our chances of survival by any means, including behavior, we are just doing our genes work since they are the ones who will get to the next generation, through our gametes (Dawkins, 2004).

In this way in the gene perspective, helping copies of our genes located in someone else´s body, yields the same results as helping these same genes within our own body (Wright & Jones, 2006; Okasha, 2006; Wright, 2010). According to Dawkins genes that are able to help the...

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