Why do people hold the political attitudes they do? Despite
the centrality of this question, the two guiding theoretical
orientations of modern political science, rational choice and
behavioralism, are surprisingly unhelpful. Rational choice is content
to take preferences as given and is not particularly motivated to
explore their origins or grounding in reality. Behavioralism is based
on the untested assertion that preferences can be understood by an
exclusive focus on environmental variables; it largely ignores the
fundamental issue of why people respond to the environment as they do.
It is quite common (and accurate) for adherents of both positions to
admit that their favored approaches are not theories at all.
Our goal is not to criticize rational choice and behavioralism.
Indeed, political scientists working within both theoretical frameworks
have produced impressive findings and insights, thereby revealing the
value in identifying influential environmental factors and in outlining
the actions that a rational individual holding a given preference
takes. Nonetheless, the fact remains that, as early proponents of
rational choice correctly noted, behavioralism is limited by its lack
of a real theory to being a largely inductive mode of research.
Rational choice, in turn, as many of its proponents have come to
realize, is reaching the limits of what can be accomplished by
deductive research based on assumed rather than actual preferences. To
fully understand, connect, and transcend the extant research requires
an empirically sustainable theory of the source of preferences and of
the reasons people respond as they do to environmental stimuli.
Such a theory exists and is being employed with increasing regularity
in the social sciences, especially experimental economics, behavioral
anthropology, and social psychology. Certainly, some political
scientists are familiar with this theory, but it has not been the basis
for original research in political science. Yet theories of the origins
of preferences (and therefore behaviors) may offer the ability to unite
the individual social sciences—and even the social sciences as a
group—with the natural sciences.
Political scientists may find the theory we describe wanting. But it
should not be dismissed without due consideration of the evidence for
and against it. Most important, the theory should not be dismissed
because of an unscientific aversion to its implications.
The central tenet of this theory is that preferences and behaviors
are at least partially shaped by evolutionary forces and therefore by
genetic heritage. Just as evolutionary pressures shaped genes governing
the physical traits of humans, they also shaped genes governing
behavioral traits. If this is true, research in the social sciences
will be furthered by taking into account evolutionarily advantageous
behaviors and by increased attention to the connection between human
biology and social behavior. This evolutionary-biological approach
incorporates valuable insights from both behavioralism and rational
choice. In fact, the most substantial current applications of this
theory are seen in the two disciplines, psychology and economics, from
which political scientists borrow most heavily—and from which we
borrowed behavioralism and rational choice, respectively. If a single
theoretical approach can make headway in disciplines as disparate as
economics and social psychology, it surely merits some attention in a
discipline like ours, which has internalized the conflict between
psychology and economics.
In what follows, we provide a general description of modern
evolutionary theory and our own more sociopolitically focused
behavioral theory, which we call “wary cooperation.” We
then draw out the direct implications of this theory for
interpretations of politics and public policy. Finally we direct our
attention to evidence supporting the assertion that is most likely to
trouble political scientists: that political orientations are to a
significant extent genetically influenced.
An Evolutionary Theory of Political
Behavior
While “survival of the fittest” is often automatically
associated with Hobbesian self-interest, the Darwinian account of human
behavior is not nearly as depressing as is typically imagined. As is
often the case, a disciple took a much harder line, which has colored
popular interpretations of the original message. In Charles
Darwin's case, Thomas H. Huxley was the individual largely
responsible for creating a story of social evolution characterized by
unceasing and often violent self-interest.1
Darwin himself recognized the incredible variety
of adaptive behaviors and the value and prevalence of behavior
designed, at least in the near term, to benefit other organisms.
2 To the extent that evolutionary theory has influenced the thinking of
political scientists, it has been primarily in the equation of natural
selection with narrow self-interest. Deviations from self-serving
behavior are typically explained by humans' limited cognitive
abilities,3
or by humans'
socialization and ultimate internalization of societal norms. As Leda
Cosmides and John Tooby put it, most economists and social scientists
assume that “rational behavior is the state of nature, requiring
no explanation.”
4 This
sentiment is evident in the work of political scientists. For example,
Elinor Ostrom asserts that “our evolutionary heritage has
hardwired us to be boundedly self-seeking at the same time that we are
capable of learning heuristics and norms, such as
reciprocity.”
5 From this perspective, self-serving behavior is
genetically driven and can only be countered by the decidedly
nongenetic teaching of societal niceties.
In equating natural selection with inherent selfishness, political
scientists reflect views held by mainstream biologists from
Huxley's time through about a quarter century ago. The
overwhelming focus of evolutionary theorists then was largely
compatible with what came to be the rational choice view of the
appropriate starting assumption for human behavior. In a well-known
work, biologist Richard Dawkins observed: “If we were told that a
man lived a long and prosperous life in the world of Chicago gangsters,
we would be entitled to make some guesses as to the sort of man he
was…. Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have
survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive
world…. If you look at the way natural selection works, it seems
to follow that anything that has evolved by natural selection should be
selfish.”6
In this view, human beings are merely “survival
machines,” constructed by the genes to help the genes continue
into the next generation. The interactions of survival machines are
hardly expected to be warm and fuzzy. Dawkins continues: “To a
survival machine, another survival machine is part of its environment,
like a rock or a river or a lump of food. It is something that gets in
the way or something that can be exploited.”7
Ibid., 66. At a later point, Dawkins clearly recognizes
that genes occasionally engage in cooperative behavior.
One
need not search long to find parallel views in social science. In one
of the founding works of rational choice, James M. Buchanan and Gordon
Tullock declared that when two people interact, each will always seek
“more rather than less” and will “exclude from
consideration” the interests of their “opposite
number.”
8 Evolutionary theory has undergone fundamental changes in recent
decades, particularly as it relates to social behavior. Renewed
enthusiasm for an earlier, but largely ignored, insight—that of
multilevel selection—offers an ingenious explanation for the
emergence of cooperation from a nuanced pattern of self-interest.
Selection pressure itself is, after all, a law of nature, not an
evolved mechanism: over time, things that last longer and/or
reproduce themselves more successfully will come to dominate
numerically. This is not limited to living things, and genetic
evolution is only one mechanism that expresses this natural law.
Traditional evolutionary theory has focused largely on the role of
selection pressure at the level of the gene, and this is what most
political scientists think of when the topic of evolution comes up.9
Multilevel selection begins by recognizing the ubiquity of selection
pressure. Focusing at any single level will highlight selection
pressure and the associated narrowly self-interested modes of activity
at that level. For example, focusing at the level of the gene
highlights the fact that the behavior of human genes is ultimately a
consequence of self-interest at that level. This has led scholars such
as Dawkins to think of organisms as nothing more than machines built
and utilized by selfish genes, genes which “care” nothing
for the ultimate welfare of the organism itself.10
Such “selfish” genes have been used to explain
the self-destructive behavior of organisms such as salmon, which leave
the comforts of the ocean to swim upstream, spawn, and die, and male
mantises, which sometimes celebrate the end of copulation by throwing
themselves back into the open, waiting jaws of the much larger
females.
Taking a step back alters this picture substantially. The genes
themselves are, after all, merely survival machines for the complex
proteins that make up genetic material. At this deeper level, it is the
complex proteins that are selfish, and their survival
machines—the genes—may behave in ways that seem highly
inconsistent with selfishness.11
For a
description of the biology of cooperation at this level, see Mark Ridley 2003.
In terms of human behavior,
if we think of groups as survival machines for collections of
individuals, then selection pressures that lead individuals to behave
selfishly may well be in conflict with selection pressures that favor
groups of individuals that behave in concert. Whenever working in
groups allows for advantages stemming from specialization, division of
labor, or even mere numerousness itself, groups characterized by
cooperative behavior at the individual level have the potential to
out-compete and hence dominate groups characterized by selfish behavior
at the individual level. Thus individuals are subject to conflicting
selection pressure. At the individual level, pressure favors entirely
self-regarding behavior, but self-regarding individuals may have a
better chance of survival if they are members of cooperative groups.
The parameters that characterize the equilibrium of these conflicting
pressures will often yield behavior that is selfish; however, under
some realistic conditions the result will be the evolution of
mechanisms for cooperation. The cooperation evident among proteins in
creating living cells, among cells in creating tissues, among tissues
in creating organs, and among organs in creating complex living
structures like plants and animals, are all examples of this balance of
competition and cooperation within the evolutionary process.
12 Frank 1988; Sober and Wilson 1998. The claim that selection
pressures can be profitably viewed at levels other than the gene, while
increasingly accepted by students of evolutionary psychology, has had a
checkered past, and many scholars remain unpersuaded.
Wynne-Edwards's 1962 account of rooks
voluntarily curtailing their clutch size for the welfare of the flock
was roundly criticized by the biological community and gave related
notions much to overcome. Moreover, so-called group selectionists
occasionally envisioned an ethereal, almost inexplicable, and somewhat
magical devotion to the group. As emphasized in our description above,
mysticism is not needed, and modern thinking is firmly embedded in the
logical consequences of selection pressures at different levels. The
switch in common phraseology from group selection to multilevel
selection is more than semantic.
In addition, continuing advances in genetics cast more and more doubt
on genes as stand-alone, clearly distinct actors in the evolutionary drama.
Instead, we now know from Gibbs 2003 and others
that many traits are epigenetic, that is, influenced by chemical marks
outside the DNA sequence. Today, much of the dispute centers on the relative
importance of multilevel selection rather than the fact of its existence.
For some sense of the opposing arguments, see the exchange in the 1994
issue of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, in which Wilson and Sober
make the case for multilevel selection, and which is commented on by
numerous scholars. See also Sober and Wilson
1998.
The important insight for human behavior comes from continuing this
Russian doll analogy of competition within cooperation to the level of
families, extended kin groups, clans, political parties, and nation
states—all of which are potentially subject to selection pressure
at the individual and collective levels. Environmental conditions that
offer substantial advantages to clans that cooperate easily and
efficiently will tend to produce at equilibrium an environment filled
largely with relatively cooperative clans. The selfish interest of the
clan vis-à-vis other clans thus acts to reduce the selfish
behavior of individuals within a clan, but only to the degree that that
reduction in within-clan selfishness improves the survival chances of
individuals in cooperative clans relative to less cooperative clans.
Thus it is not that evolution itself favors cooperation or operates in
anything but a selfish fashion; it is simply that evolution is agnostic
about the methods (e.g., competition or cooperation) by which overall
survival advantages are achieved.
Our Theory: Wary Cooperation
New theories of political behavior can be built on this current and
subtle version of Darwinian selection theory. In that spirit we offer
our own theory of “wary cooperation” drawn from the work of
leading scholars in evolutionary psychology and experimental economics.
The theory may be summarized as follows. Humans are cooperative, but
not altruistic; competitive, but not exclusively so. We have an innate
inclination to cooperate, particularly within defined group boundaries,
but we are also highly sensitive to selfish actions on the part of
other group members. This sensitivity leads us to cease cooperating
when that cooperation is not reciprocated, to avoid future interaction
with noncooperators, and even to engage in personally costly punishment
of individuals who fail to cooperate.
Perhaps the easiest way to see wary cooperation in action is to
summarize findings from the ultimatum game. In this widely used
experimental scenario two anonymous players are brought together for a
single interaction.13
One is
given the task of dividing a sum of money between the two of them. The
other can either accept or reject the proposed allocation but if it is
rejected neither player receives any money. Of course, from a rational
point of view, no player should ever make a generous offer to a
receiving player and no receiving player should ever reject a positive
offer. In practice, however, the modal offer is 50 percent of the pot,
and offers of less than one-third are rejected by receiving players
more than 50 percent of the time, meaning that a remarkably high
percentage of people are willing to sacrifice their own monetary
rewards to share with another player or to punish an allocator who kept
a large portion of the pot.
14 See Nowak, Page, and Sigmund 2000. Lest it be thought
that the generosity of allocators is merely strategic, when the game is
changed to a dictator game, in which the receiving player has no chance
to veto the proposed allocation, anonymous allocators still make
generous offers, albeit typically less generous than in ultimatum
games. See Fehr and Fischbacher 2003 for a
useful summary. See Van Dijk and Vermunt 2000
for research suggesting players in the dictator game are actually more
generous than those in the ultimatum game.
The latter practice
is sometimes called, for obvious reasons, costly or altruistic
punishment.
15 On the one hand, pure self-interest cannot explain either our
willingness to cooperate or our willingness to punish at our own
expense in this scenario.16
Thus the
discipline's theoretical basis for explaining self-interested and
non-self-interested behavior is much as Ostrom, Gardner, and Walker
(1994) describe it with regard to the
specific instance of abusing or not abusing common pool resources.
“No existing theory provides a consistent explanation for how and
why many appropriators extricate themselves from common pool resource
dilemmas [and] why this is not universally the case”
(p. 18). The theory of wary cooperation, in contrast, does explain
these puzzles.
On the other hand, pure altruism cannot explain
our willingness to punish noncooperators or, in multiple-play games, to
cease cooperating with noncooperators. Wary cooperation does account
for these behaviors. Moreover, unlike short-term self-interest or
altruism, our theory is grounded in an evolutionary view of human
behavior, for it is likely that wary cooperation is a product of innate
and genetically heritable behavioral predispositions, and that these
predispositions are the result of identifiable selection pressures.
17 The main reason for opening up social
science to the role of biology is not that it can better explain
variations of human behavior around the mean but rather that it can
help us to better understand the mean itself. We do not, however,
believe all individuals possess in the same degree the biological
materials that push us toward wary cooperative behavior. In fact, as
discussed below, we believe that a minority of humans are genetically
predisposed toward insensitivity to the cooperation levels of people
around them.
What are the evolutionary underpinnings of our theory? Evolution is a
slow process, and much of the environmental pressure favoring human
cooperation has existed for a long time. Our genetic composition is to
some extent the product of conditions faced by our hunter-gatherer
predecessors of perhaps 100,000 years ago. One of the keys to an
individual's survival was being a respected part of a viable
group. The central insight of a behavioral theory built on evolutionary
biology is that the desire for group life is a fundamental human
preference. What kinds of behaviors optimally promote belonging to a
viable group? These tend to be primitives as opposed to elaborated
behaviors since specific, genetically determined behaviors are less
likely to be adaptive. Space precludes a complete list; we mention just
six of the most important default behaviors for members of a viable
group. To sustain group membership, individuals must
- cooperate with others in their in-group;
- dislike those in out-groups;
- punish or banish uncooperative in-group members;
- encourage others through norms, institutions, or moral codes to
(1), (2), and (3);
- be ever sensitive to status, payoffs, and reputation relative to
other in-group members;
- cease cooperating if the noncooperation of other members goes
unpunished.
Since these behaviors foster valued membership in viable groups, and
since being an accepted member of a properly functioning group
facilitates survival, we believe these six behaviors will be common,
though perhaps not universal, genetic endowments.
Wary cooperation is the most social of theories, since it is built
around other people. In this sense it affords another contrast with
existing approaches. According to rational choice (and old school
evolutionary theory), for example, other people get in the way.
According to the theory of wary cooperation, other people are
the way. But this does not mean that behavior is altruistic. Social
behavior is often taken to be good and its polar
opposite—egocentric behavior—bad. But social behavior is
not synonymous with altruistic behavior.18
For a thorough treatment of altruistic behavior, see Monroe 1996.
Rather, social behavior is
centered on other people but not necessarily concerned with the welfare
of other people. In so saying, we are in complete accord with Kristen
Renwick Monroe's recent emphasis on “interactions with
others,” on “sociability” and on “an innate
need for human connection” as well as Marilyn Brewer's
account of behavior relevant to in- and out-groups.
19 In addition to expecting cooperative behavior in some circumstances,
our theory also expects—and empirical studies have proven it to
be the case—that people mindlessly conform,20
passively
obey authority figures,
21 are competitive to the point
of taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others,
22 initiate
hostilities toward those people in out-groups,
23
construct out-groups for the sake of having them,
24 and are
disconcertingly enthusiastic about punishing those not perceived as
living up to the group's behavioral standards, especially when
personally victimized.
25 The
theory of wary cooperation predicts the construction of moral codes
that conditionally value cooperative behavior; it does not predict
altruistic behavior.
Thus human behavior seems to be remarkably consistent with the
behaviors expected by our theory—an issue future scholarship will
continue to address.26
Here we must defend the claim that the behaviors
listed above are indeed advantageous for humankind—or at least
were in the past. Since no one has the ability to recreate the
Pleistocene, evolutionary psychology is vulnerable to charges that it
merely spins “just-so” stories by observing modern human
behavior and then offering post-hoc and perhaps even tortured accounts
of why those behaviors might have been valuable in our species'
distant past.
27 These charges should be taken seriously because,
as is the case with any theory, proponents have occasionally made
overstatements.
Having said this, there is intriguing support for the notion that
behaviors and traits consistent with the theory of wary cooperation are
precisely those that lead to success in a harsh and competitive
environment. Much of this support comes from computer simulations used
to test models developed in evolutionary game theory. These simulations
allow observation of the relative success of groups of individuals who
follow various behavioral rules. Some groups in these simulations are
populated by altruists, some by egoists, and some by wary cooperators.
When groups with these different characteristics are allowed to compete
with one another, those composed of wary cooperators survive the
evolutionary test. Groups composed mainly of altruists fail because
they have no protection against the occasional egoist in their midst.
But egoist groups also fail because they are groups in name only and
lack the bonds that lead to the benefits of group behavior.28
We submit that it is
not a coincidence that wary cooperation wins in computer simulations of
the evolutionary process
and is so frequently observable in
real human society.
Evidence suggests that even humans' alleged mental frailties
serve a purpose. Ralph Hertwig and Peter M. Todd demonstrate that
cognitive “limitations in processing capacity, as well as in
other resources such as knowledge, can actually enable rather than
disable important adaptive functions.”29
For
example, it is now thought that children learn languages more quickly
than adults in part due to their limited memories. Limitations
constrain solution space, allow a scaffolding to guide learning, and
suggest patterns. Neural networks designed to simulate language
learning actually learn more quickly with less memory—more is not
always better.
30 The same is true of rationality. As stated by
Cosmides and Tooby, “ ‘[R]ational’
decision-making methods … are computationally very weak;
incapable of solving the natural adaptive problems our ancestors had to
solve reliably in order to reproduce.”
31 They conclude that, from an evolutionary point of view,
human mental capacities, far from preventing rational thought,
32 actually allow us to be
“better than rational.”
33 Related evidence that there is method to human madness
comes from identification of the tasks that humans do not do well.
Humans are not particularly good at calculation, storage and retrieval
of facts, and pure logical problems.
On the other hand, humans (even very young ones) are amazingly good
at language recognition; intuitively comprehending the physics of
movement (e.g., throwing an object accurately at something while it and
the thrower are both moving); reading facial expressions for honest, as
opposed to contrived, emotion; making inferences about plants and
animals (as opposed to similarly distinguishable man-made objects); and
identifying others likely to be noncooperators, especially
cheaters—even though these tasks are as, or more, demanding than
many we do poorly.34
For example, when experimental
subjects are shown pictures of individuals and told their names along
with a single fact about them, subjects are better at remembering the
names of those who had been connected with a social fact (Sally helped
a neighbor paint his house) than a nonsocial fact (Tom has an old
refrigerator), and they are best at remembering those who had been
connected to a negative social fact (Harry did not return a CD he
borrowed from his friend).
35 These very
activities—accurately reading social situations, intuiting the
physics of the world around us, perceiving food sources, and especially
identifying those who might harm us or our group status—are those
that would have been quite useful to our ancestors as they roamed the
savannah in small bands. As biologist William Hamilton put it,
“The tabula of human nature was never rasa.”
36 The idea that human nature exists should not be confused with the
belief that it is fixed. In fact, humans must be sensitive to
environmental surroundings to achieve objectives. For example, levels
of trusting behavior vary widely around the world and even within a
country.37
If natural selection over
hundreds of thousands of generations has weeded out the altruists and
the egoists, leaving only wary cooperators, why is cooperative behavior
present in such vastly different proportions around the world? The
answer is simple but important: wary cooperation is a conditional
behavior and thus fundamentally different from strategies of
“always act in your own interest” or “always act in
the interest of the other person.” The wary cooperator acts with
a glance over the shoulder and adjusts behavior as needed. Thus the
behavior of a wary cooperator in Lombardy will be quite unlike that of
the same genotype transplanted to Sicily, merely because these two
individuals are likely to encounter different levels of cooperative
behavior.
Most contributions of rational choice and behavioralist scholarship
are in no way compromised but rather enhanced by the acceptance of
evolutionary theories. The previously content-free “preference
structures” of rational choice can find a source of clear and
potentially falsifiable content, and the “incoherent
environmentalism”38
of
behavioralism can be given theoretical coherence. The message is not
that nature trumps nurture but rather that nurture is in our
nature—and that the precise nature of our nurturing tendencies
depends upon environmental conditions.
39 Our
theory subsumes a wide range of behavior—as any successful social
theory must. Work that takes evolution seriously opens a broad range of
cooperative opportunities across methodologies and approaches that in
the past have created lines of conflict within political science; it
draws on and encourages more theory-driven research in fields as
diverse as game theory, traditional field work in anthropology, and
economic and social psychological experiments, with worldwide human
(and nonhuman) subjects.
40Implications for Politics and Public Policy
Buchanan and Tullock are undeniably correct to assert that “the
only final test of a model lies in its ability to assist in
understanding real phenomena.”41
We believe our
theory of wary cooperation has practical applications in a variety of
areas in politics and political science.
Death, taxes, and welfare
Perhaps not surprisingly, a theory that highlights our innate
willingness to engage in costly punishment sheds considerable light on
policies that relate to criminal justice. In the death penalty debate,
the theory of wary cooperation suggests that support for such draconian
punishments derives more from a desire for retribution than from an
effort to discourage potential murderers. This explains why, with
research consistently finding that the death penalty has no deterrent
value, the American public largely supports it. Historically,
executions have been public events, and while their public nature is
certainly compatible with the goal of deterrence, it is difficult to
see why anyone without a general interest in punishment would
attend.
Tax law provides another example. Do we punish tax evaders because we
all wish to be tax evaders and must be frightened into compliance, or
are we willing to pay our fair share only assuming others do the same
and evaders face swift and certain consequences? Wary cooperation
suggests the latter reason.
Turning to the positive side of government, welfare programs are
often poorly regarded, in large part, apparently, because it is
believed they provide benefits to unworthy recipients. Why are people
so willing to help the downtrodden, and why are they even more willing
to stop helping when they suspect even a handful of undeserving
recipients? Our theory provides a ready explanation for both
tendencies. People are initially helpful and cooperative, even at some
personal expense, but they are hypersensitive to the possibility that
someone might take advantage of their generosity.
The wary cooperation theory also has something to say about the
viability of strategies for dealing with cheaters in general. In the
welfare debate, for example, policy makers commonly argue that
increased effort to eliminate cheating is simply inefficient, as the
amount spent on detecting each additional cheat will exceed, often
substantially, the cost that the cheater was imposing. This rational
appeal typically serves only to further outrage those whose tax
contributions finance welfare benefits. But does anyone actually think
that it would be a good idea to send a cheat to live in luxury in the
Caribbean for what we would otherwise pay to bring him to justice for
his noncompliant behavior? In this and related policy matters, we see
clear evidence that people are willing to support and engage in costly
punishment—and also to comply themselves—as long as they
remain confident that noncontributors are routinely punished. The
perception of a general failure to punish others, rather than the
perception that we are personally unlikely to be punished, is the
proximate cause of noncompliance.
War
The phrase “millions for defense, not a penny for
tribute,” popularized in the United States during the days of the
Barbary pirates but just as relevant to today's mood (if a few
zeroes are added), nicely captures the role wary cooperation has played
in the history of international affairs. The fact that wary cooperation
helps account for humans' innate capacity to cooperate on a large
social scale is by no means equivalent to a notion that the social side
of human nature is benign in its aims and impacts. Perhaps the most
striking example of this is war. The most apparent characteristic of
war at the group level is conflict, but we should not miss the fact
that at the individual level warfare is among the most cooperative and
self-sacrificing of all human ventures. In no other arena are humans as
likely to set aside their personal health, well-being, comfort, and
even life itself, in favor of group success. Selfless participation in
warfare remains, even in modern societies, at the center of our notions
of heroism and ennobling actions. While the savagery of war clearly
derives from innate human features, it is clear that the explanation of
group-level savagery is not simply an aggregation of individual-level
aggression. While the importance of cooperation for peace may seem
self-evident, cooperation is no less critical to war. This seeming
contradiction is troubling to many. As Kenneth Waltz notes, for
example, “While human nature no doubt plays a role in bringing
about war, it cannot by itself explain both war and peace.”42
War is, of course, only an extreme example of the apparent
contradiction within an explanation for both cooperation and
competition that focuses on human nature. In some ways, avoiding this
contradiction may be the greatest value of the wary cooperation theory.
Though our theory posits a simple baseline explanation of human nature,
it does not assume that human nature must be either competitive or
cooperative; rather, it explains one source of the relative importance
of competitive and cooperative drives within a given behavioral
context.43
This is a point that critics
such as Waltz seem to miss. As Wrangham (1999) points out, it is a gross
“misconception” to believe that “the only behavioral
patterns explainable by biology are instincts, i.e., behaviors that are
obligatory and/or inevitable…. [T]his error seems
remarkable because behavioral ecologists have long stressed that
psychological adaptations are expected to respond in a contingent way
to appropriate contexts” (p. 21).
Similarly, it frees
competition from a necessary tie to self-interest just as it frees
cooperation from any necessary association with altruism. We do not
have a gene for combativeness any more than we have a gene for
cooperation, or indeed a gene for wary cooperation. What we have is a
set of innate behavioral repertoires that allows wary cooperation to
emerge and dominate in a variety of fairly common social environments.
Rational actor models would predict universal free-riding in the face
of the overwhelming costs to individual participation in warfare.
44 While some individuals do indeed seek to avoid
participation and sanctions against deserters are necessary, the modal
behavior is often voluntary participation, particularly when
perceptions of group membership and expectations of cooperation by
other group members are present. Behavioralists' explanations fare
no better, as neither the level of self-sacrificing cooperation nor the
level of violent competition find any natural parallels in the average
individual's peacetime behavioral repertoire. Both cooperation and
conflict reach their zenith in the same behavior.
What other features of war does an evolutionary view like ours
highlight? Since in this view, the conflict of war is a group-level
phenomenon, group-level factors become particularly salient. Markers of
in-group–out-group boundaries, for example (e.g., borders,
language, ethnicity, race, religion, citizenship) should assume
exaggerated importance in both the development and prosecution of
war.45
Proponents of rational choice such
as Rabushka and Shepsle (1972) admit they are
“unable to explain … the preeminence of ethnicity”
(p. 64). They do, however, attempt to do so by claiming this
preeminence is entirely the result of elites pushing their followers to
view the world through ethnic lenses, a contention that flies in the
face of even casual observation of rank-and-file people. According to
Varshney (2003), the ability of rational
choice to explain why so much conflict is organized along ethnic,
religious, and linguistic rather than economic lines has not improved
in the decades since Rabushka and Shepsle wrote.
Similarly,
the intergroup pressure of competition should lead to an exaggerated
intragroup focus on cooperation, group solidarity, and potential
internal betrayal (witness the public mood in the United States after
the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001). Human behavior in war is
a bundle of seemingly intractable contradictions. Nevertheless, our
theory can account for the inherent human willingness in wartime to
risk one's life for a chance to take the life of an out-group
member, or save the life of an in-group member while simultaneously
supporting the killing of in-group members who are unwilling to kill
out-group members.
Political institutions
Why do political institutions exist? This question has bedeviled
political thinkers for quite some time. If people prefer the kind of
societal life that is made possible by political institutions, why do
they not merely lead that life in the first place? The infinite regress
problem immediately scuttles most attempted explanations, but wary
cooperation offers a way out: the existence of political institutions
may in large part be attributed to people's intense desire for
sanctions to be brought against noncooperators. People may believe
that, if left to their own devices, most of their compatriots would be
cooperative good citizens, but the possibility of even a very small
number of bad apples is enough to drive them to create institutions.
Do people not realize that those elevated to positions of power in
institutions have great potential to take advantage of their positions
for personal gain? Indeed they do, and thus it should come as no great
surprise that public opinion research finds that Americans'
primary source of dissatisfaction with government is not that it makes
bad decisions, but rather that it makes decisions for self-serving
rather than common-good reasons.46
Government
is typically disliked not because it is perceived to do the wrong
things, but because it is perceived to do things for the wrong reasons.
Ascribed motive is the main determinant of responses to the actions of
others in any societal interaction, but it becomes acutely important
when we are dealing with people possessing substantial clout.
47 In this sense, the theory of wary cooperation
holds that those staffing political institutions should be subject to
special vigilance not because they are fundamentally different life
forms but because their ambition for authority raises suspicions, and
their possession of authority makes them potentially dangerous.
48 From an evolutionary point of view, what
could be worse than being a part of a group in which leaders are bent
on personal gain at the expense of the welfare of other members of the
group?
What does the theory say about the specific manner in which political
institutions should be constructed? For starters, it points out the
prescience of the architects of the U.S. political system in making it
difficult for decision makers to further their own ends. Separation of
powers across institutions, frequent elections, federal arrangements,
and a strong judiciary—all facilitate the balancing of one
group's powers against another's, which is, not
coincidentally, extremely popular with the mass public.
This does not mean, however, that the American political system is a
perfect fit with the institutional preferences flowing from the theory
of wary cooperation. In the people's view, far too many
opportunities still exist for elected officials to feather their own
nests. Think of the ire evoked by matters relating to congressional
salary, pension plans, and perquisites, not to mention the perceived
unholy alliance of well-heeled interest groups and politicians. Wary
cooperators like to cooperate, but they are also predisposed to be wary
of the actions of others—especially those eager to make decisions
for the group. Reformers would do well to realize that people do not
wish to be in control of the political system; they only want those who
are in control to be unable to take advantage of their
positions. If people were confident that existing constraints
prohibited such self-interested actions, they would pay even less
attention to the political arena than they do now. For most people,
involvement in politics is driven not by a desire to be heard but by a
desire to limit the power of others. Current American foreign policy
might be improved, for example, if decision makers realized that, like
Americans, people in Afghanistan and Iraq do not crave democratic
procedures. Kurds simply do not want to be dominated by Sunnis; Sunnis
do not want to be dominated by Shiites; Uzbekis by Tajiks; and Tajiks
by Pashtuns. People often express a desire for participatory democracy
when they really just want to avoid being victimized by a more powerful
group.
The Genetic Inheritance of Political
Orientations
To this point, we have asserted that the modal human behavioral
tendency is neither self-interested nor altruistic, but, rather, warily
cooperative. Further, we claim that the prevalence of wary cooperators
is the result of evolutionary pressures that reward humans skilled at
creating and existing in viable social units. Our theory is only one of
many possible theories that take seriously the connection between
biology, natural selection, and human behavior. Evidence supporting
this connection can be found in the literature on genetics and human
behavior that has flourished, as new fields of inquiry often do, with
the acceptance of a new methodology. In this section we explore one
such methodology—twin studies.
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace worked out the details of
natural selection at roughly the same time and were in remarkable
agreement—with one vital exception. Darwin was completely
consistent and contended that natural selection applied to behavioral
as well as physical traits. Wallace, on the other hand, drew a bold
line between the two, positing that the mental realm was immune to
evolution and was instead the purview of ethereal religious
uncertainties. Wallace's position is still favored by groups as
diverse as religious fundamentalists and many in the social science
community who refuse to believe that behavior is innate. The natural
sciences have sided almost unanimously with Darwin. Wallace spent the
last years of his life largely ignored, a religious mystic who thought
it possible to communicate with the dead and who tried desperately to
hold on to the fiction that our brains, behaviors, and beings
constitute something more than just another step along the evolutionary
path.49
If political scientists believe, with Darwin, that genetics
influences social attitudes and behavior, it is not evident in their
research. Certainly no recent article in a leading political science
journal has used genetics as an independent variable.50
Perhaps most believe that, while genetics may
play some nebulous role in politics, environmental complexities and
human cognitive capabilities overwhelm genetic effects, allowing the
discipline's research agenda to completely ignore biology.
Contrary to popular belief, however, the link between genes and
political attitudes and behaviors is strong. In this section we hope to
convince readers that genetic variables are more influential than is
generally conceded by political scientists. To do so we summarize
recent research on twins, on autism, and on genetic-environmental
interactions.
Twins
Monozygotic (MZ) twins have virtually identical genetic codes;
dizygotic (DZ) twins, like other full siblings, share as little as 50
percent of the genetic material that varies in human beings.51
Approximately 98 percent of all human
genetic material is estimated to be shared by all members of the
species.
This makes the study of the adult characteristics of
these two types of twins of special value in computing the relative
influence of heredity and environment—especially when augmented
by a comparison of twins reared separately and those reared together.
Such studies typically identify a substantial amount of genetic
influence and a surprisingly paltry amount of parental influence
operating through the environment.
52 To take a single example, the correlation in
general intelligence between MZ twins is much greater than the
correlation in general intelligence between DZ twins. While general
intelligence appears to be the most highly heritable behavioral trait
discovered to date,
53 thousands of twin studies have documented the
heritability of numerous other traits, from susceptibility to drinking
problems to manners of talking and from likelihood of divorce to
religiosity. Those who believe genetic composition is irrelevant to
behavior must offer an alternative explanation for the persistent
findings from twin studies; otherwise, the unavoidable conclusion has
to be that an exclusive focus on environmental factors misses a major
source of the variance in attitudes and behavior.
As interesting and challenging as these findings may be, do they
relate to the concerns of political science? While, to our knowledge,
there are no political scientists currently performing twin studies,
much of what is being done in other disciplines is surprisingly
relevant to a variety of political science subfields. The most
developed examples come from studies of the heritability of traits such
as conservatism and altruism. These behaviors have been studied in
different twin populations in different countries by different
researchers over the last twenty years. All of the studies reach the
same conclusion: a predisposition to conservatism is genetically
heritable.
This is an empirical assertion that should startle and intrigue any
political scientist. Thus far the pertinent research has been done
largely by psychologists, and there is considerable work ahead in this
field for political scientists. Social psychologists treat conservatism
as a broad personality trait, roughly equivalent to other personality
traits, such as introversion or authoritarianism. For most political
scientists this is not the first thing that comes to mind when someone
mentions a specific ideology like conservatism. Conservatism as a
belief system, a bundle of policy preferences, or a nascent group
identification are all examples of common political science
conceptualizations of conservatism that differ, often substantially,
from the view of conservatism as a personality trait. Fortunately, the
details of at least one method by which social psychologists measure
conservatism allow us a glimpse at some component characteristics that
are more compatible with our conceptions of it. Before proceeding to
the details of conservatism, we must discuss in more detail the
methodology of twin research.
The value of twins to genetic research does not come from the
distinctiveness of their attitudes and behaviors compared to the
population of nontwins. In fact, the lack of distinctiveness is a
salient and empirically established prerequisite for generalizing twin
findings to the general population.54
Nor is the
value of twins the obvious fact that they are genetically closer than
nontwin siblings. The real research power comes from the fact that the
two distinct types of twins differ genetically in known ways. For any
trait that is at least partly heritable the tendency for monozygotic
(MZ) twins to share that characteristic should be stronger than the
tendency for dizygotic (DZ) twins to share it. In contrast,
characteristics that arise from the environment, whether shared by the
twins, as would typically be the case for parental socialization, or
not shared by the twins, as would be the case for many adult
experiences, should not generate any significantly different patterns
when we contrast MZ and DZ twins.
55 This assertion—that the effect of genetics is measurably
distinct for MZ and DZ twins while the effect of the environment is
either equivalent or at least randomly distributed around
equivalence—is crucial to everything that follows from twin
research. It is important therefore to consider criticisms of this
fundamental assumption, which appear in two essential varieties. The
first is that MZ twins, genetics aside, experience a similar
environment because they are treated more alike than are DZ twins. This
could be particularly telling for childhood socialization if, for
example, parents of MZ twins tended to treat them less as individuals
than do parents of DZ twins. The second basic criticism is that MZ
twins, genetics aside, interact with each other more throughout life
than do DZ twins. This could be particularly important for adult
socialization; close adult contact between MZ twins might lead us to
expect a higher degree of environmentally induced similarity than we
would expect in DZ twins.
Both criticisms have been subject to sustained and varied
investigation, and neither has been found to hold up under empirical
scrutiny. The argument of more similar treatment fails on several
fronts. Parents frequently miscategorize their twins (DZ twins are
often believed by their parents to be MZ twins) and the differential
correlation persists in these instances of miscategorization. In other
words, the degree of correspondence between MZ twins surpasses that of
DZ twins even in a subpopulation of twins all of whom were thought by
their parents to be MZ twins.56
The speculation that MZ twins have closer or more
frequent contact than DZ twins turns out to be, at best, irrelevant.
The correlation between interpair contact, for example, and interpair
differences in conservatism is in fact slightly negative.
57 That is, the more contact, the less ideological
similarity. But the most powerful refutation of both criticisms comes
in recent studies that compare MZ and DZ twins raised apart. These
studies uniformly validate MZ and DZ differences found in earlier
studies of twins raised together. Arguments about the relative degree
of shared environmental effects between MZ and DZ twins simply offer no
credible explanation if the twins in question have been raised
apart.
58 In effect, this naturally occurring, if uncommon,
condition provides precisely the sort of laboratory control that we
want in an experimental setting.
59 To
explain this finding, opponents would need to argue that adoption
agencies are more likely to place MZ twins in similar homes than they
are to place DZ twins in similar homes. In fact, information on twin
zygosity is typically unavailable to those making placement decisions.
Even if it were, it seems highly unlikely that it would factor into
their decisions, even if agencies were generally more likely to place
twins than nontwin siblings in similar homes.
Empirical evidence also suggests that identical twins reared together
are often less likely to share behavioral traits than are
identical twins reared apart, perhaps because of parents' extra
efforts to help the twins living together establish distinct
identities. In addition, as adult MZ twins living apart age, they tend
to become more, not less, similar,60
a finding
difficult to reconcile with the belief that only the environment
matters. Interestingly, this precise effect is predicted in an early
landmark criticism of behavioralism and the conditioned-response
research on animal behavior at its core. Over time, substantial
anomalies accumulated in this research, pointing toward a primacy for
some nonenvironmental behaviors. As Keller and Marian Breland
summarized this tendency, “Learned behavior drifts toward
instinctive behavior.”
61 While the twin-study methodology has yet to be applied by political
scientists, a variety of social psychology studies use this methodology
to assess conservatism as a personality trait. The measure of most
interest to political scientists is the Wilson-Patterson Attitude
Inventory. This inventory is administered by presenting subjects with a
short stimulus term, such as death penalty, and eliciting a simple
response of agree, disagree, or uncertain. The broadest version of the
W-P inventory includes 50 items, half of which contribute positively to
the conservatism score and half of which contribute negatively. While
some of the items relate heavily to conceptions of social
conservatism—for example, pajama parties, casual living, nudist
camps, computer music, and horoscopes—others are more directly
political—for example disarmament, legalized abortion, socialism,
patriotism, and death penalty.
Studies typically use reduced sets of W-P items or tailor individual
items to the country in which the studies are being administered. For
political scientists, this is frustrating on two counts. The list of
politically relevant items is tantalizing but limited and unfocused;
moreover, the results are often presented only for the entire combined
scale, making it difficult to assess the contribution of the directly
political items to the overall index of heritability. Heritability
estimates for overall conservatism as measured by the W-P inventory are
quite high, usually around 0.60. Furthermore, the models typically show
little or no effect for shared environment (the rest is likely the
result of nonshared environmental factors, including the prenatal
environment). These findings come from studies of twins in settings as
disparate as Australia, Virginia, and Minnesota. The Minnesota
findings, based on twins reared apart, conform well to the other
studies, based on twins raised together.62
Conservatism is not unusual in this regard. Rushton,
Littlefield, and Lumsden (1986), find that
approximately 50 percent of the variance in altruism is the result of
“direct genetic inheritance” (p. 7340), with family
environment responsible for 0 percent.
Our concern at this point is not to quibble over whether in fact
genetics accounts for more than half of the variation in individual
levels of conservatism. The important point is that our discipline
currently believes that the state of the world would yield an
environmental (i.e., socialization) component greater than 50 percent
and a genetic component of essentially zero.63
To take just one example, a leading text on political
behavior states without equivocation that “attitudes, beliefs,
and values are learned predispositions, and the various forms of
political participation are learned behaviors.” See Conway 2000, 61. The twin studies suggest this
assertion is quite wrong.
Whatever the precise numbers, the
durable and stark results of twin studies are completely at odds with
current thinking in our discipline. At the very least, political
science can no longer dismiss genetics as some minor or distant
precursor to important political orientations. Taken at full face
value, these results suggest that virtually everything we have supposed
to be true about the
origins of broad political orientations
is false.
As strong as this assertion may seem, it does not indicate that most
of the extant empirical results concerning political socialization are
incorrect, only that the interpretations commonly applied to those
results are incorrect. In fact, it strongly reinforces the most salient
empirical findings.64
Though clearly the
phrase “political socialization” is a misnomer since much
of the correlation between the attitudes of parents and children is not
due to a socialization process at all.
We know, for example,
that if both parents share a political orientation and find politics to
be important, their offspring will likely have that same political
orientation and also value politics.
65 Nothing in
this description contradicts the twin-based contention that political
orientations are largely the result of genetic inheritance. In fact,
this is precisely the pattern we would expect to find if the twin
studies are correct. The challenge of the twin research is only to our
assumption that, unlike shared physical traits, shared behavioral
traits must be purely a function of enculturation.
At this point, the careful reader is undoubtedly thinking that we are
getting ahead of ourselves. As we mentioned earlier, the 50-item W-P
inventory contains both items that we would recognize as having
substantive political content and others about which we would entertain
substantial doubt. If the overall degree of heritability is largely a
function of attitudes toward modern art and pajama parties, the direct
relevance to political science may be minimal. What then do we find in
the limited studies that report heritability for individual items? A
1986 study by Martin and colleagues of over 3,800 Australian and
British twin pairs reported the following estimates of heritability (on
a scale of 0 to 1.0) for the following items: death penalty, 0.51;
white superiority, 0.40; royalty, 0.44; apartheid, 0.43; disarmament,
0.38; censorship, 0.41. The heritability estimate for pajama parties,
on the other hand, was a mere 0.08. The comparable estimates for the
influence of shared environment were: death penalty, 0.00; white
superiority, 0.09; royalty, 0.14; apartheid, 0.05; disarmament, 0.00;
censorship, 0.03 (but pajama parties, 0.44).66
These findings are powerful yet incomplete. As political scientists,
we could all provide our own list of items that we would want to see
included in this sort of inventory. Party identification, for example,
is probably an obvious item.67
Twin
researchers have not focused directly on party affiliation. The closest
they have come may be some unpublished research by Lykken, referenced
by Pinker 2002. Our expectation is that just
as affiliation with a particular religious denomination is heavily
environmental, while the tendency to be religious at all is heavily
inherited (Bouchard and McGue 2003),
particular political identifications, like party identification, are
much more environmental than the tendency to be interested in and
involved with politics in any fashion. The tendency of traits like
religious affiliation to not be shared by MZ twins any more than DZ
twins is further evidence against the argument that differences in
correlation between the two types of twins are due to environmental
factors. If this alternative explanation were true, religiosity should
produce the same pattern as religion and this simply is not the
case.
In any case, the implication for political science is
clear: we must take seriously the possibility that at least some part
of what we have attributed to active socialization is a function of
genetic inheritance. Equally important—and even more
urgent—is the need to adapt twin-study methodology to our
specific disciplinary research agendas.
We invite dubious readers to indulge us in a thought experiment.
Suspend disbelief and think seriously about what this might mean for
our entire conception of political attitudes and orientations. Daniel
Elazar characterized the American South as having what he called a
traditionalist orientation toward politics, and argued further that
these presumably learned cultural orientation had been brought to the
South through patterns of European migration.68
If white
attitudes toward issues as diverse as the death penalty, white
supremacy, apartheid, disarmament, and censorship are highly heritable,
then we might have a deeper explanation for the durability of a
characteristically southern orientation toward politics in the
relatively closed breeding population of much of the traditional white
South. This is not incompatible, and in fact substantially supports
Elazar's basic thesis; moreover, it could help account for the
fact that, unlike purely learned orientations, these deeply rooted
attitudes might prove surprisingly resistant to the rise of a generic
national culture in an era of mass communication and rapid travel.
Autism
Thus far we have merely suggested that political scientists become
acquainted with the relatively distant fields of evolutionary biology
and genetics, but it is difficult to move from distal to proximate
causes without also equipping ourselves with tools from the areas of
brain science and cognitive psychology. One relevant thread of research
in these areas has been on autism and related syndromes. While most of
us are familiar with the more extreme and debilitating forms of
childhood autism, there is a great deal of interesting recent research
on a much milder form variously referred to as Asperger's
Syndrome, or high-functioning autism. This condition leads to a variety
of physical and behavioral manifestations. Among the most salient, and
the most relevant for our purposes, is a deficiency in what
psychologists term “theory of mind” and an apparently
related tendency toward a rule-based approach to understanding the
behavior of others. One of the most prolific and respected researchers
in this area has recently suggested that rather than being a distinct
brain abnormality there is instead an autism spectrum running from
systematizers to empathizers along which we could array the entire
population.69
The details of theory of mind are beyond the scope of this
discussion, but essentially it says that at an early age, approximately
three, most individuals develop the ability to consciously place
themselves in the mind of another individual and thus not only predict
what that individual might do but also intuit that individual's
motivations and likely reactions. Armed with this capability, children
develop an increasingly extensive capability to read the minds of
others in social situations and adjust their own behavior accordingly.
This allows neurotypical individuals to understand seemingly without
effort very subtle distinctions in the orientations of others. In a
simple verbal compliment, for example “nice hat,”
neurotypicals might quickly discern either approval, flattery,
condescension, sarcasm, admiration, or banality. Lacking this ability
to read minds leaves the autistic with little more than the literal
spoken words. What most people can instinctively intuit, the mildly
autistic must deduce from other contextual and circumstantial
information combined with an elaborate set of remembered past
experiences and carefully applied rules of judgment.
As odd as this way of understanding other humans might seem, it
should be immediately familiar to all of us as a close analogue to the
intellectual investigation of the physical world. In fact, individuals
afflicted with mild autism are often relatively gifted in fields such
as mathematics, engineering, and computer science, where their
proclivity for rule-based experiential learning offers them an
advantage over more intuitive thinkers. The mildly autistic are
sometimes described as weak in folk psychology and strong in folk
physics. While much remains to be learned about the autistic spectrum
of behavior, psychologists agree that these characteristics are
genetically heritable and implicate relatively specific functional
differences in the brain.
If what we see at the extreme is merely an exaggeration of what is
present to a greater or lesser degree across the range of human brains,
political scientists must orient themselves accordingly. For example,
our diverse and often contradictory views of “human nature”
may all be correct. Those at opposite ends of the
systematizing-empathizing spectrum approach basic human interaction in
fundamentally different ways, and explain human interaction in
fundamentally different terms. At the systematizing end of the spectrum
we should find individuals increasingly likely to interact socially
with a relatively elevated focus on self-interest, a correspondingly
diminished sensitivity to the wishes of others, and a tendency toward
relatively structured and rule-based patterns of interaction. At the
empathizing end of the spectrum we should find individuals who behave
in social situations with a high, perhaps even excessive, degree of
concern for the wishes of others, a relatively weak emphasis on their
own self-interest, and a tendency toward relatively fluid and
situational patterns of interaction.70
Baron-Cohen 2003 further
suggests that the mean placement for males and females on such a
spectrum is distinct, with males located closer to the autistic pole.
This conception could account for the fact that four out of five
individuals clinically diagnosed with autism are males.
Researchers' explanations of human social and political behavior
depend in large part on which type of individual predominates in groups
under study. Moreover, researchers' own placement on the spectrum
will significantly shape both their ability to understand their
subjects' behaviors and their own explanations of those behaviors.
For example, the closer an individual is to the systematizer end of the
spectrum, the more prone that person would be to seeing the social
world in a highly individualized way, and the more likely he or she
would be to explain this individualized behavior on the basis of a
system of relatively powerful rules. An observer from the empathizer
end of the spectrum will, through both introspection and theory of
mind, see a world of highly interdependent utilities, and would be more
likely to offer explanations involving complex contingencies, with an
emphasis on context. If these two individuals happen to be political
scientists, we would not be surprised if we found that because they
viewed and explained human behavior in starkly different terms, they
would largely be talking past each other—as has all too
frequently been the case for behavioralists and rational choicers. This
suggests that differences in methodology within and across disciplines
may derive at least in part from heritable differences in brain
physiology. When Morris Fiorina writes that he is “rational
choice down to [his] DNA,” he could be literally
correct.71
Likewise, seemingly incompatible conceptions
of basic human nature may in fact be equally correct when applied to
the proper subset of the population: fundamental behavioral differences
may also derive from heritable differences in brain physiology.
Genes
For a variety of reasons, skepticism persists regarding estimates of
heritability derived from twin studies. But the case for genetics
playing a role in shaping behavior is based on much more than twin
research. Since much of the resistance among social scientists to
genetic independent variables stems from unfamiliarity with modern
biology, it is essential that we offer some indication of the manner in
which genetics connects to behavior.
The most interesting and numerous genes in human beings are not
structural (blue eyes or brown), but regulatory. Regulator genes allow
an organism to respond to its environment; they are the genes that turn
on and off the transcription of other genes (or themselves). They are
the body's thermostats. Consider, for example, biological
responses to fear and threat. The amygdala, a primitive part of the
lower brain, sounds an alarm, adrenaline and stress hormones are
released, extra blood is sent to the muscles, breathing quickens,
glucose is disgorged by the liver, blood pressure skyrockets, and
nonessential bodily functions stop. While this general pattern is
always in evidence, sensitivity, rapidity, and depth of response vary
widely. Some people experience a full-fledged panic attack at the
slightest provocation; others display quite muted physiological
reactions to even life-threatening events. Why? Just as people display
physical differences partly because of differences in structural genes,
they display behavioral differences partly because of difference in
regulator genes. People's regulator genes encourage them to react
to environmental conditions in certain ways, whether those conditions
involve danger, lactose, alcohol, an uncooperative individual, or
sexual stimulation. These on-off switches shape much of our
personalities.72
Regulator genes are not merely theoretical constructs. They have been
seen, and behavior has been accurately predicted merely by knowing the
shape of an individual's key regulator genes. Consider a gene
called D4DR, which can be found on the short arm of
chromosome 11. This gene influences the reception of dopamine, a
chemical needed by portions of the brain. Individuals with a long
version of D4DR are less efficient at collecting dopamine,
so they need to take more risks and seek more thrills in order to
generate as much dopamine as others acquire from more sedentary
lifestyles.73
None of this is to say that environmental factors are irrelevant.74
At the broadest level the interaction
between genes and the environment includes not only the natural
environment but the man-made environment as well. With the recognition
that culture, a key component of the manmade environment, can also
develop along lines quite similar to evolution and natural selection,
scholars have recently begun attempts to conceptualize and empirically
study what is commonly termed “gene-culture coevolution.”
For an early application see Boyd and Richerson
1985; for a more recent application, see Fehr
and Fischbacher 2003.
In fact, surprisingly, and
perhaps for many, reassuringly, current biological thinking unites
genetic and environmental influences in a complicated but compelling
interactive fashion. For example, recent work on violence has found a
connection to a blood transmitter called monoamine oxidase A (MAOA),
but the connection is not simply that those with genetic deficiencies
in MAOA production are more violent. Rather, those individuals who have
low MAOA production
and experienced violence as children are
much more likely to be violent as adults.
75
Acting alone, MAOA deficiencies or a violent childhood have little
predictive power, but the interaction of genetic and environmental
factors is disconcertingly powerful. A similar pattern has been found
in studies attempting to predict those individuals likely to suffer
from clinical depression. There is a gene on chromosome 17 called
5-HTT. This gene also comes in a long form and a short form. An
extensive study of nearly 1,000 New Zealanders found that clinical
depression was associated not just with the presence of the short form
of 5-HTT and not just with the presence of many high-stress events in a
subject's life, but with a combination of high-stress events and
the short-form of 5-HTT.
76 If we generalize this pattern to predispositions more central to
political concerns, such as conservatism and cooperation, it suggests
that the eventual genetic-level explanation may fit surprisingly well
with much of what we already know and much of what we have suggested
here with regard to genetics and evolution. Perhaps for a substantial
portion of the population the short form of a yet-to-be-identified gene
allows their degree of cooperation/retaliation to vary with regard
both to the specific current context and to their broader experience
over time. We might call these individuals wary cooperators. For
another portion of the population, those with the long form of the
gene, context seems to make little difference. While we believe our
theory of wary cooperation discussed earlier accurately describes the
behavior of the majority of the population, it needs to and does leave
room for a minority that behaves in a predictably different fashion.
This minority may be fixed in either cooperative or noncooperative
modes, or may alternate between these modes with no apparent regard for
the cooperation or lack of cooperation evidenced by those in their
environment. This could provide a rough genetic sketch of the
biological underpinnings for the starkly different social abilities and
orientations discussed above in the section on autism. And that
discussion in turn provides the cognitive underpinnings for the theory
of wary cooperation that was the starting point for this piece.
Interestingly, the computer simulations that we discussed above have
demonstrated that (under reasonable assumptions) a population
consisting of two types roughly compatible with mildly autistic
individuals and wary cooperators, respectively, can reach a stable
equilibrium with the larger part of the final population composed of
wary cooperators and the smaller remainder behaving more like the
mildly autistic.77
Conclusion
We began by noting the usefulness to the social sciences of greater
attention to biological evolution. Part of the problem may be that the
last time biology came to the attention of political scientists (in the
1970s, after the publication of E. O. Wilson's
Sociobiology), they believed that advocates were saying that
behavior was determined by biology.78
If that
was ever the position of biology proponents, it is no longer. A
research program focused on genetic factors to the exclusion of
environmental factors would be deeply misguided—perhaps as
misguided as a research program focused on environmental factors to the
exclusion of genetics,
We believe that modern biological theory, properly understood, holds
the promise of unifying political science and integrating political
science with other social sciences—and even with the natural
sciences. Concepts borrowed from evolutionary biology can provide the
theoretical guidance both rational choice and behavioralism need to
become even more useful than they have been to date. Scholars operating
in the behavioral tradition can certainly continue to identify aspects
of the environment that seem more influential than others and the
conditions under which these environmental influences vary. Though we
are convinced that it is necessary to understand original causes, this
understanding would be useless if behavioralists did not link these
causes to more proximate environmental factors. Scholars operating in
the rational choice tradition are similarly advantaged by the
incorporation of biological theory, since preferences can be derived
from an understanding of evolutionary pressures acting on individuals
and groups. Baselines of behavior no longer have to be questionable
assumptions that people pursue short-term tangible gains or largely
tautological assumptions that people must prefer whatever they
pursue.
We are not suggesting that all political scientists become
evolutionary theorists or adopt a certain methodological approach. We
need a healthy disciplinary division of labor in service of a genuine
theory of political and social behavior. To date in the social science
disciplines that have embraced evolutionary theory, everything
from participant-observation to pure mathematical game theory to
laboratory (and field) experiments has been employed with fruitful
results. As the old saw goes, “If you are looking in the right
place there is no wrong way to look.”79
Einstein said, “Without theory observation is
impossible,” to which we would only add that with theory all
methods of observation are useful.
Evolutionary theory has the
potential to render obsolete our intradisciplinary conflicts over
approach, method, and theory. It is more than a replacement for
existing political science theories, since rational choice and
behavioralism are simply not capable of supplying an account of
ultimate causes. It is a true theory of the origins of behavior and as
such provides a basis for bringing together the remarkably diverse and
useful ongoing research in political science and beyond.
