Why are Darwinists obsessed with why many people are not selfish?

_{Denyse O'Leary

May 19, 2015

Evolutionary psychology, News}

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The authors explain that the meta-incentives encouraging rewards given to co-operators in social dilemmas significantly prevent cooperative incentive-non-providers who shirk their duty to provide incentives to others, or the second-order free riders.

The authors focused on one human trait, a linkage, which means individuals who are willing to provide incentives would automatically provide meta-incentives as well.

Allowing a reward-to-reward linkage, rather than a punishment system, can resolve the social dilemma without any social costs for formal incentive systems.

“Unexpectedly, the role of the reward system in resolving social dilemmas is significant,” says Okada. “We would apply it to real social and biological situations in the absence of the strong institutions by analyzing the efficiency of incentives required for keeping cooperation. More.

Shouldn’t social science study these Darwin eccentrics?

Oh wait: Scientific American wonders about “liberal bias” in social psych So the editors actually noticed? Could that be why it never came up?

See also: Evolutionary psychology

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Comments

I think you have to be pulling our collective leg here. You don't think that the strongest man in a tribe got his pick of the women? (OK, so there were only four his age to choose from, but still.) You don't think that the chief gave orders to the others? That people didn't form hierarchies (small though they may have been), i.e., pecking orders? Those pecking orders--which atheists and theists alike form to this day, are one of the principal forms of institutionalized selfishness. Wars between tribes (which some argue is an evolved tendency [see The Most Dangerous Animal by David Livingstone Smith] is also radical selfishness. Sure there was some cooperation, but selfishness is incredibly instinctive in humans.EDTA_{May 19, 2015
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Come on. For more than 95% of human history (until a mere 3,000-4,000 years ago), humans lived in bands of perhaps 20-25 individuals where everyone (except perhaps 1 of the wives who came from the band over the hill) were closely related. You lived your entire life with these people (unless you joined the guys over the hill when you married one of their girls). Your aunt cuddled you in her lap. Your uncle taught you how to string a bow. Your cousins were your fishing buddies. Your sister helped you bury your mom. The group survives ONLY by freely given cooperation. Every moment of every day, you cooperate. And if you are exceptional (some individual Bushmen have enough stamina to catch and kill an eland by running it to exhaustion), the group honors you and you respond with "Aw, shucks. 'Tweren't nuthin'." There is simply no place for selfishness, either "economically" or socially in a man-pack. Only after humans had begun living in villages and became afflicted with priests (first come priests, THEN come kings) was there any advantage in being selfish. And I think we've managed to become QUITE selfish in only 4,000 years.mahuna_{May 19, 2015
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Of related interest:
Awe may promote altruistic behavior - May 19, 2015 Excerpt: Awe is that sense of wonder we feel in the presence of something vast that transcends our understanding of the world. People commonly experience awe in nature, but also in response to religion, art and even music. In the article, Piff and his colleagues outlined a series of five studies. In the first, the researchers asked a representative sample of over 1,500 people from across the United States to complete a questionnaire that measured how predisposed they were to experience awe. The subjects were then asked to participate in a game where they were given 10 raffle tickets and had to decide how many, if any, to share with another participant who did not have any tickets. Researchers found a significant association between the tendency to experience awe and generosity. In the other four experiments, the researchers asked groups of people (ranging in size from 75 to 254) to participate in an activity (e.g., watch a video or gaze at something in their environment) designed to elicit awe, a neutral state or another reaction, such as pride or amusement. The participants then engaged in an activity designed to measure what psychologists call pro-social behaviors or tendencies. (Pro-social behavior is positive, helpful and intended to promote social acceptance and friendship.) In every experiment, awe was significantly associated with pro-social behaviors. The researchers said they believe that awe induces a feeling of being diminished in the presence of something greater than oneself. It is this diminished sense of self that shifts focus away from an individual's need and toward the greater good, they wrote. "When experiencing awe, you may not, egocentrically speaking, feel like you're at the center of the world anymore," Piff said. "By shifting attention toward larger entities and diminishing the emphasis on the individual self, we reasoned that awe would trigger tendencies to engage in pro-social behaviors that may be costly for you but that benefit and help others." While the findings supported the researchers' initial hypothesis, the scientists were surprised at how consistently different types of awe and different elicitors of awe were able to promote cooperative behavior. In one experiment, they elicited awe by showing droplets of colored water falling into a bowl of milk in slow motion. In another, they elicited a negative form of awe using a montage of threatening natural phenomena, such as tornadoes and volcanoes. In a final experiment, the researchers induced awe by situating participants in a grove of towering eucalyptus trees. "Across all these different elicitors of awe, we found the same sorts of effects—people felt smaller, less self-important, and behaved in a more pro-social fashion," said Piff. "Might awe cause people to become more invested in the greater good, giving more to charity, volunteering to help others, or doing more to lessen their impact on the environment? Our research would suggest that the answer is yes." http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-05-awe-altruistic-behavior.html
Also of note: The 'argument from beauty' is a theistic argument: Aesthetic Arguments for the Existence of God Excerpt: Beauty. . . can be appreciated only by the mind. This would be impossible, if this `idea' of beauty were not found in the mind in a more perfect form. http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/williams-aesthetic.shtml Verse, NDE Quote, and Music:
Psalm 27:4 One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the LORD And to meditate in His temple. "The only human emotion I could feel was pure, unrelenting, unconditional love. Take the unconditional love a mother has for a child and amplify it a thousand fold, then multiply exponentially. The result of your equation would be as a grain of sand is to all the beaches in the world. So, too, is the comparison between the love we experience on earth to what I felt during my experience. This love is so strong, that words like "love" make the description seem obscene. It was the most powerful and compelling feeling. But, it was so much more. I felt the presence of angels. I felt the presence of joyous souls, and they described to me a hundred lifetimes worth of knowledge about our divinity. Simultaneous to the deliverance of this knowledge, I knew I was in the presence of God. I never wanted to leave, never." Judeo-Christian Near Death Experience Testimony Take Me In - Holy Of Holies - Kutless - Music Video https://vimeo.com/108109389
bornagain77_{May 19, 2015
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I've been raised a secular humanist sociologist (who was interested in why altruism exists) by Mung. Doesn't really answer my question to News.REC_{May 19, 2015
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REC: You are not the least bit interested in why altruism exists? One wonders whether anyone ever thought to raise this question [why does altruism exist] prior to the advent of Charles Darwin and his theory of descent with modification. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Comte What do you think REC?Mung_{May 19, 2015
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You are not the least bit interested in why altruism exists? Or do you know, by faith, the answer? Or is it just a lack of intellectual curiosity?REC_{May 19, 2015
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