#516 Nichola Raihani - The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello everybody. Welcome to a new episode of the Decent. I'm your host as always Ricardo Loops. And today I'm joined by Doctor Nicola Rayani. She is Professor of Evolution and Behavior at Univer at University College London. Her research considers the evolution of cooper operation in nature. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2019. And we're going to talk today about her first book, The Social Instinct How co-operation Shaped the world. So Nicola, welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to everyone.

00:33 Nichola Raihani: Thanks very much for the invite. And uh yeah, I've been looking forward to joining you.

00:38 Ricardo Lopes: OK, great. So let me first ask you since this is a book basically about uh our societies evolved about sociality. Why do you begin the book by going all the way down to the cellular level?

00:55 Nichola Raihani: Well, I think it's kind of interesting to start there because the book has the book has a very obvious structure. So it starts very small, thinking about co-operation that uh happens inside the bodies of multicellular organisms. And then it in each part of the book, I zoom out a level and think about the evolution of families and then the evolution of co-operation beyond the family group. And finally, in the last part of the book, I talk about the evolution of societies and large scale co-operation. Um The reason that I wanted to have that structure is that I think um for people who maybe don't know a lot about cooper operation or who haven't, you know, studied it in much detail. It would be quite easy to assume that cooper operation was just something that happens between individuals. So it's some kind of behavior that you see individuals doing and that's observable in some way in the real world. Uh And I don't think it's as widely appreciated that actually every multicellular being on earth, every living multicellular organism, whether it's a plant or an animal or, or a fungi is actually created through co-operation and it's created through genes cooperating with one another and cells cooperating with one another to um form this collective that we call an organism or an individual. And the reason that I wanted to uh have this structure and to think about this sort of this, this cooper operation at these, the lowest levels if you like at the lowest levels of organization is because it helps, it helps us to realize as we move through the book, these very general principles that underpin co-operation at all levels of life, whether we're talking about genes cooperating inside bodies or ants cooperating inside a a colony or people cooperating inside a society. There are some kind of fundamental general principles that emerge at all these levels of life. And that's why I wanted to start with this perspective of the understanding the individual as a feat of cooper operation. Um TO try to bring out those commonalities and to surprise people in a way,

03:24 Ricardo Lopes: right? And why do you decide to focus on cooper operation? Because for example, we could also have focused on competition. So why cooper?

03:36 Nichola Raihani: Well, for me, co-operation and competition are two sides of the same coin. Um So in, I think one of the big misunderstandings in some ways about the selfish gene, the book by Richard Dawkins, which is 45 years old now is that it predicts is that selfish genes would predict selfish behavior and that we would only find selfish genes inside the bodies of the most selfish or uh nefarious individuals. And in fact that has been that is a misconception and continues to be a misconception of what that gene eye's view perspective of evolution is about. And Dawkins himself noted in his book that in many ways, the most effective ways for a gene to ensure that copies of itself find their way into future generations is to co-operate. And through this lens, we can see that co-operation is often a selfish or a self interested strategy. And so for me, I see focusing on co-operation is in some ways, it just depends how you want to view it, you can view cooper operation as being a form of competition if you like, even though people don't often think of it that way. So I wouldn't necessarily say that my book is only about cooper operation. It's about how cooper operation is often an effective way to compete or to prosper.

05:05 Ricardo Lopes: So when trying to understand the evolution of human co-operation, what would be the best uh models? I mean, in terms of other species to, to which we should compare humans? I mean, would it be the most closely related to us, the other great apes or others?

05:26 Nichola Raihani: So I think this is a really interesting question and this is one, this kind of question is one that's actually underwritten lots of my own academic research because many of the species that I've worked on outside of my research on humans have been species that not only are not very closely related to us on the tree of life, but they're species that people probably have never even heard of. So things like a pied babbler, which is a bird that lives in family groups in, in the Kalahari desert or the cleaner fish, which is a fish that lives on coral reefs in the in throughout the Indo Pacific. And one of the general um underlying themes of the research that I've done when I've compared the behavior of nonhuman species with what we see in humans and in particular, the social behavior and the co-operative behavior is that often we can find striking similarities in the kinds of behavioral outcomes that are achieved by humans and by quite distantly related species like meerkats and hide babblers and cleaner fish. Even though we don't, we're not closely related to these species. Uh And one of the key points in some ways is this idea that often we might get to the same behavioral destination as another species. So to give an example, one of the behaviors that humans are famous for is teaching and we tend to think of teaching as being, you know, a quintessentially human activity. Um And when we, when people started looking for examples of teaching in the animal world, in the nonhuman world, they instinctively looked for it first in species like chimpanzees and gorillas and the other great apes. But we didn't find those examples of teaching in those species. And in fact, the first species where we found an example of teaching was an ant. And the second example was a meerkat. And so, and the third example actually was a work that I did, which was on pied babblers. One of the really interesting things. And one of the main messages in my book is that often we can find that humans and nonhuman species can get to the same behavioral destination. So we see these commonalities, for example, in the fact that we teach, but so do meerkats and so do ants and so do pried babblers, but we get there via a quite different cognitive journey to these other species. And so the kind of cognition that supports teaching in humans probably involves the ability to understand what a pupil knows some kind of mind reading or what psychologists call theory of mind. Whereas in species like ants and babblers and meerkats, we don't think there's that sort of cognition is happening at all to facilitate teaching. And instead the teaching behavior is achieved by our different cognitive route. And so I think often we can find similarities in the behavior we observe between humans and other species in the behavioral outcomes. And we ought to look for similarities and behavioral outcomes where the ecology is likely to favor those kinds of behaviors. And that won't always be in our closest living relatives that won't always be in species like the chimpanzees and the other great apes. But even when we do find those behavioral similarities, what we then also have to ask is, well, how does the cognition supporting those behaviors differ? And that's really where I think we start to see points of divergence between humans and other species, which is not so much what we do. But it's a, it's about how we do it and it's about how we get there cognitively.

09:17 Ricardo Lopes: So when talking about the evolution of co-operation, particularly with evolutionary biologists, people bring to the table evolved mechanisms like kin selection, reciprocal altruism group selection even so Uh I I mean, do you think that any one of these is uh enough to explain the evolution of co-operation or should we unders try to understand different aspects of co-operation uh how they evolve via one of these evolved mechanisms? And I mean, particularly group selection because that's a very controversial topic among evolutionary biologists. I mean, what do you think about it?

10:03 Nichola Raihani: So I think there is this sort of pervasive assumption in a lot of the human evolution literature that the two key mechanisms that support co-operation are either kin selection, meaning just that you help your relatives because you share copies of their genes. And that's another way to get copies of your genes into the next generation or it's reciprocal altruism. And there is a kind of, there has been at least an assumption in the literature that if you can't explain co-operation, either with kin selection or with reciprocal altruism, then we should, then we should bring in group selection as the alternative explanation. And I don't, I don't fully subscribe to that view. So I think that kin selection is probably the most important mechanism for explaining the breadth of co-operation that we see on earth. So most of the co-operation we see in um humans but also in nonhuman species occurs within the confines of family groups. And there is no coincidence that we see co-operation in families because there's just a much bigger incentive to help individuals who share copies of the, the same genes that you have. And so if you were going to say which which of these evolutionary mechanisms has the most potential for explaining most cases of co-operation that we see on earth. I think in selection probably explains most of the examples we see particularly in nonhuman species. But when we look at between unrelated individuals where we know that kin selection can't be at work. I think it's very short sighted to assume that the only other mechanism at our disposal to explain this co-operation is reciprocal altruism. And we know that there are many, many mechanisms that can support co-operation between non relatives, um things like punishment and um reputation based partner of choice or concern for reputation. And so I don't think we necessarily have to reflexively decide that it's either con selection or it's reciprocal altruism or else let's bring in group selection. Um So I think there are multiple mechanisms that are really important for understanding how co-operation evolves. Um Interdependence is arguably even more important than reciprocal altruism in a lot of cases where individuals have a stake in one another's fitness. And so they're incentivized to help their interaction partners, even if there's no uh no scope for repayment from those partners. I think now we there are lots of mechanisms we know about that can support cooper operation and group selection is just one of those and arguably the least parsimonious given what we know about how evolution works

12:56 Ricardo Lopes: and what are families from an evolutionary perspective?

13:01 Nichola Raihani: So a family, I think a family is a special kind of social group. So it's a stable social group, um obviously usually comprised of genealogical relatives. Um In our own case, I think we tend to think of families as being nuclear families, mum, dad and the kids. Um BUT in fact, nuclear families are a bit of an outlier for in, in nature, but also in our own species. The nuclear family is a bit of an outlier when you consider our long history on this planet. And also if you think outside of the western model of society and look more broadly at other cultures, the western model of the nuclear family is really quite unusual and where we see family life in humans, but also in other species, which are often called co-operative breeders, family tends to be based on a more extended notion of family. So you often have um a breeding pair or the mother and father and then several other individuals, relatives who might live in the same stable social group and might all contribute to raising offspring within that group.

14:21 Ricardo Lopes: So since you mentioned the nuclear family, and because this ties back to questions that people nowadays are discussing particularly in politics about the role that the nuclear family plays and how important it is. I mean, since we have such high degrees of cooper breathing, particularly looking cross culturally and back in time, I mean, uh I is it really that important for Children to have at home, both a mother and a father or, I mean, is it at least one of them essential or could, can they be replaced by other people or other? I mean, family and perhaps friends and perhaps even in the case of, of modern societies, other people from certain institutions.

15:11 Nichola Raihani: So I think this is one question which has been massively thrown into sharp relief by the pandemic that we're currently experiencing. And for anyone like me who has, who lives in a western nuclear family, where you have a mum and dad and Children at home, the experience of having school closures and the usual um sources of help, the way that we outsource our childcare to these institutionalized um forms of childcare has really exposed just how dependent we are on help to in order to be able to successfully raise offspring. And I think this is a, there is a more general point here like you said, which is that there is an ideology and it is an ideology in the West that the mother is the, she ought to be the exclusive caregiver for her offspring and is the irreplaceable caregiver for her offspring. And that if a mother, for example, outsources that childcare by sending her child to nursery when they're too young or, or outsourcing it to other forms of, of institutionalized child, then she might be wreaking some kind of emotional damage or harm onto her child. And I think that that view is pernicious, not just because it enforces a patriarchal norm of women staying at home to look after Children and, and, and these things, but because it actually has no bearing on what we know about the reality of how humans evolved, which is that we evolved in extended family groups where Children would have been raised by many, many different individuals and not just by the mother. And often not even the mother would not even have been necessarily the primary caregiver. Um For a lot of the time Children would have been raised by their older siblings, by their grandparents, by various other adults in around aunts, uncles and so on. Um And this idea that Children need to form this bond with one individual in order to develop a secure attachment and that if that is somehow disrupted, that the child will go on to have emotional and behavioral problems, really has no empirical support. And also is just not in keeping with our view of with our, our understanding of how humans evolved. And the fact that Children have always grown up being looked after by multiple different caregivers. Um And the reason we probably don't, we have the, we're able to have these nuclear families or we're able to persist in these nuclear families in the West is that we outsource that childcare nowadays to these various institutions. And that's how, you know, that's we out, we send our Children to school, you know, things like this. So I think it's in some ways, one of the messages in the book that I write in in the chapter on childcare is that the an evolutionary perspective would suggest that it's completely fine to send your Children to daycare. That's a, a very normal situation for a young human child to be immersed in, to be surrounded by other Children and to be looked after by multiple different caregivers, not just the mother.

18:30 Ricardo Lopes: So another question since we have so much cooperating co-operative breeding in humans and in the case of men, uh we have paternity, uncertainty. Why is it that paternal investment in humans evolved? I mean, I I'm asking you that also because many times people say, and I'm not completely sure if this is true that in comparing to other species, human males are sort of outliers in how much they invest in their Children.

19:08 Nichola Raihani: So you're right that humans are a bit unusual as far as mammals go in, that males are involved often in helping to raise the offspring. That's not a human, that's not a universal. So there is some cross cultural variation in how involved fathers are with raising their offspring and sometimes sometimes fathers aren't really involved at all. There are some societies like the Da Toga in Tanzania where men are really not involved at all in raising their offspring. And there are other societies um like for example, the, the matrilineal society called the um Mosi society in China, where men actually have much more to do with their sister's Children than they do with their own Children. So they're much more involved in raising their nieces and nephews than they are in raising their own um offspring. So it's not a hu it's not a universal, but there is a general pattern that, that human males are typically more involved in raising offspring than the average male mammal is. Um AND you mentioned paternity uncertainty. And I think for humans actually, as far as uh again in relation to other mammal species, paternity uncertainty for humans is typically relatively low. So our best evidence, even though it's very difficult to be certain, indicates that humans probably evolved um to uh uh to be socially and sexually monogamous females probably weren't mating with multiple males at the same time. And we can infer this based on looking at things like relative, the size of the testicles relative to the body size in humans and other ape species. The idea being that if females are what we call promiscuous in that they mate with multiple males, um during a single Easter cycle, males ought to grow bigger balls because they need to produce more sperm to be able to compete in sperm competition with other males. Human males, uh their rela their testy size relative to their body size is much closer to what we would expect. Um IF humans mating system as ancestrally was more at the monogamous end of the scale. And that implies that a relatively high degree of paternity certainty in humans compared to something like a chimpanzee, where females are much more promiscuous and do mate with many males in the group um within a single Easter cycle. Uh And so, I think, um in part, we can understand this evolution of paternal care through this, through there being an increased certainty for human males that, that, that Children that they raise with their um opposite sex partner are theirs. Um And also the fact that humans evolved in much more difficult environments than the environments that are characterized by, by the great apes that are alive today. And mothers really needed help in the production of young, they needed help from fathers and other family members if they were going to be able to successfully raise young. And that's another really important reason why we see paternal investment in humans and not so much in the other great ape species where mothers are much more able to raise offspring without assistance from other individuals.

22:38 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So I've already talked several times about grandmothers on the show. So I would like to ask you specifically about this since as far as we know, it was women who tended to move to their husband's household when they married. I mean, why is it that it is maternal grandmothers that tend to invest more in their grandchildren than paternal grandmothers and not the other way around considering that then the Children would be living in their father's household.

23:13 Nichola Raihani: Yeah, that's, that's a really interesting question. And it's one that when, when I first started to learn about these uh reproductive conflicts that prompted the evolution of menopause. That was a question that I also had as well because in some ways, you, your default assumption is that the younger female has moved to live with the husband's uh family. And so the nearest available grandmother to help is gonna be the paternal grandmother. So why isn't she, why are paternal grandmothers less decisive for the survival of offspring and for the fecundity of females than maternal grandmothers? Um And it I asked Mike Can about this. He is the guy who he's one of the evolutionary biologists who has been very heavily involved in developing the theoretical models on the evolution of menopause. And he, his, he, his view was that the model is correct. We fe we do see female bias dispersal such that females are moving to live with their husband's family and they're in closer proximity to their mother-in-law than they are to their own mother. But as long as they don't move too far away, as long as that dispersal distance isn't too far, then the maternal grandmother can still can still manage to help her daughter um in rai with raising offspring and anything that that entails. And so I think in my mind, at least I'd kind of always assumed that this dispersal was happening over a really vast distance. And so, you know, you're leaving home and that's it, you're never gonna see them again. But I think probably the dis the distances that we're talking about are not as prohibitive for allowing maternal grandmothers to still be involved in helping their daughters to raise young. And in fact, there are some data showing that when the distance moved by the younger female is far enough such that their, their mother can no longer help, then they, they actually experience reduced bund and reduced survival of their offspring because they don't have that assistance from their own mothers in producing young.

25:19 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, it's interesting. I also have that idea that when they moved, it was so far away that perhaps maternal grandmothers wouldn't be able to help there. And I was even asking myself if we could talk about male fill of pater in humans, but perhaps not.

25:39 Nichola Raihani: I think we don't, I think basically, uh I'm not an expert in this but the, as far as we know, um I think our best estimates are that dispersal in ancestral human populations was female biased. And so, and I think the, the models of the evolution of menopause and the reproductive conflicts and how those are resolved through relatedness, asymmetries between uh the paternal mother in law, the paternal grandmother and the younger female makes sense under this framework of female biased dispersal. So I think that, um I guess, I don't know, maybe new data will come and things will be overturned. But my, I, at the moment, I sort of accept this consensus that the dispersal in ancestral human populations was female biased.

26:31 Ricardo Lopes: Right. So, I mean, but, but in the case of grandfathers, do they play any role whatsoever? Why is it that men have also such long lifespans on average?

26:46 Nichola Raihani: So there's um an evolutionary demographer called Rebecca Seer, who's done lots of work on um who keeps Children alive. That's the title of one of her papers who keeps Children alive and based on meta analysis of lots of different studies, um as you might expect the most important person for keeping Children alive in the first years of life is the mother, fathers have a much less decisive role to play in the survival of their offspring. The presence of a maternal grandmother often has a positive effect, but the presence of grandfathers is really not decisive at all for keeping Children alive. And so the inference um from these, from these studies is that grandfathers aren't really doing that much. Um AT least in these um in these studies for which we have data, grandfathers aren't doing that much to keep their grandchildren alive, to improve the survival of their, of their grandchildren. And so yes, there is a, a question of why do you know, why do men get to then have this extended lifespan? And I think one of the most obvious answers that I've seen uh that makes sense is that a man can still continue to accrue reproductive success quite late into his life. Um And without a substantial amount of investment, unlike, unlike women who have to, you know, get pregnant and just stay a baby and then um lactate after the baby is born, the investment involved for a male is much, much less. And so it could, it can simply be like these opportunities to continue to accrue reproductive success, can help to select um for a long lifespan in men as well as in women.

28:38 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So moving from families, why is it that it is so common from for humans to help others they are unrelated to?

28:50 Nichola Raihani: So, yeah, I mean, this is a really big question and I guess whenever we ask a why question in evolutionary biology, we have to always recognize that there are two different, broadly speaking, two different kinds of explanation that we could offer. So, on the one hand, we can offer what we call proximate level explanations and they're simply concerned with how the behavior comes about what the motives are or the maybe the physiological mechanisms that bring that behavior about. And we can also ask um what we call um Well, sorry, we can also provide what we call ultimate level explanations. And those are more concerned with the evolutionary significance of the behavior. And so when we ask why humans help strangers, if we were to offer proximate level explanations, we might be in the realm of thinking about things like warm glow, it feels good to help other people, or maybe we have a norm, psychology. And in the society that we live in, there's a norm which dictates that you ought to help, you know, help people if you can, even if you don't know them. Um There, there are a bunch of um proximate level explanations that you could offer to explain why people might help others. And I really don't think it's as simple as saying, here's the reason there are, there are maybe, I don't know 25 or 30 different kinds of proximate level explanation. Maybe more that you could offer to, to, to that in answer to that question. If you want to give an ultimate level explanation of why people help. Well, broadly speaking, we would say that um the tendency to help other individuals, if it has any genetic basis would be under positive selection if it increases the individual's inclusive fitness. So if it, if it generates some benefits in terms of survival or reproductive success, and there are a few evolutionary routes by which that could be achieved, for example, um if you help other individuals, you might improve your reputation and then you might then improve your standing or your social position, you might be more likely to get helped, um, by other people when you need it. Given that you have a reputation for being a helpful person who is normally doing the right thing for others, you might um, avoid being punished by other people if you, if you help in certain scenarios or if you don't defect in certain scenarios. Um, THERE again, just like with the proximate level of answers, there are, there are multiple different routes by which a tendency to help others could, could be reconciled with benefits at the individual level. And you could see how it could be under positive selection.

31:38 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So if one of people's concerns is their reputation, what about when they perform good deeds that are hidden from others? I mean, what do, why do we do that? And what do we have to gain from it?

31:53 Nichola Raihani: So, one of the really important things to bear in mind when we're thinking about things like why does a human, why do people help other people? Like I said, one, we can think about these two different kinds of explanation which we call proximate and ultimate. And often people don't often have to be aware of the ultimate level um of the ultimate function of the behavior for the behavior to be under positive selection. And so, um if we take a completely different example, just because sometimes it's easier to think about something that's slightly different. If you were to say why do people have sex? Well, on a proximate level, people have sex because they find it, um, you know, they enjoy it or they desire to have it or they find, you know, they find it subjectively rewarding. The ultimate reason sex exists and the ultimate function of sex is, or at least one ultimate function is to produce offspring. It's a pretty direct means to increase reproductive success. That doesn't mean that every time we have sex we're kind of thinking about, I'm gonna get reproductive success. Now, like people, the proximate and the ultimate reasons why behavior exists can be completely separate. And often in our mind, we're not even aware of the ultimate reason why we do something. And so if you say something like why do people give anonymously well for many people helping others or donating to charity or giving in an anonymous way feels very subjectively rewarding. It's a phenomenon that economists have called the warm glow of giving. And it, you know, makes you feel all fuzzy and nice inside to know that you've helped somebody. Um And that fuzzy warm feeling is evolution's way of getting you to do something that on average is in your long term interest that on average might be expected to result in reputation benefits or any other host of benefits that might occur because of you performing a helpful action. And if, if occasionally that doesn't happen, that doesn't mean that the whole strategy is, is under negative selection. It's a evolution works on averages, it works on average outcomes. Um And sometimes the reason why we do something is really quite different to the evolutionary reason that that behavior exists if that makes

34:16 Ricardo Lopes: sense. Yes, it makes perfect sense. But in the book, you also talk about how people tend to be uncharitable toward those who do good deeds. So, I mean, why is that

34:28 Nichola Raihani: then? Yeah. So that's another thing that I always wanted to come to. So thanks for asking that question. So one of the unusual things about human psychology is that we don't just, we're not stuck with observing behavior and having to assume that the behaviors that we observe, that the intentions and the outcomes are always perfectly aligned. So humans have this very sort of sophisticated form of cognition that some psychological theory of mind that allows us to look under the hood. When we see somebody doing something, for example, giving to charity, we can look under the hood and we can, we can actually entertain the possibility that the reason that someone's doing something might be different to the reason that they, that they are trying to signal. So for example, when someone gives to charity, we we know that often doing charitable acts can result in reputation benefits. And so when we see someone doing a charitable thing, we can also ask ourselves, well, is the reason the person is giving to charity? Is it because they want to help that beneficiary or is it because they actually want to improve their own image or their own appearance or how they look to other people? And this kind of skepticism is a uniquely human trait. I think it's one that we don't share with any other nonhuman species and it actually can result in some quite strange outcomes which is that often doing good doesn't lead to looking good because people can be suspicious of the reason why you're doing it. And if we suspect that people are acting with these calculated or self serving motives in mind, then we frequently withhold reputation benefits. And we don't, um, we don't afford that individual, the higher status that you might normally expect to result from doing these charitable things. And so in some ways, you can then get into these counter cycles of individuals actually hiding their altruistic behavior, for example, by donating anonymously or, um, something like that so that they don't invite this skepticism or this suspicion from other people. There's actually a really lovely quote, um from Oscar Wilde, which I think really sums it up nicely, which is, it's something like the nicest feeling in the world is to donate anonymously, but have somebody else find out about it. And the reason that it's the nicest feeling in the world, it's because of course, if they think you're doing it anonymously, then all the skepticism that results from looking under the hood is vastly reduced because, uh, the, you know, there's no, it seems far less calculated when you do it sort of anonymously.

37:25 Ricardo Lopes: So, but taking into account all of the benefits we might get from helping other people talking from approximate level, perhaps just feeling good and ultimately, perhaps even increasing our fitness. Can we say that people are really altruistic or is helping behavior? Ultimately selfish?

37:49 Nichola Raihani: I think on a proximate psychological level, lots of what you would call helping behavior or altruistic behavior is psychologically altruistic. It's, it's motivated from a genuine desire to help other people or a genuine enjoyment from, you know, doing the right thing. And so I, and I think this is where often I run into, um or I get challenged by people because they think that you're trying to take the altruism out of altruism in a way by suggesting that um helping behavior can ultimately be explained in terms of benefits to the helpful individual. People will often mistakenly assume that that means that all helpful behavior is performed in a calculated manner and with those benefits in mind. And that's not at all what an evolutionary perspective would say. So the evolutionary perspective to, to allow us for the fact that helping behavior can be psychologically pure can be very, very genuinely altruistic with no real calculated um uh desire to improve one's own position, supporting it. But that doesn't change the fact that those, those psychological motives, those proximate motives have probably been selected for because ultimately in an evolutionary sense, performing helpful behaviors or being co-operative is often the best way to ensure evolutionary success. And so, yes, I think altruism a lot of the time is uh can be understood in terms of self interest. If what you mean is the self interest, the gene's own selfish interest. But I don't think that that means that all altruism is knowingly or calculatedly selfish.

39:47 Ricardo Lopes: So, could you tell us about interdependence?

39:52 Nichola Raihani: Yeah. So I think, I mean, I mentioned at the start that I think this is sort of a a neglected mechanism for supporting cooper operation relative to something like reciprocal altruism. Um Interdependence is just the idea that you have a stake in your partner's well being or fitness more strictly speaking. Um I illustrate the idea of interdependence in the book using a toy example, which is imagine if you were in a rowing boat with um one other person and the boat springs a leak and the boat's filling up with water and you both need to bail out the water to, you know, in order for the boat not to sink. Now, if you, if you were the kind of uh prepared individual on the boat and you brought one chocolate bar, but your friend didn't have a chocolate bar with them, it could actually be in your own interest to share that chocolate with your friend to the extent that that allows them to keep on bailing out the boat. If we assume that both of you are needed to bail out the boat in order to stop it sinking, then you suddenly become really interdependent and it can be in your own best interest to help your interdependent partner. Even if there's no expectation of reciprocity at that time, simply because your partner, your own survival or your own well being is highly dependent on your partner's presence and your partner's um being there. And so this is the idea of interdependence and for many issues that live in groups or that have stable social interactions or repeated social interactions with the same individuals, it probably makes quite a lot of sense to think about these interaction partners as being interdependent rather than simply being to individuals that w that support cooper operation through um a highly dogmatic form of reciprocal altruism like tit for tat and the difference between those two things is that in tit for tat, it only benefits me to help you if I think you're gonna help me in return. And if I help you and you don't help me, then I've just wasted my investment. If we're interdependent, it can benefit me to help you even if you don't help me in return. And I think that that idea of it um unconditional helping within these sort of established relationships is much more in line with what we see in nature. And these relationships probably are often much more interdependent than we have previously um assumed.

42:33 Ricardo Lopes: And and why do we care so much about what other people think of us?

42:41 Nichola Raihani: Well, for humans, I think that we are all very, very sensitive to our image or our reputation. And some of the reasons for that are that individuals that gain a good reputation are often more likely to be chosen as interaction partners. So if you in experimental settings and also in real world settings, the most generous individuals are often the people that um in an experiment, people say they want to choose them as a partner in real world scenarios, those often occupy more central social network positions, they have more social capital. Um And they're also more likely to receive support themselves if they fall ill or if they are unable to meet their needs. For whatever reason, the individuals that have accrued, a good reputation are more likely to receive help from others when they need it. And I think there are uh this um this sensitivity to reputation can be explained in terms of our dependence on one another and our dependence on our social connections to, to survive and to, to meet our daily requirements. And for sure, like the humans are massively concerned with our reputation and we don't really see much evidence of that in any other species apart from the cleaner fish um system that I've worked on with red one Bahari. So I tell you, a bit more about it.

44:15 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I mean, I have them on the show and we talked a little bit about that. But yeah, please go ahead.

44:20 Nichola Raihani: So it's kind of again, it's this idea of the behavioral destination and the journey because cleaner fish do show concern for reputation, but they do the cognitive journey they take to exhibit this concern for reputation is very different to the cognitive journey that humans use to show concern for reputation. So briefly, um, cleaner fish live on coral reefs and they offer a cleaning service to their clients, which involves removing parasites from the surface of the skin. But there's a conflict between the cleaners and the clients because the cleaners would actually prefer to eat living tissues, mucus and scales um and not to eat the active parasites. Now, some of the clients that a cleaner fish interacts with have a large home range and that means that they have access to multiple cleaning stations within their home range and that means that they can afford to be fussy. So if they, if they go to a cleaning station and they arrive there and they see something ending badly, they see the cleaner fish being chased by the current clients or they see the current clients swimming away very quickly, then the fussy client will, can think, ok, I won't stay here. I'll go some, I'll go to this other place that I know about this other cleaning station. Strangely enough, Cleaner Fish seem to be aware when they're being watched by these, what we call fussy or visitor clients. And they are actually more cooper or they offer a better service to their current clients when they're being watched by the fussy or the visitor client. And this demonstrates a rudimentary concern for reputation in clean official caring about what other individuals think. And of course, in the cleaner fish, the cognition that supports this is not the ability to take perspective, to understand what the client is thinking or to impute beliefs to the client or anything like this. It can simply be learned through trial and error that if I do, if I cheat, then those kinds of clients always swim away. So therefore, I won't, I'll X parasites and um they learn through trial and error or through associative learning what behaviors bring about the rewards that they're seeking. And so it just again, it's this idea of thinking about the same behaviors but different cognition supporting those those same sort of behavioral outcomes.

46:47 Ricardo Lopes: So at the same time, we also have lots of social comparison. I mean, we compare ourselves to others a lot. And I would imagine that particularly in circumstances where there's lots of inequality that would have negative psychological impacts on people. So I, I mean, in what way is the social comparison affect our lives?

47:11 Nichola Raihani: Yeah. Again, it's a super interesting question and I think it's one where there's not actually, there's, there's, I wouldn't say there's a consensus yet in the field as to whether social comparison is uniquely human or not. So one way that social comparison can manifest is as a concern for fairness or disliking getting rewards that are less than what another individual gets. Um And in the lab, you can measure this by asking whether individuals will refuse a reward if a partner gets something better. And this can be a test of what we call inequity aversion. Now, we know that young Children are usually very averse to inequity and anyone who's spent any time with a young child will have heard them shout. Oh, that's not fair. And this kind of tendency to appreciate what's fair and what's not fair comes online at about four or five years old and Children really start to be able to be sensitive to, I'm getting one thing and you're getting four things and that's not fair and they will actually refuse. They will sacrifice their one sticker or their one sweet to prevent the partner from getting more than them. When people have done similar studies with nonhuman primates and with other animals, the results are much more mixed. And in my view, I don't think that the evidence is very strong to suggest that other species have a concern for fairness. And I think that many of the results in this field are more consistent with much simpler explanations of um of of the cognition that supports rejecting unfair outcomes. For example, it can be due to frustration at seeing something you want, that you can't get or having your expectations violated. Like you see that one individual gets four, but you get one. And so you have it, it's not necessarily a social comparison that we're seeing in, in other species in the same way that we, that we see in humans. Um And I think this concern for fairness and this meritocratic psychology, if you like this idea that things ought to be fair. And that uh for example, if we work together to achieve a joint outcome, then we ought to share the spoils of that outcome where I shouldn't just take everything for myself and leave you with nothing, right? This, this is the kind of um psychology and the kind of behavior that a concern for fairness can support. And it's really a point where we really see quite strong divergence between humans and uh in particular chimpanzees where for example, even human Children who work together to get a reward will then voluntarily split that reward with the partner that they worked to get the reward with. Whereas in chimpanzees, if they, they will work together to get a reward, if they have to, but you never see the in the one individual then giving half to the other one that helped it. If they can monopolize the reward, they will monopolize it for themselves. And so you can see how this non meritocratic um principle could be a real impediment to collaboration because in a way, what's the point of working with you on a task? If we at the end of it, you, I, you just keep everything for yourself and I don't get anything. And so I think this kind of psychology, this c this concern for fairness which you call social comparison is all part of the same thing. But it's a really crucial foundation of our collaborative natures actually, and our, our ability to work together to achieve joint success and to motivate individuals to work together, to achieve joint success. And I think that is a real point of divergence between humans and the other great apes.

51:12 Ricardo Lopes: So talking about unfairness, this ability, we have to join together and rebel against tyrannical leaders, for example, is it uniquely human? Do we also find it in other great apes, for example? And if not, uh in what ways does it allow for us to affect social structures that we don't really find in other great apes?

51:37 Nichola Raihani: I think among the apes, it's quite unique. It's what Christopher Berm has called the reverse dominance hierarchy where um individuals resist the actions of dominant or big shot um individuals and instead they work together to prevent any selfish minority from gaining an unfair advantage. Um And this is part of what why human societies are often described as being egalitarian. Unlike many of the other great ape societies that are often much more hierarchical, much more despotic and where an alpha male often gets a great, much greater share of reproduction than the other males in the group. How having said that I don't think it's unique to humans because there are, I mean, when we, as I said, at the start, the reason why I started the book by thinking about co-operation inside our bodies is that I said that some of the common principles that we saw in the evolution of co-operation to form individuals, we would also see at different levels or different scales of um evolution. And one of those general principles is this idea of the collective pulling against the might of any selfish entity that tries to gain an unfair advantage. And one place where we see that principle in action is actually inside our bodies where all the genes form what has been called a parliament of the genes where they, they all work to together in some ways to prevent the actions of any selfish genetic element or any selfish gene that tries to over replicate itself relative to the others. They were the the rest of the genome works together to prevent any of those selfish entities from having their way and from disrupting the um the the stability of the collective in some social insect species. You see workers who work together to collectively police the actions of any single worker who tries to lay eggs in the society. So sometimes worker ants or worker bees can lay under fertilized eggs that will develop into males. But the other workers in the society will often eat those eggs, they'll cannibalize them. And that's called worker policing. And again, you see the might of the collective at work in holding the kind of the interests of selfish entities, selfish genes, selfish individuals in check. And so I actually think that that pattern of the collective a bit like a tug of war. The collective on one end of the rope pulling against the in the individual selfish elements. On the other end is a real common theme that we see at all levels of life and the transitions to greater complexity, the evolutionary transitions to greater complexity occur when that collective is able to overwhelm the interests of the selfish, uh the the the sort of selfish entities.

54:50 Ricardo Lopes: So we're reaching our time limit. So, uh so let me just ask you one last question with all of this in mind. I mean, with what we know about the evolution of human cooper operation and how it works? Is it possible for us to foster uh large scale cooper operation? Like for example, nowadays, we have issues to tackle like climate change, which demand, I mean, international Co Ordination. Is there something that you wrote about in your book or uh somewhere else about human cooper operation that we can use with that with that goal in mind.

55:31 Nichola Raihani: So I think that many of the massive global problems that we face today are problems of failed co-operation and they are problems that require us to co-operate at global scales. And it's not obvious that this is something that we're especially good at. So we're what one problem with global cooper operation in a way is that it's constantly at risk of being undermined by co-operation at lower levels and co-operation that's easier to achieve. So, for example, um nepotism and corruption and bribery are all forms of local co-operation that are quite natural to us in some ways, nepotism is helping us family corruption or things like that or can be helping your friends. I mean, these are forms of cooper operation and they are, they come much more easily to us in some respects than cooperating at a global scale with people that we don't know that we might never meet. Um And so I don't think it's a given that we will necessarily be able to resolve the global challenges that we face. And I certainly am not gonna sit here and tell you that I have the answers. But II, I also don't think, I don't think it's totally out of our grasp to do it. But I think it, it in it will involve us learning how to co-operate at a scale that we've never really before managed to do effectively. And so I guess it's for me, I think it's still really an open question how the human story really ends and what, whether we managed to over climate disaster and, and you know, o overcome future pandemics that we're going to experience and things like this, I think we can do it. Um But whether we will do it, I think is up to us.

57:33 Ricardo Lopes: OK. So, uh the book is again, the Social Instinct of cooper operation shaped the world. Uh Where can people find you on the internet?

57:43 Nichola Raihani: Um I am probably most easy to find on Twitter where I my handle is at Nicola Rajani. My full name, I have a website called the Social Evolution and Behavior Lab and that's at UCL University College London. And yeah, you can find me there.

58:01 Ricardo Lopes: OK. So it's been a real pleasure to talk to you, Nicola. Thank you for coming on the show. Thanks so much. Hi guys. Thank you for watching this interview. Until the end. I would just like to ask you if you can to please consider supporting the show for it to keep running. You will find links to my Patreon page and also to paypal in the description box of this interview and amount even just $1 per month will already be a great help. Otherwise, and if you like what I'm doing, please share the interview. Leave a like and hit the subscription button. The issue is brought to you by N Lights learning and development. Done differently. Check their website at N lights.com. And finally, I would like to give a huge thank you to my main patrons and papal supporters, Kenen Litzke and Blanchett Bears and Las for S Fredericks Ricardo Vladimir Craig Healey, Adam Kel Olaf, Alec Jonathan Wiesel Jacob Wipe Matthew Whitten Bed, Arno Wolf, Tim Hollis, Henri Alenius John Connors Paulina Baron Philip for Connolly Jerry Mueller, Herbert Gins, Ruth Gervase Bo Wear M Beger Goldstein. Then Dimetri Robert Windegger Ruin, ASIO Arthur Kz Mark Nevs Colin Holbrook, Susan Pinker Thomas Trumble, Bernard Seus Pablo, San Simon Columbus, George Pina Phil Cavanagh, Cory Clark, Mark Blythe Roberto Nws Mi Stormer Eric Neumann Samuel Andreev Diag nuns, Bernard Eni, Alexander Dun Bauer, Amarie Hickson, Fergal, Ken Evan Boden H Herzog John Ross, Jonathan Libran Oslo Bullet, Nathan Lean Stanton T Samuel Correa, Eric Ians, Mark Smith, Jw Juan We Tom Hummel David Sloan Wilson, Yasa Desa Rau Ivan Solo, Roma Roach, Dmitri Grigoriev, Diego London, Correa, Tom Roth Jank Punter, Adana Rosman Charlotte Bli Nicole Barbaro, Adam Hunt Palo Stasi Nele Bach, Catherine and Patrick Tobin. All Ortiz Guy Madison Gary G Elman. Jean liars L A Adrian Yagi, Nick, Golden Paul Tolentino. Jean Bobos, Jules Price Edward Hall. My producers is our web, Jim Frank Luca stank, Ian Gilligan, Sergio, Guan Lo and Tom Venning Curtis Dixon Jean Linear Benedict Mueller, Vegi Sardo France and Ian Bachan. And my executive producers, Michelle Rozsi, Rosie Jim Spratt and Matthew Lavender. Thank you for all.