Science of Good and Evil

by Michael Shermer

  My point is this: just as I argued that morality evolved long before religion, I am claiming that trade evolved long before the state. There is now archaeological evidence, for example, that over the past 200,000 years stone tools and other artifacts such as seashells, flint, mammoth ivory, and beads were the objects of trade among our hominid ancestors, because they are often found hundreds of miles from where they were manufactured.55 Shepard Krech, in his debunking of the “ecological Indian” myth, shows that the reason Europeans were so readily able to trade with Native Americans (beads for pelts, for example) was that the Indians were already well accustomed to trading among themselves. 56 The psychology of trade probably has as much to do with forming alliances between individuals and groups as it does increasing the supply of resources, but the end result is the same: cooperation and reciprocal altruism that goes into making trade successful accentuates amity and attenuates enmity, leading (in the language of provisional ethics) to greater happiness and liberty for more people in more places more of the time.

  The Biology of Cooperation and Trade

  There is now scientific research to support the thesis that trade is good for both individuals and groups. Recall the Prisoner’s Dilemma experiments discussed in chapter 2, in which it was found that a cooperative trusting strategy was shunned by players in a one-trial game, but embraced when they played multiple rounds, particularly when players could interact with each other to establish trust. The best strategy in iterated contests was tit for tat with no initial defection. In nearly all cases the most selfish thing to do—that is, the way to gain the most number of points (or money) in the long run—was to begin by trusting and cooperating, and then do whatever your partner does. The most successful tactic in an extensive Prisoner’s Dilemma contest was a computer program entitled “Firm but Fair,” which cooperates with cooperators, cooperates after a mutual defection, quits playing with constant defectors, and defects with partners who always cooperate (called suckers). 57 In a related experiment, nine subjects were each given five dollars. If five or more of the nine cooperated by donating their five dollars to a general pot, all nine would receive ten dollars. Although it pays to be a cooperator (you get ten instead of five dollars), it pays even more to be a defector (fifteen instead of five dollars), as long as at least five other people cooperate. The results were mixed, with many groups of nine subjects failing to achieve the critical mass of five cooperators, because there was no trust. Then the experimenters added a step: members of some groups were given the opportunity to discuss their strategy options before playing. Those groups that interacted before playing averaged eight cooperators, and 100 percent of these groups earned cooperative bonuses. By sharp contrast, those groups that did not interact before playing earned bonuses only 60 percent of the time.58 Finally, in research on social dilemmas, psychologist Robyn Dawes found that groups given the opportunity to communicate face-to-face were more likely to cooperate than those who were not. “It is not just the successful group that prevails,” Dawes concluded, “but the individuals who have a propensity to form such groups.”59

  These results remind me of President Ronald Reagan’s cold-war strategy: trust with verification. Trust is built over time and through interactions, and trade is an effective tool for establishing trust. (One of the first things to go when trust breaks down between two nations is trade. If a country is especially untrustworthy, the international community may even impose economic sanctions that prohibit any trade with them. The end result is often war.) The psychological impulse to form relationships and alliances is the deeper cause that lies beneath the moral sentiment of trust, and trade is an effective medium that allows people to create trusting relationships with and form attachments to other trustworthy people. And, recall, it is not enough to fake being a cooperator, because over time and with experience deceivers are usually flushed out. You actually have to believe you are a cooperator, and there is no surer way to believe you are a cooperator than to be one.

  Our brains even evolved a mechanism to reinforce this process—cooperation leads to stimulation of the pleasure centers in the brain. Scientists at Emory University had thirty-six subjects play Prisoner’s Dilemma while undergoing a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scan. They found that the areas of the brains of cooperators that lit up were the same areas activated in response to such stimuli as desserts, money, cocaine, attractive faces, and other basic pleasures. Specifically, there were two broad areas dense in neurons that responded, both rich in dopamine (a neurochemical related to addictive behaviors): the anteroventral striatum in the middle of the brain (the “pleasure center,” for which rats will endlessly press a bar to have it stimulated, even going without food) and the orbitofrontal cortex just above the eyes, related to impulse control and the processing of rewards. Tellingly, the cooperative subjects reported increased feelings of trust toward and camaraderie with their game partners.60 In addition to dopamine, neuroscientists Steven Quartz and Terrence Sejnowski have documented the connection between oxytocin—a brain chemical produced during eating, breast-feeding, and sexual orgasms, believed to play a vital role in human bonding—and pro-social behaviors, such as cooperation and exchange.61

  There is now, in fact, a banquet of data that has spawned a new field of research on the cognitive neuroscience of human social behavior, demonstrating that humans evolved powerful neurological mechanisms to reinforce cooperation, accentuate pro-social behavior, and bond non-related people through the process of social exchange.62 Jorge Moll and his colleagues, for example, monitoring fMRI brain scans, found that moral emotions activate the amygdala, or the emotion module in the brain, as well as the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex, a higher level of cognitive processing in the brain, indicating that moral behaviors are as much related to moral emotions as they are to moral reasons (figure 33).63 In a similar technique utilizing fMRI scans on subjects participating in two-person “trust and reciprocity” games, Kevin McCabe and his colleagues found that areas of the prefrontal cortex—known to mediate impulse control and the delay of immediate gratification—are activated in the brains of cooperators (but not defectors), suggesting that cooperation requires “attention to mutual gains with the inhibition of immediate reward gratification to allow cooperative decisions.”64 The importance of the prefrontal cortex in humans and the other great apes was explored by Katerina Semendeferi and her colleagues, who found that area 10 of the frontal lobe in particular is linked to such higher cognitive functions as the undertaking of initiatives and the planning of future actions, and that this area, while larger in apes than in monkeys, is in humans “larger relative to the rest of the brain than it is in the apes” and has “more space available for connections with other higher-order association areas.” She concludes that “the neural substrates supporting cognitive functions associated with this part of the cortex enlarged and became specialized during hominid evolution.”65

  Figure 33. Moral Modules in the Brain

  Jorge Moll and his colleagues employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to produce brain scans, and discovered that moral emotions activate, as seen in this figure, the prefrontal and temporal lobes (higher-level cognitive process in the brain) as well as the amygdala (the emotion module of the brain), indicating that moral behaviors are driven by both emotional and rational parts of the brain. (Rendered by Pat Linse, from Jorge Moll et al., “The Neural Correlates of Moral Sensitivity,” in The Journal of Neuroscience, 2002, p. 2733)

  I claim that the reason for this cortical expansion is that humans evolved to became the preeminent social and moral primate. The brain imaging research of Uta and Chris Frith of University College London also supports this hypothesis, showing that in order to be a moral agent, one must be both self-aware and aware that others are self-aware, functions that are located in two different areas of the brain. Self-awareness, at least in part, appears to be located in the medial prefrontal cortex, whereas representing others’ actions and intentio
ns appears to be centered in the temporal cortex. “We speculate that the precursors of mentalizing ability derive from a brain system that evolved for representing agents and actions, and the relationships between them.”66 It is those brain relationships that form the foundation of social relationships.

  How does trust translate to trade? At the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, Paul Zak has demonstrated the relationship between oxytocin, trust, and economic prosperity. He argues that economists have shown how trust is among the most powerful factors affecting economic growth, and that since trust is directly related to neurological chemicals such as oxytocin, it is vital for national prosperity that the country maximize social interactions among its members, as well as members of other countries. Free trade is one of the most effective means of socializing, as are education, increased civil liberties, freedom of the press, freedom of association (most notably by increasing telephones and roads), and even a cleaner environment (people in countries with polluted environments show higher levels of estrogen antagonists, thereby lowering their levels of oxytocin and thus their feelings of trust). Impoverished countries are poor, in part, because trust in the legal structures to protect business and personal investments is so low. “Differences in trust cause differences in living standards,” Zak concludes. He has even computed that “a 15 percent increase in the proportion of people in a country who think others are trustworthy raises income per person by I percent per year for every year thereafter.” For example, increasing levels of trust in the United States from its present 36 percent to 51 percent would raise the average income for every man, woman, and child in the country by $400 per year, or $30,000 over a lifetime .67 It pays to trust (with verification, of course).

  Although extrapolating directly from neurochemistry to national economies is surely oversimplifying matters, what all this research tells us is that on one level we cooperate for the same reason we copulate—because it feels good. On a deeper evolutionary level, the reason cooperating feels good is because it is good for us, individually and as a species. Thomas Jefferson realized this in 1814: “These good acts give pleasure, but how it happens that they give us pleasure? Because nature hath implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses.”68

  How do trust and trade reduce war and violence? In every case study of societies that made the transition from war to peace, there is a direct causal relationship between population size, ecological carrying capacity, and the availability and exchange of resources. As archaeologist Steven LeBlanc explains, “There is no change in the ability to shift to peacefulness as social complexity evolves. Rather, the shift occurs when the ecological relationships suddenly change, regardless of the type of social organization affected.”69 The primary engine driving the shift in these ecological relationships is trade. When populations grow beyond the carrying capacity of their environments, they are forced into competition, which leads to war, which leads to alliances, which leads to trade, which leads to peace. In other words, the solution to war—that is, to move a society from a warlike existence to a peacelike existence—is not to be found in a particular type of government or religion or ideology or worldview; it is in a particular type of social process called trade. The evolutionary origin of trade may have been political alliances, but one of the unintended consequences is that trade produces a division of labor that generates more goods for more people more of the time.

  Moral Heroism: Skepticism as a Virtue

  In the end, how shall we treat our fellow humans? Here we face ourselves in the penetrating mirror of humanity’s 100,000-year journey, where the heroic in the human spirit is allowed to rise from the ashes of our primitive ancestry, imploring us to rise above the dark side of our nature. Religion has certainly inspired greatness out of ordinariness, and such heroics have been well documented throughout the ages, especially by the particular religions to whom the heroes professed worship. But religion has a built-in system of intolerance that logically follows from adherence to a fixed set of dogmas. I think we can do better.

  I believe in the heroic nature of humanity and in the ability of human intelligence, reason, and creativity to triumph over problems and obstacles. There has been great progress in human history, as measured by greater amounts of liberty and prosperity for more people in more places more of the time. In some cases, religion, particularly Judaism and Christianity, has fostered freedom and free markets; where this influence was combined with the Enlightenment introduction of secular political and economic systems and the separation of church and state, more freedoms for more peoples were enjoyed over the past two centuries than accumulated over the previous two millennia. Patriarchal dominance, for example, is being systematically displaced by gender equality in societies where women are allowed to flourish. How did this happen? First, women decided that they were not going to put up with this arrangement any longer; second, women were given the freedom to act on this decision; and third, society realized that women also seek greater happiness and greater liberty, and that they can achieve them more readily without being in bondage to males. Increasing the happiness and liberty of half of society raises the overall happiness of the group. Libertarianism is the happiness principle and the liberty principle writ large.

  Religious freedoms must always be protected, but the price for this security is the separation of religion from government. Historically, where church and state were wed, individual liberty suffered, including and especially religious liberty. Paradoxically—because many Christian conservatives today call for greater influence of their religion on politics—Christianity is at least partially responsible for this division between the sacred and the profane. Jesus himself admonished his followers (Matt. 22:21): “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” Historically, this resulted in two separate magisteria—spiritual and temporal, ecclesiastical and lay, religious and secular—each with its own laws, courts, and hierarchical authority.70 (Historian Bernard Lewis, in fact, identifies the secularization of Western culture as one of the strongest reasons for its prosperity and progress in science, technology, and culture; and the lack of separation of church and state for “what went wrong” in Muslim countries that drove the Arab world from its medieval apex of human achievement to its status today as a cultural backwater.) Thus, in order to generate greater liberty for more people we must maintain the separation of church and state and foster the greater secularization of state society, by which I mean public morality should only be legislated by secular bodies (while private morality may be as religious as the individual prefers). The members of secular bodies may themselves be religious, but the body itself must remain religiously neutral. Because of the natural inclination to favor one’s belief for preferential treatment even in secular systems, however, I personally prefer (although it should never be legislated) that public policy be governed by people with no religious preference at all. These are secularists.

  Who are secularists? Secularists are nonbelievers, nontheists, atheists, agnostics, skeptics, free thinkers, humanists, and secular humanists. Unfortunately, many of these words carry pejorative baggage. Words matter and language counts. “Feminist” is a fine word that describes someone who believes in the need to secure the rights and opportunities for women equivalent to those provided for men. Unfortunately, thanks to conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, it has also come to be associated with sandal-wearing, tree-hugging, postmodern, deconstructionist, left-leaning liberals best scorned as “Femi-Nazis.” Likewise, “atheist” is a descriptive term that simply means “without theism,” and describes someone who does not believe in God(s). Unfortunately, thanks to religious fundamentalists, it has also come to be associated with sandal-wearing, tree-hugging, postmodern, deconstructionist, left-leaning liberals who are immoral, pinko communists hell-bent on corrupting the morals of A
merica’s youth. Speak the scorn into existence. A 1999 Gallup poll reflected this attitude. When asked, “If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be an X would you vote for that person?” (with X representing Catholic, Jew, Baptist, Mormon, black, homosexual, woman, and atheist), while six of the eight received more than 90 percent approval, only 59 percent would vote for a homosexual and less than half, 49 percent, would vote for an atheist.

  For the most part I avoid labels altogether and simply prefer to say what it is that I believe or do not believe. However, at some point labels are unavoidable (most likely due to the fact that the brain is wired to pigeonhole objects into linguistic categories), and thus one is forced to use identity language. Since the name of the magazine I cofounded is Skeptic and my monthly column in Scientific American is entitled “Skeptic,” I usually just call myself a skeptic, from the Greek skeptikos , or “thoughtful.” Etymologically, in fact, its Latin derivative is scepticus, for “inquiring” or “reflective.” Further variations in the ancient Greek include “watchman” and “mark to aim at.” Hence, skepticism is thoughtful and reflective inquiry. Skeptics are the watchmen of reasoning errors, aiming to expose bad ideas. Perhaps the closest fit for skeptic is “a seeker after truth; an inquirer who has not yet arrived at definite convictions.” Skepticism is not “seek and ye shall find”—a classic case of what is called the confirmation bias in cognitive psychology—but “seek and keep an open mind.” What does it mean to have an open mind? It is to find the essential balance between orthodoxy and heresy, between a total commitment to the status quo and the blind pursuit of new ideas, between being open-minded enough to accept radical new ideas and so open-minded that your brains fall out. The virtue of skepticism is about finding that balance.71