Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind

by Mark Pagel

  This criticism raises the problem of designing a signal—the green beard—that others can trust as a reliable and honest indicator that you are an altruist, and not a selfish social cheat. How do we know whom to cooperate with, apart from looking for clues of shared values? This is the same problem we encountered in Chapter 4 in trying to understand one possible role of extreme religious beliefs and practices. Our interest there was how observers can use these extreme acts to gauge someone’s commitment to a group. Amotz Zahavi’s handicap principle and Thorsten Veblen’s idea of conspicuous consumption showed us that it is precisely because some of the things that animals and people do are wasteful and even reckless that we know whatever they are doing says something believable about them.

  For instance, a peacock’s giant tail tells us that he is healthy because it is so costly and wasteful to produce. Peahens know that only the fittest males can afford to make the biggest tails: less fit males can try but will probably die from the burdens of their giant tails. Similarly, we speculated that one possible function of religious belief was to signal your commitment to the group—religious beliefs and practices such as self-flagellation, memorizing scripture, or fasting can be costly, and for that reason can become believable signals. We also instinctively recognize Veblen’s idea in the conspicuous consumption of wealthy people. A huge diamond engagement ring or an expensive car have little functional value over other rings or cars, and that is precisely why they are good signals that someone is wealthy—how else could they have so much money to waste? They are useful signals because they are expensive ways of being useless.

  Zahavi and Veblen even went a step further and often emphasized that the best signals were those that were directly relevant to what an animal was trying to tell you. One of Zahavi’s favorite examples was the “stotting” behavior of some gazelle species when being chased by lions. As the lion pursues the gazelle, the gazelle punctuates its escape with stots, a series of little pronks or prongs that involve jumping straight up into the air, legs stiff, and lifting all four feet off the ground. Why would they do such a ridiculous thing? Wouldn’t it be far better for the gazelle to put all its energy and time into running away? About the only worse things for the gazelle would be to stop running altogether, or turn around and run at the lion. Another of Zahavi’s examples is the curious behavior of the skylark, which when being pursued for its life by the predatory merlin seemingly looks over its shoulder and begins to sing.

  All of these actions use up the very resource an animal needs to escape or protect itself, and that makes them informative about the animal’s abilities. The gazelle is telling the lion that it is such a fast runner it can afford to waste valuable time by jumping vertically into the air, and yet still get away. The skylark is telling the merlin that it can waste its precious breath. Both actions are directly relevant to what the animal is trying to signal to the pursuer—fast running, or strong lungs for flying. If they are lying about their abilities, these actions are the ones that will get them killed. And indeed, not all gazelles stot, nor do all skylarks sing at the approach of a merlin, but as Zahavi would expect, those that do are more likely to get away. To understand the gravity of stotting and singing while being chased, consider that next time you are chased by a mugger, you punctuate your escape with little jumps up into the air, and even occasionally burst into song. Veblen was fond of saying that gentlemen carried walking sticks to show that they could get by without the use of one of their hands. And of course if you are wealthy, what better way to show off how much money you have than to use it up on wasteful grands projets such as a folly in your garden, or a private art collection? Indeed, it is sometimes said that the perfect garden folly is the one that drives you bankrupt. Why? Because to go bankrupt shows you can make the money back some other day.

  The handicap and conspicuous consumption theories tell us something remarkably simple and yet profound about how altruists can go about identifying other altruists. If you want to know who is an altruist, look at who is behaving most altruistically! Altruistic acts are by definition costly because they aid someone else at your expense. They can be reckless, such as jumping into a river to save someone’s life or pulling someone from a burning house. And they can be wasteful of your time and money. If earning the badge of altruist takes enough effort, then anyone who puts in the effort to do so is, by definition, an altruist.

  This gives us insights into all the peculiar little acts of altruism that we routinely perform in society, such as holding doors, standing aside for people, giving up seats on buses or trains, helping the elderly, contributing to charity boxes, or even risking our lives to save animals. It is not just that we are “nice.” Once it is up to others to grant you the badge of being an altruist, altruists have no choice but to try to stand out from the crowd, and it falls on you to do whatever you can to convince your societal audience to grant you the label. The value of cooperation means that something of an altruism arms race arises, forcing would-be altruists to acquire “long tails” of altruism to compete with other altruists trying to do the same. To compete at the very highest levels in the altruism competition, we have to demonstrate something akin to altruistic conspicuous consumption—we have to become altruism show-offs—by doing all the usual things, but also by volunteering our time, joining local community projects, tithing to a church, helping others in distress, or making large contributions to philanthropic organizations.

  That we all possess these dispositions to some extent is a measure of how important cooperation has been in our past. Group action—whether it be in hunting or foraging, attacking another tribe, or simply moving to new lands—has been our species’ hallmark and secret advantage over others. In turn, if cooperation has been valuable to us as a species, it is also worth protecting, and we can expect groups or just about anyone judging you to require lots of evidence before accepting you (the principle of information again). A group might subject you to long or costly periods of initiation, during which someone is held in a state of suspended worthiness as others evaluate their tendencies, consistency, and integrity. Newcomers to villages are often still remembered as “the newcomer” even many years later. We impose these trials on newcomers instinctively, even though there is no reason to believe that strangers are any less reliable per se than people we know. What these trials do is allow us to develop a good estimate of the quantity i in our model; put in more everyday terms, these trials are a measure of just how long our altruistic tails have to be to be believable.

  In Sebastian Junger’s example of the combat platoon in the Korangal Valley of Afghanistan, the men’s survival depended upon each of them being committed to giving their lives for the others. But how could someone new to the group be trusted? The men had devised a pragmatic measure to find out. Junger describes the “blood in, blood out” rituals, in which men arriving to the platoon would be subjected to severe beatings. Junger witnessed one such beating, of a lieutenant newly assigned to lead the platoon. Without any indication of what was about to happen, the men surrounded the new lieutenant, knocked him to the ground, and beat him severely. Attacking an officer violates one of the military’s deepest prohibitions. The beatings therefore signaled the seriousness with which the men took the commitment. It was a way of showing what they were willing to risk—a court-martial for their actions—and what they could do to someone who wavered in their commitment.

  The lieutenant was not disposed to press charges because he knew his life depended as much on getting his men’s support as theirs did on his. Enduring this painful and costly beating was a way of purchasing the men’s trust. The degrading things that men in combat platoons routinely say to each other can also be seen as painful tests of commitment. If being told by another man that he would like to have sex with your mother is enough to lose your support, then it might be that bullets zipping over your head will also cause your support to waver. Of course, once men are accepted into a combat group, it is their behavior in battle that is the true
measure of their commitment, because that behavior cannot be faked. Courage and valor in battle are about the longest tails of altruism one can produce. Ultimately, altruism itself is the best measure of whether someone is altruistic, and men in battle groups know this.

  Thinking of our actions, and the reputations they build and maintain as green beards that advertise our altruistic nature, might help explain a curious phenomenon most of us routinely encounter in our everyday lives. It is that when people witness helpful and cooperative behavior, they are more likely to produce it themselves. If you see someone hold a door, or someone holds a door for you, if you are like most people you will look over your shoulder to see if someone is following, and if so, you will hold the door for them. The same is true of seeing people donate to the Salvation Army, give blood, or stop to help someone change a punctured tire. Witnessing any of these events makes you more likely to be helpful yourself. It is why buskers or street performers put money in their hats before they even start to play: it shows that others before you have been kind enough to contribute.

  Social psychologists have long struggled to find an explanation for this effect. Couldn’t it just be that it makes us feel good to do these things and seeing someone else’s helpfulness or generosity reminds us of that? Maybe, but this again just raises the question of why we have minds that like to be nice or generous. A different suggestion is that when we observe others do something, it reduces ambiguity about what is appropriate behavior, or it reassures us that the behavior is safe or acceptable. This might be true in some circumstances, such as providing minor medical help. But the greenbeard idea gives a more general and natural explanation. It says we help more when others do so because their acts of altruism raise the bar for us; their actions take some of the shine off of our reputations. We must respond in kind to purchase a bit more reputation, as a way of staying competitive in the “who’s an altruist?” game, and this means showing your helpful side. This could be one reason why public charitable auctions work so well, and it could be the second reason why the Mother Teresas of the world are sometimes treated with ambivalence: they make the rest of us look unhelpful by comparison.

  THE REPUTATION MARKETPLACE

  OUR SOCIAL systems of cooperation and helping are revealed as sophisticated marketplaces, capable of generating both individual returns and goods that benefit others. They work like a monetary system, with our personal reputations acting as the currency we use to buy trust and cooperation. Reputations are valuable, so we have to earn or pay for them. We do so by engaging in altruistic acts, costly to us but beneficial to others. Once purchased, a good reputation can then be used to buy cooperation from others, even people we have never met, just as we can use money to buy goods from people we have never met—economists call this transferability. In this sense, we can see how the abstract and symbolic idea of a reputation promoted trust and cooperation in our societies just as money can now. Both make it easier to purchase goods or services from someone you might not know. The transferability of our reputations occurs routinely and without us even being aware of it. For example, normally when describing someone to a third party, among the first things you will say are about that person’s reputation, such as, “He’s a good fellow,” or, “She’s very friendly,” “You can count on her,” or, “He’s awkward and difficult.”

  Like money, reputations get used up. They will decay as people’s memories fade; you might do something to harm your reputation; you might encounter people who have never heard of you, or someone might opportunistically attack your reputation for their gain. Malicious gossip has been used for tens of thousands of years, but has more recently ascended to uncharted heights (depths?) as people now use the Internet in strategic ways to attack others’ reputations. This is particularly problematic in the hotel and restaurant industry, where a proprietor will hire people to write unflattering accounts of a rival’s establishment, and the reports can be read by anyone in the world. Apart from this being a distasteful thing to do, it tells us just how valuable and transferable a currency our reputations are. Indeed, our reputations represent the first “monetary union” or single currency, working in every country. We could even see them as a form of credit, because a good reputation might allow you to negotiate an exchange on the promise you will produce your part of the bargain later (in this context it is noteworthy that “credit” derives from the Latin credo or “I believe”). On the other hand, our reputations’ vulnerability to being attacked means we need continually to top them up by regularly engaging in altruistic acts. Such a need might lie behind much of our simple but overtly polite behaviors.

  In the modern world, we can see reputation building as a fundamental part of our economic behaviors. You might buy something from me and then later return it, slightly used, meaning I cannot resell it. Why should I take it back? My act of altruism toward you might more than pay its way because you will now tell people what a fair shopkeeper I am: the transferable reputation I have earned from my altruism purchases others’ trust in me and attracts their custom. So fundamental are our reputations to our social systems that comparing them to a monetary system is not merely apt, it should probably be made the other way around. Money, like reputation, is an abstract system of trust, in which possession of something that has very little intrinsic value comes to stand for something of potentially much larger value. But of course monetary systems only arose much later than our modern human social systems; they make use of the abstract and symbolic thinking that our cooperative systems might have put in place by sometime around 160,000–200,000 years ago, and they piggyback directly onto systems of reputation. And, while you can hold money in your hand, reputation can only be held in your brain.

  We should recognize the transferability of reputation as one of the chief ways that the altruism we are trying to understand here differs from acts of reciprocal cooperation. That system is one of a barter economy, in which one person provides a good or service to another in exchange for a good or service from them deemed to be of equivalent value. You might give me the tanned hides from the game you have killed. I will give you back some clothing I have made from them, keeping some for myself as payment for my services. You and I both get clothing, but neither of us gains beyond our mutual exchange. It is a system that almost certainly favored the development of the psychological mechanisms that would later allow us to make the leap to buying and selling our reputations. For example, if you could acquire a reputation as someone good at hunting, many people will come to you offering to make clothing and you can choose the best deal. And if I can get a reputation for making good clothing, many people will come to me with their hides and I can negotiate a good rate of exchange for the clothes I make. An economy is born.

  The returns from moving beyond mere reciprocation should also tell us of the fundamental role that language plays in our system of cooperation (and in our economies). Language unlocks the benefits of cooperation by allowing precise exchanges to be negotiated, and by allowing reputations to encourage good deals or help to block bad ones from going through. It increases the exposure of your actions—acting as an enhancer—making acts of philanthropy, friendliness, helpfulness, courage, and bravery play to a far wider audience than those who merely witness your actions. Indeed, there is reason to believe, as we will see in Chapter 8, that this is why language evolved: it is principally a social technology for managing and exploiting the benefits of reputation and the cooperation it enables. The lack of language is the reason why no other animal can practice this powerful form of cooperation.

  To see why, imagine the following scene early in our evolution when language skills were in the process of evolving: You are good at making arrowheads but hopeless at making the finished arrows. You need at least twenty arrows to go hunting, so you are looking to exchange arrowheads that you make for the wooden shafts with flight feathers attached. Two other people you know of are good at making the wooden shafts but not good at making arrowheads. One of them has very
poor language abilities. You approach that one and lay down a pile of arrowheads in front of him. You are hoping he will get the idea that you want to trade him arrowheads for finished arrows, splitting them fifty/fifty between the two of you. But he thinks the arrowheads are a gift, smiles, takes them, and walks off. You pursue him, gesticulating, a scuffle ensues, and he stabs you with one of your own arrowheads.

  Replay that scene now and imagine yourself approaching the second person. His language skills are good. You lay down your arrowheads saying, “I’d like to trade arrowheads for finished arrows.” He looks at you and says, “Give me your arrowheads. I’ll fit the wooden shafts, and give you half the completed arrows back in a week.” This is a good start, but you face a dilemma. Will the arrowmaker actually deliver on his promise or just walk off with your goods? Not knowing, you consult acquaintances, who assure you the arrowmaker is trustworthy, and the deal goes ahead. It is just possible this deal could have been completed without language; but with it, the deal could be negotiated. The reputations gained from previous exchanges with other people have eventually brought each of these people a mutually beneficial deal.

  The analogy to a monetary system can also offer an alternative to a controversial view about our psychology. At a distance, our generalized and diffuse form of altruism or cooperation can give the appearance that we are motivated by a deep commitment to help others, even at our own expense, including in some extreme instances giving our lives for our nation or society in war. Some anthropologists and economists think this is an indicator that we have evolved to do things for the good of our groups. But the greenbeard view is that we behave altruistically, but we don’t do it for the group. It is precisely the most costly acts—the ones least likely to benefit us individually—that most efficiently purchase reputations, even if they look as if we do them for the group. Again, the analogy to money might help: when we earn money by working (analogous to earning a reputation), no one says we do it for the good of the group. Even so, the system of earning wages and then exchanging money for goods and services could be said to benefit society because it helps to build an economy; but that is not our motivation. Our motivation is personal gain. Similarly, there is nothing in the notion of buying and selling your reputation that says we do it for the good of the group.