Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking in a Modern World (21 page)

The belief “What is natural is good or right” is so widespread that it has a name. Scientists call it the
naturalistic fallacy
. The view is persistent and a bit romantic since it seems to hark back to an earlier time when we weren’t burdened with scientific knowledge—just our primitive, often spiritual connection with nature itself. Undergraduates who believe that natural is good are often challenged when you remind them that things like tsunamis, AIDS, pain, death, and aggression are all “natural.”

So the question is, if doing what’s natural is so good, why are we suggesting that you second-guess your inherited cognitive and perceptual shortcuts? The answer is simply that doing the natural thing, falling back on your default Caveman Logic, is not necessarily a good thing. Unlike your ancestors, you have alternatives available to you. Many of them are really quite spectacular, especially in contrast to those “natural” strategies.

The list of ways in which we second-guess or overcome natural tendencies is already quite impressive. We’d just like to make it a little longer. This book is largely about evaluating evidence, reaching conclusions, and formulating belief systems. Most of those processes allow you the luxury of time. Time to reconsider, ponder, take in more evidence. Arguably, if going beyond our Pleistocene default settings can be done anywhere, it is under such leisurely conditions. But consider a very different kind of example: when thrown into a crisis of life-threatening proportions, most of us fall back on hardwired strategies. There’s often no time for reflection: under dire emergencies most of us trust our survival to the cognitive circuitry that kept our ancestors in the game.

Indeed, it is part of the “natural is good” argument that when it matters most, we should depend on our default settings and ask questions later. The surprising thing is, even under these circumstances, “natural” is not all that it’s cracked up to be. A recent issue of
Time
magazine reports cases of mysterious scuba accidents in which people drowned needlessly, that is, when their gear was fully functional. The results of research performed at the University of Wisconsin suggest that our “natural” response to suffocation may have been the culprit. Experiencing a panic response while underwater, divers occasionally respond instinctively and tear away whatever is covering their mouths. Normally, that might remove the source of suffocation; it has quite the opposite effect when the diver is breathing through an underwater hose.

Here is more evidence that falling back on natural responses can be hazardous to your health: The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently interviewed nearly nine hundred survivors of 9/11 and found that even the survivors were remarkably inefficient when faced with a life-and-death crisis.
²²
Few people left the burning towers immediately. The “run for safety” panic response that many assumed would prevail was barely in evidence. Some survivors took up to a half hour before leaving. Over one thousand people admitted to turning off their computers before departing the building. The NIST report also revealed that over one hundred people who had clear access to safety and time to leave the building were among the casualties. They did not sacrifice their own lives to help others. They simply did none of the things necessary to save their lives. Indeed, many who did survive the crisis were saved because they were lulled from shock or various kinds of dissociative states by others who shouted at them or literally dragged them to safety. People often refer disdainfully to horses who “go back into a burning barn” and have to be saved from their natural tendencies. Yet in this regard, we may be little better than a herd of horses.

The 9/11 results are not unique. They mirror reports of survivor behavior in another widely studied tragedy: the 1977 Tenerife airport disaster in which two planes collided while on the ground. In that accident 583 people died, although many of them died not from the crash itself but from the resultant fire. These people needed to flee to safety. Again, however, reports indicate that their natural response was to freeze, the very opposite of what they needed to do to survive. Interviews with survivors from both 9/11 and Tenerife suggest that victims either sat still or walked aimlessly, looking more like zombies or sleepwalkers than persons whose survival depended on their flight from a danger zone. Similar tales of people “standing still like statues” emerge from the sinking of the
Estonia
in the Baltic Sea in 1994. Described as one of the worst sea disasters in modern European history, only 137 of 989 passengers survived.

It is difficult to understand how such passive behavior might have benefited our ancestors, or whether our ancestors ever faced the kind of large-scale crises that occur in modern society. In any case, the message seems clear: the natural or default settings of our mental apparatus are not necessarily geared to our best interests in the modern world.

Altruism poses a fundamental dilemma for evolutionary biology. It is a seemingly wonderful quality of human nature, yet it just doesn’t fit how natural selection is supposed to work. Altruism is, figuratively speaking, the elephant in the room.

The problem is this: Altruistic acts occur widely in nature yet, by definition, they contribute to the reproductive fitness of another organism at a net disadvantage to the altruist. How can such genes and the behavior with which they are associated pass through the filter we call natural selection?

Virtually every textbook on evolutionary biology or psychology
²³
will walk the reader through this apparent paradox and suggest a twofold solution. It involves
kin selection
and
reciprocal altruism
. These are not just solutions to the problem of altruism with humans who, of course, are the primary concern of this book. These mechanisms work all over the phylogenic scale. They are
logical
solutions to how the mechanism of gene transmission, which is essentially selfish, might favor a process that occasionally prioritizes others.

Consider the fact that our relatives share some of our genetic material. The more closely they are related to us, the more of our DNA they are likely to share. Organisms are not randomly altruistic. They direct their selfless acts differentially, and the recipients are more likely to be relatives than strangers. These are not conscious volitional choices; kin selection is observed widely in species few people would assume to be great thinkers. In fact, there is no reason to believe that conscious thought or deliberation is involved for
any
species in the processes underlying altruism. It is simply a fact that altruistic acts are more often directed toward those who share genetic material with us.

This discriminative pattern leads to what is called
inclusive fitness
. From the gene’s point of view, the chances of making it into the next generation are still reasonable if we save our brothers or sisters, even if we die in the act. Our reproductive fitness is thus defined not just as our own, but in a broader sense to include all of those who share our genetic material. The process is quite finely tuned. Given a choice between saving a brother and a cousin, the brother gets the nod. Given a choice between a cousin and a second cousin, the former is the more likely choice, and so on. This is known as
Hamilton’s rule
.

This lesson in evolutionary biology serves a major point in Caveman Logic. Kin selection and inclusive fitness are one way that altruism makes sense within a Darwinian framework. But plainly, not all altruism is directed to kin. There are pointed exceptions to this, especially among so-called higher primate species. In such cases, the mechanism of reciprocal altruism has been invoked. This is simply a way of formalizing the “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” idea. Reciprocal altruism opens the door to many subsidiary issues, such as reputation, cheating, and cheater detection. These are all very big issues within the field of evolutionary psychology. Reciprocal altruism also requires that the individuals come equipped with a well-developed apparatus for individual recognition.

A hundred thousand years ago, we lived in small social groups, perhaps numbering fifty to seventy-five individuals. Most group members were related to some degree. Think about altruism, kin selection, inclusive fitness, and reciprocal altruism within that context and the mechanisms start to make pretty good sense. Even add a few more very distant cousins and it still makes perfect sense. Under living conditions like those, group cohesion is everything. Those mechanisms that reinforce group identity and loyalty will plainly be favored. The mechanism that says, “I will do for you, even at relative disadvantage to myself,” is reasonable for a host of reasons, all of which make intuitive sense to the altruist, as well as theoretical sense to an evolutionary biologist.

But the process doesn’t stop there. A lot of Pleistocene folks walking together through the savannah or enjoying a group hug is not the extent of the picture. Altruism has a flipside and, like it or not, it is an inevitable part of the deal. Just as there is an in-group that benefits from cooperation, trust, and good will, there will also be an out-group that does not. This is where the plot thickens very quickly and we are again faced with an aspect of our caveman heritage that does us little good in the twenty-first century.

Today, humans have replaced those small Pleistocene bands of relatives and very close friends with a variety of larger organizations that bear little similarity to what they used to be. Because the drive to affiliate remains strong, we’ve become rather indiscriminate in what constitutes a “group.” Just as our ancestors did, we continue to use group memberships as part of our identity as individuals. This is, again, a good way to build group cohesion, but it sets the stage for some measurable nastiness. Group members enjoy the benefits of prosocial behavior. But what about outsiders to the group? How are they viewed and treated? The answer isn’t always pretty; in fact, negative attitudes and behaviors directed at outsiders may be a fundamental part of group solidarity.

Plainly, group identity occurs at many levels. I am a member of my family, both immediate and extended. Under the right conditions, I will act in their support against nonfamily members. I also live in a community, and so my hometown becomes part of who I am. Perhaps that town is Dallas, Texas. I take pride in that as well. If I happen to be in the audience at a taping of the
Tonight Show
and the host mentions something about Dallas or Texas, I am going to cheer out loud for all to hear. That’s
my
town. I’m proud of it. In fact, if you happen to be from Houston or, worse yet, New York, I might tease you or, if conditions should escalate, engage in a physical confrontation with you. I’m from Texas, boy, and I’ll kick your ass! But if I’m from Texas, then I am also an American and you can bet that I’m willing to argue, hit, or kill in support of that as well. In his book
Us and Them
, David Berreby discusses how arbitrary and multiple these identities can be. As the humorous t-shirt says, “You mess with me, you mess with the whole trailer park.”

Just stop for a moment and consider how modern group identities are an overextension of a perfectly reasonable caveman mechanism. How have things progressed from an understandable bond with our small Pleistocene group (under 100) to—using our previous example—the rabid and enthusiastic support of the population of Dallas (about 1.3 million residents), Texas (over 21 million persons), or the United States (about 300 million). And this isn’t the extent of the average person’s group membership. Let’s not forget two other major sources of identity. Many people view their professions as part of their personal identities. I am a psychologist. I am proud of that. I feel kinship with other psychologists. We may have some internal divisions that cause occasional conflicts. Skinnerians may believe Freudians are misguided, and industrial /organizational psychologists may be focused on issues quite different from cognitive neuroscientists. But those differences are nothing compared to how most of us feel about sociologists. The bottom line is that I am a psychologist (or trucker or farmer or dentist) and I feel affinity for others in my profession, even if I’ve never met them and share no genetic material with them. Again, the term to describe what has happened here is
overextension
. This is a Pleistocene mechanism that has gone well beyond its original (and, arguably, appropriate) settings.

We’ve saved probably the most dangerous group membership for last. Aside from being a Texan, an American, and a trucker, I am also a Baptist. A Protestant. Now we’re getting into some serious business because we are dealing with supernatural agents, a worldview, and metaphysical concepts like right and wrong. There is very little wiggle room here for most people. Again, the flipside of altruism, that most admirable quality of humans, is not simply the lack of altruism, but something far worse. In the earliest years of the twenty-first century, this point needs little elaboration.

In his book
In the Name of God
,
²⁴
philosopher John Teehan discusses the paradox of how seemingly peaceful religions can generate hateful violence. His argument, rooted in evolutionary theory, is that there is no paradox at all. Teehan’s point is similar to the case made by psychologist David Berreby in his book
Us and Them
. Obviously, you cannot define an in-group without reference to an out-group. And how do we view members of the out-group? While answering that question, consider that we humans, because of our natural history, seem incapable of living outside the network of group bonds and identity. Plainly, group membership brings many benefits to the individual as well as to the collective. But it holds many costs to those outside the group (who are, of course, members of
other
groups). The best that one can hope for is tolerance of other groups—be they religious or national or professional or familial. But history has shown that such tolerance is a lot to ask, especially in the realm of religious identity. There is a continuum of attitudes toward the out-group. If tolerance is the best-case scenario, it quickly moves to suspicion, xenophobia, disdain, and ultimately violence. Some would suggest the continuum is a very slippery slope.