Kin Selection and Human Cooperation

Kin Selection and Human Cooperation

Kin selection is a process by which members of group exhibit preferences favoring the reproductive success of their relatives over more distantly related individuals. Kin selection is often used to explain the behaviors of social animals but when applied to humans, the concept of kin selection cannot adequately explain human cooperation.
Kin Selection in Meerkats
A model organism for kin selection behavior can be observed in meerkats. Often “helpers” which are individuals that do not reproduce and help to raise another closely related individual’s offspring confer a reproductive advantage to the offspring. A study by A.F Russell showed that helpers in meerkat groups reared pups that had a greater weight at the time of independence, were more likely to compete for alpha male positions and pups that began reproducing at an earlier age.
Problems with kin selection when applied to humans
Unlike in meerkats humans participate in many groups which have a low level of relatedness among individuals. Even without the mechanism of kin selection humans appear to have high levels of cooperation among large groups. For example, participation in big game hunting, warfare and protests do not confer a direct reproductive advantage and there is relatively little relatedness among individuals.
Alternate explanation for human cooperation/ Altruistic punishment
Altruistic punishment is another alternate explanation for the level of cooperation among human groups. Altruistic punishment is a mechanism by which members of a group punish defectors of a group in order to gain cooperation from the defector in the future. In their 2002 paper on altruistic punishment in humans Ernst Fehr and Simon Gachter state, “If those who free ride on the cooperation of other are punished, cooperation may pay.” The punishment of an individual is often detrimental to the health of the individual carrying out the punishment. However, if the benefits of punishment outweigh the cost of punishment altruistic punishment can occur. As Fehr & Gachter point out, to justify altruistic punishment in human groups humans must have a tendency to punish free riders.
Summary of Fehr & Gachter’s Public Good Experiment
The model used by Fehr & Gachter to show that humans have a tendency to engage in altruistic punishment set up a “public good” experiment. In the experiment groups of four individuals from a pool of 240 college undergraduate students were placed in different rooms and given 20 monetary units (MUs) from which they could contribute to a group project. For every MU invested in the project there was a return of .4 MU. If no one invested in the project each individual earned only 20 MU but if all of them invested each earned 32 MU. This applied to all members of the group, even if they did not contribute any MUs to the project. Thus, it was more beneficial for an individual to not invest in the project, which can be defined as self interest behavior. For those who did invest in the project the return was the same. The tests were done anonymously and the groups were changed in each trial. Each member of the group could punish those that did not cooperate by deducting 3 MUs and reducing their MUs by 1. This type of punishment is beneficial to the following groups and thus can be defined as altruistic punishment.
The results of Fehr & Gachter’s study showed that there is a significant tendency for humans to participate in altruistic punishment and that the cooperation of the groups increased when the amount of punishment increased. For example, 84.3 % of individuals punished one or more times. The results also show that punishment was not random because 74.2 % of the punishments were on defectors by cooperators.If punishment was used cooperation (MUs) increased while mean cooperation (MUs) decreased if punishment was absent.
Summary
Altruistic punishment offers an explanation for cooperation among non related individuals while kin selection cannot be used to explain these types of behaviors. Although previous researcher have tried to explain human cooperation through kin selection behaviors such as participation in war an big game hunting cannot be explained by kin selection.

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