Why Humans Cooperate: A Cultural and Evolutionary Explanation

by Joseph Henrich

Cooperation among humans is one of the keys to our great evolutionary success. Natalie and Joseph Henrich examine this phenomena with a unique fusion of theoretical work on the evolution of cooperation, ethnographic descriptions of social behavior, and a range of other experimental results. Their experimental and ethnographic data come from a small, insular group of middle-class Iraqi Christians called Chaldeans, living in metro Detroit, whom the Henrichs use as an example to show how kinship relations, ethnicity, and culturally transmitted traditions provide the key to explaining the evolution of cooperation over multiple generations.

Genres: Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, Science, Nonfiction, Evolution, Philosophy

272 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2006

About the author

Joseph Henrich is an anthropologist. He is the Chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology of Harvard University and a professor of the department.


Joseph Henrich's research focuses on evolutionary approaches to psychology, decision-making and culture, and includes topics related to cultural learning, cultural evolution, culture-gene coevolution, human sociality, prestige, leadership, large-scale cooperation, religion and the emergence of complex human institutions. Methodologically, he integrates ethnographic tools from anthropology with experimental techniques drawn from psychology and economics. His area interests include Amazonia, Chile and Fiji.

Reviews

[John Stepper · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant piece of work on the evolution (biological and cultural) of behavior. (I confess it took me months to read it! It’s well-written but dense, and I had to go slowly to savor and understand it.)

In addition to the clear logic and comprehensive research, what makes this book 5 stars is the addition of ethnographic insights based on a community in Detroit. This brings the theories to life and puts them into a modern, practical context that makes it all easier to understand.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely not a bad book. Although, there's some weirdness. The thinking around relatedness seem to be confused in a meaningful way, at least at one point. Chaldeans marrying their cousins would make people more related to each other within families than if spouses were less closely related. That obviously matters for ethnocentric behaviors/social evolution....

The Extended Phenotype isn't cited in the end, which makes me wonder if the authors have read it. That would clean up some of the problems, but it would end their belief in the co-evolution junk. JP Rushton's genetic similarity stuff would've helped, too. They cited some of his earlier cooperative behavior stuff, but not those papers. Not sure if there's gatekeeping going on, and if there is, who is doing it, but there's a line the book doesn't seem to want to cross...

[Neil Pasricha · Rating 2 out of 5]

A while ago I read chunks from The WEIRDest People On Earth: How The West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous. Stuffed to the gills with fascinating charts, ideas, and theories, I traced back the author’s other stuff and came upon this book which I thought might help illuminate some of the bigger issues around our dive-bombing trust levels. It’s a decent book but unfortunately only the first couple chapters offer much. The definition of cooperation feels off (“Cooperation occurs when an individual incurs a cost to provide a benefit for another person or people”) and then most of the book is actually a deep academic field study about an insular group of middle-class Iraqi Christians (called Chaldeans), living in metro Detroit, exploring their kinship relations, ethnicity, and traditions and trying to use that as a barometer for cooperation through generations.

[Per Kraulis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Argues for the hypothesis that human cooperation and culture must be viewed in an evolutionary context. Genetic and cultural evolution are two parallel processes that have affected the emergence of modern Homo sapiens. The propensity for culture has created a new environment for human genetic evolution. The authors discuss the limits of the usual explanations for human cooperation: kinship, reciprocity and game theory. These are valid, but insufficient, to explain all phenomena regarding human culture and cooperation. I find the exposition very readable. It combines an ethnography of the Chaldeans in Detroit with a review of the theoretical framework proposed by the authors.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a classic!