“We are survival machines… blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes”

The picture of human nature painted by Princeton Professor and science journalist Robert Wright in his book “The Moral Animal: Why we are the Way We Are – the New Science of Evolutionary Psychology” is not a very flattering one.

According to Wright, the human animal spends its life desperately seeking status because we crave social esteem and the feel-good biological chemicals that flood our bodies when we impress people.

Though we claim to be independent thinkers who hold fast to our moral values no matter what the consequences, the reality is that we become self-promoters and social climbers when it serves our interest.

What generosity and affection we bestow on others has a narrow underlying purpose, aimed at the people who either share our genes or who can help us package our genes for shipment to the next generation.

We forge relationships and do good deeds for people who are likely to return our favors. We overlook the flaws of our friends and magnify the flaws of our friend’s enemies. We especially value the affection of high status people and judge them more leniently than strangers. Fondness for our friends tends to wane when their status slips, or if it fails to rise as much of our own and we justify this by thinking “He and I don’t have as much in common as we used to“.

Wright says that we do all these things, mostly unconsciously, because of the evolutionary roots of human behavior that have been passed down throughout the 2 million year evolution of the human species – these behaviors are programmed into our genetic molecules.

The book explores many aspects of everyday life while looking through the lens of evolutionary biology. It borrows extensively from Charles Darwin’s better-known publications (including On the Origin of Species) to provide evolutionary explanations for the behaviors that drive human social dynamics.

Below are just a sample of the provocative questions Wright tackles in his book:

Why are humans more monogamous than other animals?

The birth cycle of the human species, unlike most animals, takes a long time. Human mothers carry their babies for 9 months and their children require years of caring and development before they are capable of living independently.

Due to the long birth cycle, women only have a limited number of chances to pass on their genes to the next generation (about a dozen or so during their lifetime). Men, on the other hand, have unlimited chances to pass on their genes given enough supply of women.

From a male evolutionary point of view it makes sense that their genetic drive would be to have sex with as many females as possible. However, this is not in the best interest of the female. To increase the chances of survival, and the well being of her children, it was in the female’s best interest to select male partners who were high in a genetic trait that Wright calls “Male Parental Investment“. Men with high parental investment traits have loyalty characteristics that make them more likely to invest in a monogamous relationship with a single woman and their children.

Men who women perceived were more likely to stick around after their baby was born became more appealing to women and therefore more likely to successfully mate with them. As a result of this preference by females, the trait for high male parental investment evolved over time to become more genetically prominent in men across thousands of generations.

Why is a wife’s infidelity more likely to break up a marriage than a husband’s?

Jealousy is a natural emotion for human beings, but a 1982 experiment which asked participants to picture their partner either having sex with another person or forming a close emotional bond surprisingly showed that men and women experience jealousy very differently.

For the men, picturing their mate having sex with another person led to feelings of intense rage and anger while the idea of their mate being close friends with another male didn’t bother them as much. Women, on the other hand, showed the opposite reaction. They were much more distressed with the idea of their partner forming an emotional attachment with another woman than they were with the idea of one-time sexual infidelity. 

Wright attributes both of these responses to a natural built-in evolutionary reflex of the human species. It is the male’s unconscious desire to propagate their genes that drives their sexual jealousy. Picturing their partner in a sexual act with another man was enraging to them because of the possibility that another man could impregnate their partner, potentially resulting in them rearing a child that had another man’s DNA.

For females, it is not so much the thought of their mate having sex with another female that is upsetting to them; it is the danger that her mate will form an emotional bond with another woman and it will lead to him withholding some of the resources that her man provides to her and her children (so that he can share them with the new woman).

What makes a family prefer some children over others?

Wright claims that evolution has a role in influencing which child and specifically, which gender children the family prefers. Evolutionary psychologists explain that parents will tend to favor the child/gender that has the greater potential to carry on their family’s genes.

This ability to pass on genes historically differed based on what social class the family came from. In a poor family of low status, it was usually the girl who had a greater chance to marry “up” into a family that was wealthier. In wealthier families, it was the boys who were favorites to spread their family’s genes because of their power to find any woman or even multiple partners.

In a study of medieval Europe and nineteenth-century Asia, anthropologist Mildred Dickeman reported that killing females before their first birthday, was much more common among rich, aristocratic families than it was among poor and low-class families. And rich families much more frequently gave inheritances to their eldest son rather than their eldest daughter.

This evolutionary influence still carries on today. A 1986 research study of the island families in Micronesia found that low-status families spent more time with their daughters while higher status families spent much more time with their sons.

Why do humans have morals?

Why is it that humans seem to exhibit a higher sense of morals than other species? Is it because we are conditioned to do what’s right from a very young age, or is it something we are born with? If you ask an evolutionary psychologist, they’ll say that humans behave in a moral way simply because it helps us to fulfill unconscious Darwinian urges for the survival and propagation of our species. 

Our moral behavior is an evolutionary instinct from our past that helps us to survive while enhancing our image. In essence, doing good things for other people is to our advantage because it establishes a debt in our favor that we can cash in at a later date when we need help. For example, if you give food to someone who is desperately hungry, they are much more likely to assist you in the future when you need help to survive.

Wright refers to this concept as “reciprocal altruism“. Our altruism is not selfless. We will readily do good things for other people when it will improve our image and standing in the community or raise our overall social status.

On the other hand, we are not so quick to help others when doing good for others carries no benefit to us. It is clear that human moral sentiments are used with brutal flexibility, switched on and off in keeping with our self-interest.

Evolutionary Psychologists conclude that there is scientific evidence that what we do can be explained by the evolution of our species and the unconscious urges we have to pass on our genes. Altruism, compassion, empathy, love, conscience, the sense of justice — all of these things, the things that hold society together, the things that allow our species to think so highly of itself, can be shown to have a firm genetic basis.

That’s the good news. “Given that self-interest was the overriding criterion of our design, we are a reasonably considerate group of organisms”, says Wright. The bad news is that, although these things are in some ways blessings for humanity as a whole, we need to keep in mind that they didn’t evolve for the “good of the species” and aren’t reliably employed to that end.

Although I found this book thought provoking and many of its insights fascinating, I still like to believe that we are more than just animals doing things instinctually or robots running a program that was downloaded into us. I believe we are all endowed with a spirit that makes it possible for us to rise above our nature and resist the urges of what Biologist Richard Dawkins calls our “selfish genes”.

In the movie “The African Queen“, there is a scene where Humphrey Bogart claims that he can’t change his bad behaviors because “it is only nature”; but Katherine Hepburn responds smartly to the captain’s statement by saying: “Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”

May you experience all the benefits and wonder of our miraculous genetic past, but also have the strength of spirit you need to overcome our built-in selfish instincts and motives. If you can do this you will become more than human!

Kiss me, I’m 21% Irish…

For Father’s Day this year, I received an interesting gift from my step-daughter – an ancestry testing service that analyzes genetic markers in a person’s DNA to determine the likely geographical origins and heritage of their ancestors. All I had to do was spit into a tube and mail the sample to the lab. Two weeks later, a report of my genetic analysis was available for me to view online.

The science behind Genetics is complex and can be hard to grasp for the average person. In school we learned that all life is made up of cells and that inside those cells long strands of DNA molecules are compacted into thread-like structures called chromosomes. Human cells have 46 chromosomes, 23 inherited from the mother and 23 inherited from the father.

Image courtesy of National Cancer Institute

Located on the chromosomes are genes. Genes are molecules that act like instruction manuals in our body. Each cell in our body contains over 20,000 genes. Working together, these genes describe specific biological codes that determine which traits we inherit from our parents (like eye-color, nose shape, height and even behavior) .

Scientists tell us that the genetic code that are part of the DNA and RNA molecules inside all living organisms contains compelling evidence of the shared ancestry of all living things. Higher life forms evolved to develop new genes that support different body plans and types of nutrition –  but even so, complex organisms still retain many of the same genes from their primitive past.

Prior to having my DNA tested, my understanding of my ancestry did not go back very far. I knew only that my maternal grandparents were farmers who had emigrated from Canada to the United States in the early 1900’s and that my father believed his ancestors emigrated to America from Wales sometime in the 18th century.

I admit to a slight feeling of trepidation as I dropped my sample into the mailbox. I wondered what the possible side-effects of exposing the secrets of my genetic past could be – and how it might be risky to pull up rocks from time gone by when you can not be sure what may crawl out to bite you. Thinking about the words of the philosopher Edmund Burke who wrote: “People will not look forward to posterity, who never looked backward to their ancestors“, I pushed any concerns aside and mailed my sample.

Luckily, the results of my look backward in time were mostly in line with what I expected to find and only revealed a few surprises that made for interesting conversations with my family. According to the lab report, the DNA in my saliva had this to say about me:

• My most recent ancestors all came from the European region.
• I am 41.1% British & Irish, descended from Celtic, Saxon, and Viking ancestors. I most likely had a great-grandparent who was 100% British & Irish. This came as welcome news to my lovely lass Kathleen who was happy to learn that I shared some of her Irish heritage.
• I am 38.7% French and German, descended from ancient Alpine-Celtic and Germanic populations that inhabit an area extending from the Netherlands to Austria. I most likely had a great-grandparent, born between  1870 and 1930, who was 100% French & German.
• I am 3.8% Scandinavian, descended from the people of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland. I most likely had a third, fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh-great grandparent who was 100% Scandinavian and born between 1690 and 1810.
• My maternal line stems from the genetic branch T2a which traces back to a woman who lived nearly 17,000 years ago in the Middle East. Her descendants spread over the millennia from its birthplace in the Middle East to northeastern Africa and throughout Europe, riding waves of migration that followed the end of the Ice Age and the origin of agriculture. 1 in every 490 people share this common ancestor.
• My paternal line stems from a genetic branch called R-M269, one of the most prolific paternal lineages across western Eurasia. R-M269 arose roughly 10,000 years ago, as the people of the Fertile Crescent domesticated plants and animals for the first time.
• King Louis XVI and I have a common paternal ancestor who lived 10,000 years ago.
• Jesse James and I have a common maternal ancestor that lived 19,500 years ago.
• 244 Neanderthal variants (4% of my total) were detected in my DNA. This information will come in handy for those times when I try to explain to my wife the reasons behind my sometimes boorish behavior. Neanderthals were ancient humans who interbred with modern humans before becoming extinct 40,000 years ago. Fortunately, I have inherited a known Neanderthal variant associated with having less back hair.

The results that surprised me the most were the revelations of my Irish, German and Scandinavian heritage (which I was not aware of), my ancient ancestral connection to King Louis the XVI and Jesse James and the existence of Neanderthal variants in my DNA.

Those revelations were interesting, but surprisingly, the two biggest things I took away from this ancestry research activity are that: 1) more things unite us than divide us; 2) genetics is not destiny.

There are more things that unite us than divide us

Throughout history, humans have consistently focused on the ways that we are different. People have been categorized, judged and assigned value based on the color of their skin, their physical attributes and their culture.

But when you look at people through the lens of genetics, all humans basically belong to the same family.  Our bodies have 3 billion genetic building blocks that make us who we are; yet only a tiny amount are unique to us, which makes all humans about 99.9% genetically similar.

To put this into perspective, physicist Riccardo Sabatini pointed out in his TED talk that a printed version of your entire genetic code would occupy some 262,000 pages, or 175 large books. Of those pages, just about 500 would be unique to us. The genetic book of any two people plucked at random off the street would contain the same paragraphs and chapters, arranged in the same order. Each book would tell more or less the same story. But one book might contain a typo on one page that the other lacks or may use a different spelling for some words.

We’re mostly just all the same. But instead of embracing our genetic similarities, we cling to small visible differences as symbols of what makes us unique. How silly it is for us to carry racist or prejudiced beliefs that some people are somehow born superior to others.

An observation made by the character Susan Ward in the novel I am currently reading (“Angle of Repose” by William Stegner) points out how people can benefit when they keep an open mind, accept others and embrace diversity. Susan was raised as an elite intellectual in high class New York society. She went out to the Wild West after the Civil War to join her engineer husband who was surveying the Western lands. In an 1884 letter to her friend back east, Susan Ward wrote this about the Chinese cook they employed in their camp:

“When I first moved out here the sight of a Chinese made me positively shudder, and yet I think we now all love this smiling little ivory man. He is one of us; I believe he looks upon us as his family. Is it not queer, and both desolating and comforting, how, with all associations broken, one forms new ones, as a broken bone thickens in healing.”

Humans also share a remarkable amount of genetic similarities with all living things. This is because large chunks of our genome perform similar functions across the animal kingdom.

All life on Earth is related and shares a common ancestor. We are about 99 percent the same as our closest animal relatives, the chimpanzees. Humans, mice and many other animals shared a common ancestor some 80 million years ago; and humans and plants share many common genetic traits associated with growth, sexual reproduction, respiration and the need for water, oxygen, and other chemicals.

Knowing that all life is related in this way gives us reason why we ought to be respectful of life in all its forms.

Genetics is not destiny

The second thing I take away from this activity is that Genetics is not destiny. I understand that our genetic makeup has a big influence on how we develop and behave; and that “mistakes” that occur during genetic replication will hurt some people (by causing disabilities and diseases) and help others by increasing longevity. In a universe of blind justice there is no satisfactory explanation as to why certain people inherit “good” or “bad” genetic traits.

Beyond genetics though, our destiny is influenced in large part by the environment we were raised in and the choices that we make. It is possible to overcome unfavorable genetic natures if, while we are growing up, we are nurtured in a safe and supportive environment with access to adequate nutrition, education, and health care and we have respectful role models and mentors to help guide our steps .

Psychologists have long debated this “Nature vs Nuture” question. Some argue that nature is the greatest determining factor while others argue that nurture is more important in determining how we will turn out. Most now agree that it is a combination of both.

Knowing that all humans share 99.9% of their genetic code, it makes sense to me that the differences between people are more related to their environment than their genetics. Everybody’s genes are basically the same, but we are all have different experiences in how we were raised which can have positive or negative effects on our brain development.

It is comforting for me to think that we have a chance to change kids for the better simply by treating them better. That is something that we can each control – we can always strive to continue making improvements in our behavior and our society’s treatment of children; but we can’t change the genes we were born with.

The reason I initially undertook this genetic testing activity is because I was interested to know who I was and where my ancestors originated. In truth, the information I learned hasn’t really enlightened me that much about who I am or what path I should take in life.

What I really learned is that the most we can say about DNA is that it governs a person’s potential strengths and potential destiny. However, we mustn’t allow ourselves to be chained to blind fate or ruled by our genes. We must remember that despite our genes all of us have free will and can choose the type of life we want to live.