Homo sapiens is by far the most social species in existence, and outlived its sibling species through unprecedented cooperation – by meeting the needs of the many. What was the basis of this success? It was written in our genes…
Now that humankind has developed technology that allows us to observe the human brain while it’s operating, we’re beginning to make rapid progress in understanding how the mind works. And one finding in particular shines light on both our misunderstanding of the past and our problems in the present: we literally think differently from one another.
Recent studies in the neurological foundations of sociopolitical bias have set us on a path of discovery of brain differences that result in variations in both predispositions and behaviors, across a wide spectrum of cognitive features: creativity, risk aversion, empathy, response to authority, and a number of others. Put another way, there’s more nature than nurture in our social thoughts, feelings and behaviors: our paths are not set in stone, but neither are we born tabula rosa – there is great diversity to be found in the brains of any nursery full of newborns.
Of course, there is plenty of nurture in the mix as we grow. The predispositions we’re born with shape our responses to our social group as we learn to be part of it, but the social group itself provides the knowledge we need in order to express ourselves and interact with others. But more often than not, we are born into social groups that reinforce those predispositions nature has provided (more on this later) – nature and nurture are often singing the same song, when it comes to the shaping of our behavior.
Cognitive Diversity
Several areas of the human brain play important roles in our social predispositions, and it’s the study of these areas and how they vary that are opening up our understanding of cognitive diversity in human beings. Each of these areas can contain a range of tissue volume, and we are able to correlate that volume to ranges of social thought and behavior.10 The result is that there are several prominent combinations of variation in these areas which produce predictable social orientations and worldview. Put another way, there are several cognitive “types” of human beings, genetically determined, each with social predispositions that serve particular functions in a human group.
The anterior cingulate cortex. The ACC is part of the corpus callosum, the tissue which integrates the two hemispheres of the brain. Among other things, the ACC is a hub for the processing of social interactions,
empathy in particular; it facilitates error detection, monitors outcomes, and plays a role in action planning.
As such, the ACC is deeply involved in much if not most of our social behavior, playing a central role in evaluating our interactions and sending us signals when something is amiss.
The insula. The insula (insular cortex) is a kind of line judge for social emotion, calling out boundary violations. It regulates emotional response to disgust, which turns out to be strongly correlated to our core moral choices.11 These responses in turn feed into our evaluation of social behaviors in others, empathy, and processing of social emotions.
The amygdala. Part of one of the most ancient assemblies in the brain (the limbic system), the amygdala is actually a pair of components - one port, one starboard.
The starboard amygdala is where fear is processed, and where emotional responses to episodic memories occur, tying past events back to our feelings about those events.
Dopamine receptivity. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that ‘rewards’ the brain when good things happen. Not surprisingly, it kicks in as part of the cognitive equation in everything from creativity to sex to social media response. Dopamine produces a high, from which other brain processes then emerge.
Low receptivity to dopamine is the basis of ADD, the quest of the brain’s attentional mechanisms to scan for novelty in the environment, with all the emotional peripherals that implies. High receptivity to dopamine can result in anxiety, as the brain is rapidly satisfied with the stimulus at hand and desires no more – which also carries some emotional consequences.
There are others, but these are the big ones. Variation in these brain areas gives humankind a cognitive diversity that allows groups of human beings to solve more problems – and solve them more effectively – than any one human being could alone.
And since this variety is genetically transmitted, it’s been a feature of human social existence for a very long time.
Chuck and Roger in the Middle Paleolithic
Chuck is a young Cro-Magnon in the Middle Paleolithic, part of a tribe that hunts and gathers in South-Central Africa. Possessing a large ACC, a large insula, and a small amygdala – as well as having low dopamine receptivity - he is a skilled tracker, leading one of his tribe's hunting teams. He is inventive, adept at detecting patterns. He has found that his team performs best when they pool their insights and knowledge of environment, weather, and sign. He performs best, knowing that the portion of the tribe back at camp is safe; as a consequence, he could be called a risk-taker.
Roger is a member of Chuck's tribe. His cognitive features are the opposite of Chuck’s – smaller ACC and insula, larger amygdala, high dopamine receptivity. He has little aptitude for pattern detection but possessed of uncommon diligence and alertness. He works third shift, keeping the basecamp's fire going at night, which provides warmth within and protection from the predators without. He is uninterested in pooled insights or deliberation - he is a man of action. He is more afraid of the dangers around the tribe than most others, but this makes him the ideal security officer.
Chuck tends to take his time making a decision. When tracking a migrating herd, he and his team pick up on many signs and choose their course carefully. They are not impulsive, but deliberate. Roger and those like him, on the other hand, are very impulsive, very reactive; they have to be, because a single snapping of a twig in the shadows over their shoulders might signal the approach of a predator. That’s not a moment for lengthy contemplation.
Chuck seeks consensus; Roger issues and obeys commands. Chuck scans for opportunities; Roger scans for threats. Chuck responds to novelty, Roger to a safe status quo.
Chuck and Roger represent opposite ends of the cognitive type spectrum – they are as different as can be – but each fills an essential role in tribal survival; it is difficult to imagine human survival in the Paleolithic without them. And between them are people of still more cognitive types, each with a different combination of strengths and skills, each contributing something meaningful and different.
This mix of diverse reasoning styles, differing decision-making impulses and viewpoints was a tremendous survival advantage across hundreds of thousands of years, as early humans navigated an Ice Age landscape packed with flesh-eating predators. The meeting of the tribe’s needs, under such tense conditions, required more than just fast reflexes (though those were certainly important); it required diversity not just in skills, but in thought. We could not have survived without that.
And that hasn’t changed.
The Evolution of Cooperation
In his book Why We Cooperate, developmental psychologist Michael Tomasello addresses the following question: is cooperation between human beings a naturally emergent behavior or a learned one?
Either way, it’s great that it exists, but the implications for our thesis – that human beings possess the inherent goodness in which Gene Roddenberry believed – are profound: if the former, then we have within us what we need to achieve a fully humanist future; if the latter, then it will be a far greater struggle, getting where we want to be.
Tomasello begins by pointing to research12 demonstrating that infants as young as 18 months overwhelmingly attempt to assist adults whose hands are full. He cites this as one of five reasons to believe that this cooperative impulse in very small children is a naturally emergent human trait. It’s the first of five:
1. Very small children impulsively help others without prompting or training;
2. Parental reward does not alter the outcome of #1; the child will impulsively help with or without reward;
3. Chimpanzee infants exhibit the same behaviors;
4. Human children exhibit the behavior across a diverse range of cultures;
5. Experiments have shown that helping behavior in young children is mediated by empathy – they will tend to help an adult they perceive to be a victim before helping another.
Tomasello continues to methodically develop a portrait of cooperation as evolutionary, building toward this conclusion: “...the changes we see in human societies beginning with the advent of agriculture and cities are not due, on anyone’s account, to any kind of biological adaptation,” he wrote. “The changes would seem to be sociological only, given their recency and the fact that by this time modern humans were already spread out all over the glove (so that a species-wide biological change was highly unlikely). What this means is that most, if not all, of the highly complex forms of cooperation in modern industrial societies – from the United Nations to credit card purchases over the Internet – are built primarily on cooperative skills ant motivations biologically evolved for small-group interactions: the kinds of altruistic and collaborative activities that we have seen here in our simple studies of great apes and young children.”
We have good reason to believe, then, that the deep cooperation that a humanist future would require doesn’t need to be contrived; it just needs to be awakened.
Lost in Space
Genetic variety in both our ancient (limbic) and modern (cortical) brain components – those contributing to social reasoning, in particular – gives us a group of distinct cognitive “types,” each with different cognitive strengths and decision-making style. No one human mind can encompass the variety expressed by this range of distinct types; it takes a group of humans – a diverse group, with many persons of each type – fully express the potential of human reason and decision-making. And that potential, by evolution’s hand, is how humankind has managed to meet the needs of the many, since our beginnings.
The problem is… we’ve lost our way. Our modern social organization robs of us the value of the cognitive diversity that we absolutely will need to meet the challenges that threaten us, both today and tomorrow.
Comments