"Why can't a rhesus be more like a stump-tail?" was de Waal's question, and he set up a mixed colony. The stump-tails he chose were six months older than the rhesus, and a little bigger. At first the rhesus tried threatening the stump-tails, but they didn't respond. The two monkey species played separately and slept separately, in two big huddles. They groomed each other, however, a process encouraged by the fact that the stump-tails were enchanted by the opportunity to examine long rhesus tails.
Soon the rhesus and the stump-tails were playing and sleeping together in one monkey heap. Although the rhesus did not adopt stump-tail calls and gestures, they did succumb to their touchy-feely culture and increase their rate of reconciliation until it was the same as the stump-tails. When de Waal removed the stump-tails, the rhesus kept on reconciling, like nice little stump-tailed ladies and gentlemen. It would be interesting to know what would have happened if the experiment had tried to impose rhesus mores on stump-tails. Would they be as quick to become morose grudge-holders, sabotaging one another's chances at tenure?
Another glimpse of rhesus potential comes from an experiment in which male rhesus were left alone with strange infants. Although males usually ignore infants, these males were solicitous, picking the babies up. But if there was a female in the cage, she would take charge of the baby's care (Don't hold him like that! Support his head! My God, give him to me!), and the same male would revert to standard hands-off behavior, appearing uncaring and unhelpful.
The increasing focus on peacemaking and cooperation bears on one of the most perennially vexing areas of evolutionary psychology, that of selfishness and altruism, especially as expounded in Richard Dawkins' 1976 book, "The Selfish Gene." Unending confusion has been caused by Dawkins' use of the word "selfish," which switches between applying to individuals and meaning just what you think it means, you egotistical greed-head, and a very specific and different meaning invented by Dawkins and applying to genes -- being an entity subject to natural selection.
Similarly "altruism" sometimes has an everyday meaning that includes giving to charity and snatching strangers out of the path of the runaway train, and sometimes means "self-destructive behavior performed for the benefit of others."
Partly as a result of this confusion, and partly because of the old fondness for uncomfortable truths, it has been widely announced that there is no such thing as altruism: The thing is genetically impossible. If you donate a kidney to a relative, you're only doing it because you share genes with them; if you give money to charity, you're only doing it to show off, so people will admire you and further your genes; and, worst of all, if you give money anonymously, you're only doing it to feel good about yourself, so you will more effectively be able to convince others that you are a decent creature, you big hypocrite. (See Robert Wright, "The Moral Animal," for more on what self-deluded phonies we are, except maybe him.)
This confusion about altruism and selfishness is odd, considering that Dawkins can write with marvelous clarity. Why use metaphorical language that is so confusing and makes so many people upset? Well, it's certainly catchy. Perhaps there's also amusement in confronting people with the Uncomfortable Truth that everything they do is selfish. Andrew Brown, in "The Darwin Wars: How Stupid Genes Became Selfish Gods" (published in the UK, but not yet in the U.S.), suggests that when Dawkins was born "The good fairy gave him good looks, intelligence, charm and a chair at Oxford ... The bad fairy studied him for a while, and said 'Give him a gift for metaphor.'"
In the realm of altruism, another recent optimist is Lee Dugatkin, with "Cheating Monkeys and Citizen Bees: The Nature of Cooperation in Animals and Humans." The bulk of the book analyzes "selfish" reasons for cooperating with relatives, partners (you brush flies off my face and I'll brush flies off yours), teams (lions hunting large prey together), and larger groups such as tribes and nations. It also touches lightly on Dugatkin's own work with guppies. (Don't scoff -- these are wild guppies.)
Dugatkin is candid about his intellectual journey and how his views changed when he met his wife and when their son was born. Once, he says, "I was what I now refer to as a 'for the love of science' scientist ... I actually held those scientists who directed their work toward helping people in contempt. I viewed them as intellectual prostitutes ..." (He doesn't say he dashed about challenging people to face Uncomfortable Truths, but I bet he did.)
However, Dugatkin's marriage and fatherhood changed his perspective, and he is now determined to use his work for the benefit of all, and someday to share with his son "my thoughts on how ideas emerging from the study of animal cooperation might facilitate human sociality." (Why isn't this man roaming the streets hungry and homeless, hitting on women?)
Dugatkin charts evolutionary psychology along a political axis, arguing that liberals believe in the fundamental goodness of humans, and conservatives believe that humans are only good if taught to be so. This is nothing new -- the social sciences and biological sciences, insofar as they describe humans, are perennially politicized. Natural selection has a history of popularity with some who equate their own success with Darwinian fitness. (De Waal gives the example of how this "convenient justification of disproportionate wealth in the hands of a happy few ... led John D. Rockefeller to portray the expansion of a large business as 'merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God.'")
This formulation makes Dugatkin a conservative, and he is urgent that people be taught to be good. In his final chapter, he describes himself as deeply religious. While humans are "God's crowning creation," animals have instructive worth. "If animals are here to help us, why should it not be the case that they can help us understand how to be more cooperative? ... The beauty in this is that the animals need not even be cooperative themselves."
This pattern is common in works of evolutionary psychology: Hundreds of pages are devoted to the inescapability of "selfish" genetic mandates are followed by a quick upward leap, appealing to the unique human intellect, unique human morality, or in this case, the unique love of God, to get us out of this deterministic hole.
Throughout recorded history people have denigrated animals as other and inferior, soulless, mindless instinct machines. Evolutionary psychology alarms people by putting us in the same despised category as animals -- with the exception of those who go with the program, who understand and accept the uncomfortable truths of evolutionary psychology and thereby make an intellectual leap that places us above the genetic battleground. If we didn't place animals down so far, it wouldn't take such a vast leap to distinguish ourselves from them.
As befits a field that can't resist telling you what you're really doing when you think you're doing something else, the controversies of evolutionary psychology involve the motivations of scientists to a remarkable extent. Of course you think that, you're a liberal! Of course you think that, you're a man! Of course you think that, you want to drive me crazy! (Of course you think that, you're a human!) It's a bad sign for objectivity when knowing someone's political party, age or sex is likely to tell you where they stand on the issue of stump-tailed monkey destiny.
About the writer
Susan McCarthy is a San Francisco freelance writer and the author, with Jeffrey Masson, of "When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals."
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