Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

Hotheads | 403tions. An animal must be able to grant a large benefit to another at asmall cost to itself, and the roles must commonly reverse. The animalsmust devote part of their brains to recognizing each other as individuals(see Chapter 2), and, if repayment comes long after the favor, to rememberingwho helped them and who refused, and to deciding how to grantand withhold favors accordingly.Humans are, of course, a brainy species, and are zoologically unusualin how often they help unrelated individuals (Chapter 3). Our lifestylesand our minds are particularly adapted to the demands of reciprocalaltruism. People have food, tools, help, and information to trade. Withlanguage, information is an ideal trade good because its cost to thegiver—a few seconds of breath—is minuscule compared with the benefitto the recipient. Humans are obsessed with individuals; rememberthe Blick twins from Chapter 2, one of whom bit a police officer but neitherof whom could be punished because each benefited from reasonabledoubt that he and not his twin did the deed. And the human mind isequipped with goal-setting demons that regulate the doling out of favors;as with kin-directed altruism, reciprocal altruism is behaviorist shorthandfor a set of thoughts and emotions. Trivers and the biologistRichard Alexander have shown how the demands of reciprocal altruismare probably the source of many human emotions. Collectively theymake up a large part of the moral sense.The minimal equipment is a cheater-detector and a tit-for-tat strategythat begrudges a gross cheater further help. A gross cheater is onewho refuses to reciprocate at all, or who returns so little that the altruistgets back less than the cost of the initial favor. Recall from Chapter5 that Cosmides has shown that people do reason unusually well aboutcheaters. But the real intrigue begins with Trivers' observation thatthere is a more subtle way to cheat. A subtle cheater reciprocatesenough to make it worth the altruist's while, but returns less than he iscapable of giving, or less than the altruist would give if the situationwere reversed. That puts the altruist in an awkward position. In onesense she is being ripped off. But if she insists on equity, the subtlecheater could break off the relationship altogether. Since half a loaf isbetter than none, the altruist is trapped. She does have one kind ofleverage, though. If there are other trading partners in the group whodon't cheat at all, or who cheat subtly but less stingily, she can givethem her business instead.The game has become more complicated. Selection favors cheating