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

Family Values 507and offer to pay the hosts for his dinner. Inviting the hosts back the verynext night would not be much better. Tit-for-tat does not cement afriendship; it strains it. Nothing can be more awkward for good friendsthan a business transaction between them, like the sale of a car. Thesame is true for one's best friend in life, a spouse. The couples who keepclose track of what each has done for the other are the couples who arethe least happy.Companionate love, the emotion behind close friendship and theenduring bond of marriage (the love that is neither romantic nor sexual),has a psychology of its own. Friends or spouses feel as if they are in eachother's debt, but the debts are not measured and the obligation to repayis not onerous but deeply satisfying. People feel a spontaneous pleasurein helping a friend or a spouse, without anticipating repayment or regrettingthe favor if repayment never comes. Of course, the favors may betabulated somewhere in the mind, and if the ledger has become too lopsided,a person might call in the debt or cut off future credit, that is, endthe friendship. But the line of credit is long and the terms of repaymentforgiving. Companionate love, then, does not literally contradict the theoryof reciprocal altruism, but it does embody an elastic version in whichthe emotional guarantors—liking, sympathy, gratitude, and trust—arestretched to the limit.The facts of companionate love are clear enough, but why. did itevolve? Tooby and Cosmides have tried to reverse-engineer the psychologyof friendship by calling attention to an aspect of the logic ofexchange they call the Banker's Paradox. Many frustrated borrowers havelearned that a bank will lend you exactly as much money as you canprove you don't need. As Robert Frost put it, "A bank is a place wherethey lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when itbegins to rain." The banks say they have only so much money to investand every loan is a gamble. Their portfolio has to return a profit or theywould go out of business, so they measure credit risks and weed out theworst.The same cruel logic applies to altruism among our ancestors. A personmulling over whether to extend a large favor is like a bank. He mustworry net only about cheaters (is the beneficiary willing to repay?) butabout bad credit risks (is the beneficiary able to repay?). If the recipientdies, is disabled, becomes a pariah, or leaves the group, the favor wouldhave been wasted. Unfortunately, it is the bad credit risks—the sick,starving, injured, and ostracized—who most need favors. Anyone can