Economics has long found itself in the dock, accused of being the imperial discipline conquering all other social sciences. The profession must now face having the tables turned and being taken over by a new science that will include standard economics as a special subsection. Just as Einstein’s theory of relativity turned Newton’s theory of gravity into a special case, so evolutionary psychology contains utility theory as one very useful but limited paradigm.

Gary Becker is, of course, correct; economics is a powerful tool for understanding human behavior. It lacks, however, the theoretical foundation that would give it validity. Moreover, various anomalies continue to plague it. This paper contends that incorporating evolutionary thinking can explain the anomalies while providing a theoretical underpinning for demand theory.

An evolutionary approach assumes that most universal human traits, especially those also found in other animals, are the product of natural selection. Since people appear to have an unlimited demand for wealth, income, and power, evolution or culture must have produced those desires. Since cultures differ greatly and have evolved themselves over tens of thousands of years, it would be remarkable if, without any genetic basis, all human groups manifested the same desire for riches. The fact that people in all known human groups have wanted material goods indicates at the least a genetic predisposition to shape the culture towards acquisitiveness. The economists’ utility function, which reflects these desires, is likely to be a product of natural selection. If the assumption that people desire unlimited wealth does not derive from evolutionary pressures, what is its origin?

Neanderthals, probably our nearest cousins, apparently had no desire for goods. Early humans, including Neantherthals, used no jewelry, paintings, art objects, or elaborate tools, such as hunting weapons. (Mithen p.135). Neither material culture nor ritualized burials were part of their life style. Our ancestors were evolving for the millions of years during which there is no hint in the archeological record of a material culture. Prior to modern man, it would seem that a utility function that included acquisition of goods did not exist. Evolution, however, must have found it useful or today’s people would not exhibit such behavior. The idea that such a utility function is simply natural cannot be sustained in light of the evidence that man’s ancestors had no such function.

Between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago, however, our ancestors in an explosion of culture developed painting, elaborate tools, jewelry, and art objects. The economist’s utility function was born. These individuals crafted jewelry as a means of conveying status and group affiliation. Archeologists have uncovered one body buried 28,000 years ago, for example, of a 60 year old man, whose clothing was festooned with beads.(Mithen p. 174-75). Clearly this was an important person; his burial garments indicates that social stratification was consequential well before modern society developed.

For over a hundred years, psychologists have debated the relative importance of nature (genes) over nurture (environment). The new evolutionary paradigm accepts the view that, while cultural factors determine much of human behavior, genetics also plays a major role. High quality corn seed, for example, will produce a great yield in Iowa but very little in Arizona. Had Mozart been born in the highlands of New Guinea, the world would lack much great music. On the other hand, given my lack of musical ability, being born in eighteenth century Vienna would not have produced even another Salieri.

Although genes do not determine outcomes, they may set limits or influence behavior. Nor does nurture or culture fix destiny. No matter how my parents had spent on piano lessons, I could never have become a concert pianist. Nature and nurture interact in a complex unfathomable way to make people what they are; the interplay left me a concert goer, rather than a performer.

Our genetic inheritance, however, does play a significant role in determining many typical human behaviors. Neural scientists, such as Joseph LeDoux, psychologists, and evolutionary scientists have shown that many human emotions that drive conduct are part of our genetic inheritance. LeDoux (1966) has demonstrated that fear has a strong instinctual basis; reactions to perceived danger are hard-wired by our genes. Influenced of course by the person’s history and current environment, other common behaviors have a strong genetic component as well. Alex Kacelnik of the University of Oxford has found that starlings discount future food rewards (Kacelnik 1996). Behavioral ecologist Marc Hauser of Harvard shown that monkeys have simple numerical skills very similar to those of human infants (Williams 1997). Steven Pinker of MIT (1994) has described in detail how the human mind has evolved to employ a structure for the understanding and utilization of language.

Since human cultures vary so much and many have been isolated for hundreds to thousands of years, many psychologists assume that common factors appearing in all human societies have, in all likelihood, a genetic base. Economic behavior is found in all societies: people trade, seek more goods, and invest for the future. As Kacelnik has found other animals in addition to humans discount the future. Evolution shaped what economists dub the utility function; it has also framed and limited the "economic" man.

The objective of this work is to integrate the approach taken by economists to microeconomic behavior into an evolutionary perspective. Integration will provide, as Martin Daly and Margo Wilson contend, a more robust conceptual framework than received doctrine, one that has the additional advantage of clarifying and rectifying certain anomalies in utility theory. It will put utility theory on a solid foundation based on evolutionary principles.

The problem challenging economists has been to educe a science based on first principles, that is, a paradigm free from subjective judgments. They looked to psychology for a foundation but failed to find a satisfactory theory. Hedonic psychology, that is, the theory of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, and behavioral psychology, which considers only the observed behavior of humans, have both proved fruitless. The new field of evolutionary psychology, which theorizes that human nature evolved to maximize inclusive fitness in early man, however, provides a more robust theoretical construct that explains much of human behavior, including economic actions. This new approach furnishes a theoretical basis relying only on evolution and selection pressures to maximize reproductive fitness. No longer must economics depend on introspective analysis, a subjective approach which has been shown in psychology to be unreliable, unhelpful, and misleading (LeDoux, ch. 3). Evolution supplies a well-grounded justification for income, wealth, and power as key components of the utility function.

For decades economists and others have wrestled with the problems of human choice (see Lewin 1996). In the nineteenth century, theorists developed the concept of utility as a measure of well-being. Since then utility theory has gone through many metamorphoses, from concepts of cardinal utility to the adoption of ordinal rankings. Economists first developed the concept of marginal utility but this implied being able to value people’s well-being. Subsequently they developed indifference curves, which did not imply the measurement of utility but simply the ability to compare. From an empirical point of view this was no more satisfactory than marginal utility analysis since, in practice, there was no way of estimating indifference curves.

Dissatisfaction with a simple utility function based on goods and services goes back many years. Since Lancaster (1966), economists have tried to generalize the utility function to include basic needs or desires. In "On the New Theory of Consumer Behavior," Becker (1976a, p. 137) discusses reformulating the consumption function to include certain basic needs or wants. He quotes Bentham as having offered fifteen such basic "simple pleasures." Marshall offered only two: distinction and excellence. (Marshall Principles of Economics, Book III, Chapter II.) Nevertheless, as Hirshleifer (1980, p. 652) points out, "in the ‘new theory of consumption,’ the provenance of our underlying deeper desires remains an unanalyzed mystery."

In expanding on what should be represented in the utility function, Becker writes (1976a, p. 144) that there is no useful theory of tastes. He goes on to say: "In the standard theory all consumers behave similarly in the sense that they all maximize the same thing – utility or satisfaction [or perhaps fitness]. It is only a further extension then to argue that they all derive that utility from the same ‘basic pleasures’ or preference function, and differ only in their ability to produce these ‘pleasures.’" (p. 145). Writing a few years later, Epstein shows that a theory of tastes can be developed. He points (1980 p. 670) to the pressures of natural selection as "apt to play a powerful role in the formation of dispositions and tastes in the individual organism." Herbert Simon (1992 and 1993) also notes that the wealthy, powerful, or famous can have more progeny than those who lack those goods. In other words, selection pressures, manifested through greater reproduction by those who exhibit tastes that foster fitness, shape the utility function.

In a prescient footnote in a paper published two years before E.O. Wilson penned Sociobiology – the work that pioneered the field of evolutionary psychology – Becker writes (1973, p. 145, n. 2): "To venture one further step, if genetical natural selection and rational behavior reinforce each other in producing speedier and more efficient responses to changes in the environment, perhaps that common preference function has evolved over time by natural selection and rational choice as that preference function best adopted [sic] to human society." Here Becker seems to be assuming that evolution has promoted the survival or well-being of the species, whereas natural selection works on the genes and on the individual animal. At the same time, that preference function which would maximize reproductive fitness in primitive man would not necessarily or even likely be the best adapted to [modern] human society.

Not only utility theory but the literature relating firm behavior to evolution has its roots in the 19th century. "Social Darwinism," widely expounded in the last century, has been largely discredited after it was used to "justify" greedy capitalistic behavior and the tendency of the rich to get richer. Although social Darwinism was largely correct in using evolutionary models to explain social stratification among humans, it then made the leap of claiming that what evolution produced must be desirable. In this Panglossian universe, might is right! More recent works have been based not on normative criteria but have consisted of positive expositions of market phenomena; they make no claim that monopolies or wide disparities in income are necessarily always desirable results.

An extensive number of economists have related economics to evolution (e.g., Alchian 1950; Houthakker 1956; Arrow 1972; Becker 1973, 1974, and 1976a and 1976b; Hirshleifer 1977, 1980, and 1985; Epstein 1980; Winter and Nelson 1982; Simon 1990, 1992, and 1993; Bergstrom and Stark 1993; Stark 1995; Rose-Ackerman 1996; Robson 1996; Bergstrom 1996). In the main these works have related evolutionary concepts to industrial organization questions, such as the birth and death of industries and firms, or to questions on the fringe of economics, such as altruism. Certain of these authors, in particular, Becker (1976b), Hirshleifer (1980), Epstein (1980), and Simon (1993), have related the utility function to selection pressures. In addition, Bergstrom and Stark (1993); Stark (1995); and Simon (1992 and 1993) have associated utility theory with evolution.

Gary Becker (1976b) appears to have been the first to specify a utility function that depended only on genetic fitness. In that paper, in which Becker addresses directly the role of sociobiology, he stipulates a production function for fitness as f = aX, where f is fitness and X is consumption goods. The production function for fitness can be viewed as the utility function developed through evolution. Becker goes on to employed this devise to analyze altruistic behavior. He gives the fitness function for individual h as:

f_h= f_h(X_h,t_h;S_h,E_h), (1)

with X_h being his goods and services, t_h being time spent to produce fitness, S_h being his stock of skills and other human capital, and E_h his environment. In cases where both parties gain, he shows that in certain circumstances it would pay for a selfish individual to act altruistic towards a benefactor. The increased income of the benefactor would lead him or her to be more generous to the selfish one.

In addition to Becker (1976b), Jack Hirshleifer (1977) appears to be among the first economists to apply "sociobiology" to economics. Hirshleifer (1977) also relates the utility function to fitness:

He goes on to explain kin selection and altruism within the family, in addition to what is often called reciprocal altruism . Hirshleifer recognizes clearly that economics and the social sciences generally are a branch of biology.

Sociobiologist (Wilson 1975) and economists Jack Hirshleifer and Gary Becker (1974 and 1976a), as well as others, have all employed evolution to "explain" intra-family altruism. Since children receive half of their genes from each parent, it will pay a parent to benefit its offspring, whenever the improvement in fitness for the child is more than double the loss to the parent.

Evolutionary psychology – also called "sociobiology" – contends that the selection pressures that faced primitive human beings shaped certain human behavioral patterns. Scientists agree that the pressure to spread our genes shaped our physical bodies and our brains. The new paradigm argues that, over millions of years, evolution molded human nature, a product of the mind (Wilson 1978). Human tastes formed millions of years ago, however, are not necessarily optimal for the modern world. Many people, for example, over indulge in calorie laden foods, including sugars. In a calorie-scarce world, such behavior made good evolutionary sense. In the modern Western world, it can lead to obesity and early mortality.

The evidence that genetics plays a major role in human behavior is overwhelming. Studies (Plomin et al 1994) comparing identical to fraternal twins show that alcoholism, autism, major affective disorder, reading ability, memory, neuroticism, vocational interests, violence, and hyperactivity, as well as a host of other disorders have a significant genetic component. Almost weekly, researchers report finding genes related to various diseases. Scientists (Hamer et al 1993) have found evidence that genes play a role in determining sexual orientation.

Other studies (Hedges and Nowell 1995) have demonstrated that males score significantly higher on tests relating to mechanical and instrumental skills, such as auto and shop information, electronics, and mechanical reasoning. In more basic abilities, the difference in average values between the sexes was small, but women did significantly better in reading and writing while men did a little better in math and science. In all fields, however, the variance of scores was significantly greater for men than for women. The practical implications of the greater variance have a wide scope: males will make up a much larger proportion of the mentally deficient, especially those with literacy handicaps, as well as a higher proportion of those who enjoy exceptional mathematical and scientific ability.

In addition, many anthropologists (Wrangham and Peterson 1996; Nishida 1991; Manson, Joseph H. and Richard W. Wrangham 1991; de Waal 1982) have documented, in non-human primates, social behavior that resembles closely that of men and women. Male chimpanzees, for example, sneak into the territory of other tribes; if they find a single male, they attempt to kill him. If they discover an unguarded female, they kidnap her and bring her back to their territory. This type of behavior is found, not only among primitive hunter-gatherer societies but also among teen-age gangs in the United States.

Frans de Waal in a remarkable work, Chimpanzee Politics, shows that our nearest relatives exhibit behavior quite similar to that of modern humans. These apes make short term alliances, break them, form new relationships, all with the aim of achieving alpha status, that is, the premier chimp. By doing favors, by helping the hapless, and by stroking potential allies, they curry favor. In return they receive aid in tribal disputes or in securing access to females.

Evolutionary scientists claim that a practice followed by all known societies is likely to have roots in natural selection. The separation of various human groups over a hundred or more millennia has allowed them to develop many unique customs; yet all humans retain certain characteristics. As Darwin pointed out, human facial expressions are the same around the world: all people, including small babies, smile when they are happy; when sad, all humans have the same look of distress.

Dawkins (1976) has coined the word "meme" for cultural evolution. Although culture can and does change over time, more quickly than genes, and will respond somewhat to selection pressures, most human cultures are well above subsistence, so selection may now be less effective in changing cultural norms. Ethnologists and historians have documented, at least from a modern viewpoint, many dysfunctional cultures. The Aztec civilization, for example, with its huge number of human sacrifices, was thriving when Cortés arrived. The conquistador, by making allies of those tribes who were the sources of the Aztec sacrifices, was able to overthrow Montezuma’s more numerous troops. The Mayan civilization may have died off because poor agricultural practices exhausted the soil, leading to environmental degradation.

All cultures must meet the demands of genetics. How people satisfy traits derived by evolution differs greatly, but they must procreate, meet dangers, and eat. Within the bounds of satisfying those demands, cultural developments, while not totally arbitrary, are almost impossible to forecast or explain. Cultural drift within genetic limits may be random.

The nuclear family, for example, often found with multiple wives and in a few cases with multiple husbands (usually brothers), is common to all human groups. As Darwin noted, anger, generosity, acquisitiveness, pride, murder, and altruism are characteristics found everywhere. Wilson (1975), Daly and Wilson (1988), and Wright (1994) all stress that many of these evolved behaviors, while fitness-enhancing when humans were hunter-gatherers, are not necessarily so today. In addition, the environment, human as well as natural, has a major effect on human action. Although our genetic heritage may predispose young males towards violence, for example, changing incentives and environmental conditions can restrict such unwanted action.

The basic hypothesis afirms that our behavior is shaped to improve the likelihood that, in a primitive hunter-gatherer society, we would reproduce our genes. Those individuals who followed policies or customs that resulted in passing their genes to the next generation met the fitness test. Simply having offspring was not enough. The children had to live long enough to reproduce themselves. Moreover, since an individual shares half his or her genes with siblings, it might pay (in a fitness sense) for one person to sacrifice fitness in order to aid his or her siblings in passing on their genes. The more individuals who have genes that encourages helping relatives, the more people who will inherit those traits that lead to successful reproduction and the willingness to sacrifice for one’s brothers and sisters.

Sons and daughters share half their genes with their parents. On average nephews and nieces have one-quarter of the genes of their uncles or aunts. In algebraic terms, if the loss of fitness to A is a from some act and the gain to relative B is b, then genetic fitness is enhanced if a < rb, where r is the proportion of genes they share. As Hirshleifer puts it (1977, p. 21), "any individual should be willing to give his life to save two of his brothers (since full sibs have at least half their genes in common), or four half-brothers, or eight cousins, etc." Although such a sacrifice may look like altruism, it really enhances fitness, for the sacrifice heightens the probability that the individual’s genes will survive and spread. An ostensibly more selfish approach would lower inclusive fitness.

Evolution is interested only, which is simply a manner of speaking since evolution has no objective, in reproducing genes (Dawkins 1976). It is indifferent to the well-being or the happiness of an individual or the survival or prosperity of a species. An animal that is miserable, however, may lose its will to live and reproduce, so evolution has made humans tolerant, even content, under most circumstances, including poverty and sickness.

Two essential points require clarification. People have a range of abilities, tendencies, drives and temperament. Although evolutionary psychology may suggest and evidence support the proposition that teenaged and young adult males will be more aggressive than either teenaged girls and young women, this does not mean that all such males will be more aggressive. Some girls will be more aggressive than some males. Some males will be very mild mannered. Each sex will reflect a distribution of militancy with the mean of the males being more combative. The only claim – justified below – is that the median of aggressiveness for young males will be greater than the median for young women (or older men). Wilson (1978, p. 128) asserts that "History records not a single society in which women have controlled the political and economic life of men." The greater aggressiveness of young males is not necessarily desirable. We must not, of course, confuse "is" with "ought."

According to anthropological research, human beings are a mildly polygynous species; of 849 different societies, polygyny was legitimate in 83 percent (Daly and Wilson 1988, p. 132). Darwin noted that among most species the greater the disparity in size between the females and the males, the more polygynous the species. Male gorillas are typically twice the size of the females and only the most successful fighters among male gorillas mate, but they copulate with many females. Among humans, men are on average somewhat larger than women, indicating, as does the anthropological evidence, a mild tendency towards multiple mates. In many societies, this has taken the form of polygyny; in the modern industrialized world, it is reflected in serial monogamy.

For all male animals, fathering an offspring involves little cost. The implications are straightforward. As Robert Trivers points out, "the general rule is that female investment leads to female choosiness and male lack of investment leads to male-male competition" (1985, p. 204).

Women have a limited reproductive potential; they produce about 400 eggs in their life while men generate almost limitless sperm (Wilson 1978, p. 124); childbearing years are restricted. In addition, a pregnant woman must carry the fetus for nine months, then nurse and nurture the child for many years before it can survive on its own. No other species produces offspring that are so helpless and need care for so long. Especially in the hunter-gatherer societies that constituted human and proto-human societies for a million or more years, females, while caring for an infant, were too heavily burdened to forage successfully for themselves and their offspring. They needed help during childbearing and rearing; even today with government aid and modern technology, being a single mother is difficult.

As a result of these biological constraints, which evolved through hundreds of thousands to millions of years, male and female reproductive strategies differ. Each sex follow a mixed but different strategy. The modern world is too new to have affected these basic instincts. Given the long period that children must be cared for and the resulting age-old biological restrictions placed on women’s ability to care for themselves and their children on their own, women still look for men who will be able to provide for them and their offspring.

In contrast, since each successful copulation boosts the likelihood that a male’s genes will be passed on to the next generation, most mammalian males want to impregnate as many females as possible. If they impregnate other women besides their wife(s), they may produce children and those women may get help from other men (who may or may not think the children are theirs) or those females may succeed in raising their sons and daughters on their own. In any case, the probability that the male will successfully pass on his genes is above zero and worth the low cost of copulating outside of marriage (provided his adultery is undetected or unpunished).

Human males are unlikely to maximize their reproductive fitness simply by impregnating many females. Since single mothers in a primitive society had very poor prospects for successfully raising children, males had to provide long term support for their mates and their offspring in order to give them a chance to mature. The need to support mothers and their progeny for many years obliged men in hunter-gatherer societies and even today obliges them to establish long-term relationships. They must provide support for their mates and their children at least until their young mature to the point that of being able themselves to reproduce. Men are programmed by their genes to form families. Hence they fall in love. Love leads to marriage and marriage to family and children. Even where parents choose their children’s mates, marriage often leads to love, and almost always to families and children. Every society in the world has contained families as the basic unit of the community to raise those progeny (Daly and Wilson 1988, p. 187).

Since children have a better opportunity to grow up with the help of a father, men have evolved to love and care for one or a few women and the resulting offspring. Nevertheless, given an opportunity to have sex with another woman, many men will take it. A woman on the other hand is more careful in choosing a mate. To maximize her fitness potential, her mate must be a good provider and someone who will remain loyal to the family. She will look, therefore, for evidence that he can support her and the children well.

Moreover, she will be less willing to indulge in a temporary liaison since this is likely to damage her future fitness, even if it does not result in any issue. Since men can never be certain that any children are theirs, they are particularly sensitive to evidence that a woman is or will be faithful. Evidence that a woman is promiscuous increases the uncertainty that any baby a woman bears will be her husband’s offspring. Raising someone else’s progeny leads to genetic death. Consequently a man will be less willing to make a long term commitment to a woman whom, he suspects, has been engaging freely in sex outside of marriage. The uncertainty of paternity explains the double standard and why so many societies put a very high premium on a woman’s virginity at marriage.

Once married with children, playing around with other men becomes even more risky for a woman. If a man cannot be confident that his spouse’s children are his, he may desert his wife and her young. In addition, since the number of children a woman bears is independent of the number of her mates, females gain only a little fitness advantage by extra-marital affairs. She may diversity her genes by copulating with another male. Nevertheless, the potential cost of losing her mates support constrains her. Consequently women will be more discreet and probably less promiscuous than men; they have more to lose and little to gain in terms of fitness while men can almost always gain by cheating.

A few women may choose a promiscuous life style in which men provide payment for sex. Although this is less likely to advance fitness as well as a good husband-provider, it may be the best solution for low status women with poor prospects in the marriage market.

In summary, men and women have different strategies and look for different qualities in a future spouse. Although they are generally unconscious of the primal source, those strategies are the result of a long evolutionary development. A typical woman is principally concerned with the ability and willingness of a future husband to provide well for her and her progeny. She seeks a male with high earnings or earnings potential or one with power and/or status. Men on the other hand seek a mate that is young and healthy, so that she can bear many children. The best evidence of youth and vigor is physical attractiveness. Consequently men are less concerned with the intelligence or earning power of a future mate and more concerned with her beauty. Women care less about the age or handsomeness of a male and more about his economic prospects.

Male and female behavior reflect these different outlooks. In many animal species, females only mate with males which bring them gifts, usually of food, prior to copulation (Dunbar 1996, p. 46). The male is required to make an investment, which makes abandoning the female after copulation more expensive. In the Western world, a man woos a woman with gifts, dinners, and entertainment that exhibit a willingness and ability to spend on her. This costly commitment reassures the prospective bride that the man has the income to support her and her children and will remain loyal to her. Leaving her for another requires a whole new investment. Women on the other hand tend to be more concerned with their looks. They emphasize clothes, hair, and make-up, and generally go to much greater lengths than men to increase their physical attractiveness.

Economists have long recognized that married men earn more than those who are single. Most have attributed the difference to marriage encouraging men to work harder, be more responsible, and to take steps to increase their productivity. Evolutionary psychology suggests, however, that men who are potentially higher earners will be chosen by women as their mates. Christopher Cornwell and Peter Rupert have found that marriage per se does not boost earnings but that those with high earnings are more likely to get married in the next few years (1997).

The payoff for the sexes differs. Presumably in the groups from which humans evolved and in most existing primitive societies, almost all women mate and almost all have children. During her life, a woman may at the outside produce about twenty infants. In many if not all hunter-gatherer societies, successful males could acquire more than one wife, while others would go wifeless. An alpha male with many consorts can produce dozens of offspring while a low status man may have no progeny. The variance in the number of offspring produced by women is much smaller than the variance in the number fathered by men. This makes the stakes higher for a male. Men face a considerably larger variance in their reproductive success.

According to the Guinness Book of Records (1979), an emperor of Morocco, Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty (1672-1727) holds the record for the largest number of children, 888. As a consequence, many men in 18th century Morocco must have gone without access to wives or to offspring. Their genes died with them. On the other hand, according to the Guinness Book of Records (1996), the most fertile woman in recorded history gave birth in 27 confinements to 69 children. This Russian woman, the wife of a peasant, produced 16 pairs of twins, seven triplets, and four quadruplets in the period 1725 to 1765. Her extraordinary number of offspring nevertheless totaled less than 10 percent of the number fathered by Emperor Bloodthirsty. Moreover, she deprived no woman or man of an opportunity to pass on their genes.

In many primitive societies these sex differences become vary obvious. A census of a Yanomamo Indian village in southern Venezuela found that four older men had between 41 and 62 grandchildren each while many older men had none (Jones 1993, p.122). Older women, however, had roughly the same number of descendants.

Let us consider in greater detail the mating strategies of the two sexes (see Wright 1994). Males in virtually all polygynous species compete for females. In the case of gorillas, the strongest and most aggressive simply gathers a harem and protects his females from other apes by brute strength. In others species, including Homo Sapiens, the females may play more of a role in choosing their mates. For human females, the male must not only be a good provider but willing and able to defend her and their children. Males, not only in human, but in all polygynous species, compete for access to females by fighting and by staged evidence of bravery and vigor. For humans these behaviors are all too evident. In almost all known societies young men must exhibit courage and aggressiveness in order to be successful. Young males fight amongst themselves. The winners have access to more girl friends and to more mating opportunities than the losers.

The statistics demonstrating the violent nature of young males are overwhelming. As Wrangham and Peterson (1996) put it:

Clearly all young males are not violent. Humans respond to their environment. If the route to being an "alpha male" lies through academics, then boys, at least those who may do well, will compete for grades. Young human males who are unwilling or unable to compete academically are likely to resort to gangs and violence. Our evolutionary history shows violence as typical among male primates in the struggle to be on top (Wrangham and Peterson 1996, chapter 10).

Altruism has always been a puzzle to any science, whether economics and evolutionary psychology, postulating that individuals act in a selfish manner. Altruism as it is used here and in most of the other literature includes behavior that helps others but also profits the perpetrator. Acts which benefit others at a loss of fitness without compensation seem rare, hard to explain, and may be almost nonexistent.

Many economists such as Becker (1974 and 1976) simply assumed that altruistic people include in their own utility function the well-being of other individuals. Beyond recognizing that most people are more likely to include their kin’s utility than that of strangers in their own, economists have had little to say about why innately selfish humans should be kind to strangers. Altruism has also puzzled evolutionary biologists who assume that all life acts as if it were programmed to promote its fitness in terms of maximizing its genetic contribution to future generations.

Economists, such as Hirshleifer (1977), and evolutionists have postulated that altruism could spring from reciprocity. Reciprocal altruism, however, suffers from the "free rider" problem. If others are kind, there is an advantage to cheating by failing to reciprocate. Some have argued that altruism increases the fitness of the species; but, as many have noted, free riders would destroy the universality of such altruism. As the selfish prospered at the expense of the altruistic, selfish genes would increase even if the species as a whole were better off being altruistic.

Robert Axelrod (1984 & 1987), a political scientists, has resolved this difficulty. His research on game theory has shown that reciprocal altruism was a stable and robust long-run solution to the prisoners’ dilemma game (Wright 1994). Axelrod’s work, based on an iterative game, indicates that a Tit-for-Tat (TfT) policy – that of being "nice" on an initial interaction with a strange individual, with whom ones expects to have frequent future relations, and then simply repeating the moves of the other player – can be in many cases the best long run strategy. TfT mimics the biblical "an eye-for-an-eye," "a tooth-for-a-tooth," but seasons it with generous measures of forgetting and forgiving. Assuming that the iterations go on for an indefinite or unknown time and that the discount rate is not too high, the strategy is stable and brings the best long-run rewards.

Axelrod invited computer scientists and individuals, some of whom were economists and most of whom had worked on game theory, to submit a program for an iterative "Prisoner Dilemma game." The game was set up to have on average around 200 iterations. The payoffs were the usual: defecting while the other cooperated gave the defector T more than the sucker’s S. If both cooperated, each got R, which is less than T and more than S. If both defected, they each got P which is more than S but less than R. The rankings then are T>R>P>S. The actual payoffs used by Axelrod are shown in the table below.

Taken from Axelrod (1984), Figure 1, p. 8.

The research involved two cycles of the game. In the first round, fourteen programs were submitted and run against each other and a random player. The simplest rule – Tit-for-Tat – which requires cooperation on the first move and then cooperation or defection depending on its partner’s last move, earned the highest score. Moreover, all the top scoring programs were also "nice" in that they began with cooperation. Those computer codes, however, did not do quite as well as TfT since they were not as forgiving.

The second round involved 62 entries from around the world. All knew of the outcome of the first round, yet TfT won again. As in the first round, being the first to defect was costly. Of the top 15 rules, all but one were "nice." Axelrod also ran an evolutionary tournament in which the number of copies of each program depended on how well it scored in the previous generation. If one rule earned twice the score of another, for example, in the next round it would be twice as well represented. The results of the tournament, which mimic the results of an evolutionary process, showed that TfT took the lead fairly early and its margin continued to grow through 1000 generations. Again the "nice" programs all did well while the "mean" rules all eventually perished.

The results show that if the discount rate is low enough and the probability of meeting the individual again is high enough, choosing to cooperate on the first iteration and following the TfT strategy will typically bring the best outcome when playing against many other strategies and over time will come to dominate other strategies. (Axelrod 1984). A strategy of everyone’s attempting to cheat everyone else is also stable. If everyone defects, then even an individual who attempts to try cooperation cannot prosper. However, if a small group of individuals follow a TfT strategy, they will do better than the cheaters who will each receive P while the TfT-ers will earn R, R being greater than P. In that circumstance those who follow the TfT strategy will spread over time either because in an evolutionary context they will prosper and reproduce more often or because others see the benefit and copy the strategy. Moreover, those who follow this simple rule are immune to an invasion (or mutation) by an evil cheat. The defector can make a little profit on the first non-cooperative move, but from then on the cheater suffers.

In summary, this research has demonstrated that under certain conditions players – computer games, insects, bacteria, or humans – who adopt a rule of being nice by initially cooperating but who will punish cheaters by not cooperating every time the other does not cooperate, do better than the nasty types. This is also a stable strategy which can easily spread from a small number who follow it. Since TfT is such a simple program – in round one it had only four moves – chance variations could easily evolve such a rule.

In terms of human evolution such an outcome seems likely. Since cooperation among kin will enhance fitness, evolution predicts that kin will be altruistic towards each other. When a parent aids his or her child, the parent gives his or her genes a better chance to reproduce. A small group of close relatives would be likely to evolve a tendency to cooperate. Brothers would help brothers; first cousins would help first cousins. As a consequence, a genetic tendency towards cooperation with others could develop. Although cooperation might be confined initially only to those known to be close kin, it seems likely that it could easily spread to include more distant relatives and then to other tribal members. Since it increase the well-being of its owners, such a mutation will be stable.

According to Axelrod’s findings, a small initial group of cooperating individuals is stable and will produce greater gains than non-cooperation in the hostile outer world. The family with a gene for cooperation, taking the form of love and family loyalty, will prosper over others without such a gene. Over time this gene will then spread throughout the population. As the group widens, the gains will spread and the genetic tendency towards a TfT strategy becomes broadly distributed. Psychologists have found that people do act this way. They have shown that people respond positively to someone who is nice and with hostility to someone who is negative (LeDoux 1996, p. 62).

Tit-for-Tat will only be profitable in cases where individuals expect to meet each other frequently in the future. Economists are familiar with this argument: firms that deal regularly with a stable group of customers or suppliers are unlikely to cheat them since they will lose their custom if they do so. Individuals who deal with each other on a continual or frequent basis also follow unwritten rules of honest behavior.

Such behavior is not confined to the market place. People give support to others without the expectation of immediate repayment. Members of a tribe of proto-humans a million or so years ago would help fellow hunters who failed, were hurt, or became sick. Evolution of a TfT strategy built in an expectation of reciprocity. Reciprocal altruism thus became the basis for moral behavior. A whole tribe would help its unfortunate, each member expecting that others would help them. If a tribal member failed to help those in need, those who expected aid would be angered and might seek retribution. At a minimum other members of the tribe would feel an injustice had been done and might harbor resentments.

Evolution employs emotions as its instruments to make people behave. Such feelings are often so powerful that simple willpower is powerless to overcome them. Charles Darwin showed the strength of these basic feelings through an experiment at the London Zoo. He pressed his face against a thick glass plate in front of a puff adder, determined not to jump if the viper struck. When the snake attacked, Darwin reported that he "jumped a yard or two backwards with astonishing rapidity. My will and reason were powerless against the imagination of a danger which had never been experienced." (LeDoux p. 112).

To insure that people play the game, evolution has instilled emotional feelings of justice: "I cooperate, you cooperate;" of anger: "you cheated, you defected;" and of forgiveness: "forgive and forget." Being "nice" by being benevolent is fitness enhancing as is the feeling of justice. Guilt may be a mechanism that keeps people aware of the possibility of retribution for having failed to be "nice." As Wright (1994) points out, guilt manifests itself most often when the culprit is in danger of being exposed. Feelings of guilt may also act to prevent defection.

As economists are well aware, a reputation for honesty can promote exchanges. A person meeting an individual who is well respected will feel safe that he or she will not be cheated and that the honest individual will not defect. Businesses attempt to convince their customers of this through many strategies, such as building a brand name, stressing how long they have been in business, or that they have been certified by some credible group. In a similar manner, humans try to create an image of trustworthiness, honor, or a willingness to take vengeance for perceived injuries. To protect one’s honor and respectability is a common human desire. A reputation for vengeance can reduce the probability of being cheated. A reputation for honesty can induce others to act benevolently towards the individual because benefactors can feel confident that they will be aided when they request help.

Nevertheless, a game of TfT in which one player, A, cheats, followed by the retaliation of the second person, B, leading to A retaliating again produces the all too common example of a feud. Unfortunately this behavior is obvious in much of the world: the Arabs and the Israelis, the Irish and the English in Northern Ireland, the Serbs and the Muslims in Bosnia; the Greeks and the Turks in Cyprus. In all of these cases it is hard to restore a feeling of trust. Each player believes the other should make the first move to cooperate; when one does, the other greets it with suspicion, believing it to be inadequate.

As with any characteristic, being "nice," that is, a willingness to offer friendship or cooperation to strangers, will take on a range of values. A small proportion of the population will greet strangers with friendliness and open-handedness. Others will be very suspicious of those who are new and unknown. Selection will insure that on average people offer to cooperate on the first meeting and then continue to cooperate as long as others do. But human beings will exhibit a wide range of behavior. Some will attempt to cheat on the first or on an early exchange. Those people may actually profit if they are able to avoid retaliation by finding new players unfamiliar with their past behavior. Thus "drifters," people who move around a lot, will be suspect. Since drifters are difficult to distinguish from honest immigrants, all newcomers may be suspect.

On the up side, some people may be so nice that others easily take advantage of them or they may provide goods to people who, they know or suspect, will never be able to repay them. A small percentage of the population gives to unfortunate people in circumstances under which the givers are unlikely to receive a benefit. Only 9 percent of the U.S. and 6 percent of those in the United Kingdom, for example, give blood – without compensation – both voluntarily and anonymously (Arrow 1972, p. 347). Most people who give blood, however, let their friends, neighbors and families know, enhancing their reputation for altruism.

Although reciprocal altruism, reflected in TfT, provides a basis for building a moral code, it breaks down very easily. Misunderstandings can all too easily lead to feuds. TfT also fails when a game is considered to have only a single round or to be ending. The stable solution in those cases is for both parties to defect.

Consider two primitive hunters, one of whom is attacked by a wild and ferocious animal, such as a saber-toothed tiger. The second person could come to the aid of his partner but only at some risk to himself. If he simply runs away, he lives to spread his genes while his dead partner cannot retaliate. If he helps, both may survive although the helper runs the risk of being killed as well. It is most likely that the second hunter runs from the scene.

Wars between tribes can also result in situations where self-preservation may be preferable to aiding a colleague. A tendency to run, however, will reduce the long run fitness of members of the tribe. Those tribes that work together and fight together are likely to win and secure women as a prize. If there were a moral feeling that encouraged bonding and tribal solidarity, members would be more likely to take risks to help each other. Paul Samuelson made this point many years ago (1958 p. 481):

Geese and ducks fly in flocks, often traveling in military procession; many types of fish swim together in large schools; bison, antelopes, and giraffes travel in herds. Humans congregate in tribes. A few stray males may become hermits, but single family units cannot survive. Being a member of a tribe increases individual fitness.

For our species and for many others, there is safety in numbers. Many animal species that are subject to predation find safety in numbers. Groups provide safety to their members in several ways (Dunbar 1996, pp. 17-18). The larger the group, the more eyes and ears available to detect predators and the more arms to fight them. In addition, predators can easily become confused over which animal to attack when there are many prey bunched together. Trivers (1985) reported, for example, that the probability of a wood pigeon’s being eaten by a goshawk plummets from 20 percent when its is alone to 0.2 percent when it is with fifty other pigeons.

Lions, tigers, hyenas and other large carnivores preyed on early humans. Early man also preyed on smaller animals or scavenged. Groups of these hunter-gatherers had a much higher success rate than a single individual. Although proto-humans must have feared attacks by lions and other larger predators, their chief threat was probably other hominid tribes. The larger the size of the tribe relative to others, the more secure its members and the greater the ability of it to successfully maraud and steal females. But larger groups are less stable than smaller associations. Consequently mechanism that would help promote group loyalty would be favored by evolution.

History shows that our human ancestors evolved over time to live in larger communities. Anthropologists have reported a growth in the size of hominid bands: on average australopithecines lived in groups of 67 individuals; communmities of homo habilis numbered about 82; homo erectus tribes consisted of 111; homo sapiens bands contained 131; the Neanderthals lived among 144 others; while modern human tribes number 150 (Mithen p. 133).

Since large groups had greater reproductive success than smaller, evolutionary pressures developed to insure the social coherence and sustainability of larger groups. A large group, however, has greater problems of coordination and maintaining social cohesion. It becomes harder for any one individual to achieve dominance and therefore reproductive success. New alliances will continue to erode his authority. Dealing with these social problems requires increased intelligence. Steven Mithen (1996) and Robin Dunbar (1996) argue that the most important factor leading to the development of intelligence was the necessity of socialization. In other words, in groups where interrelations are important, evolution would drive intelligence towards better skills in manipulating one’s fellows. Language developed as a means of stroking more than one individual at a time. Although part of this evolutionary push would be towards managing ones fellows it was also important to maintain social cohesion. The larger the group, the more difficult it was to assure that all members or even most members would be willing to sacrifice to assure the success of the tribe. If the tribe itself is to be viable, all members must work together, especially when the group is threatened. Free riding is a major problem.

Group loyalty could easily have evolved from loyalty within a family which was then enlarged to include a larger group – the whole tribe – some or many of whom could be related. Knowing kin from non-kin could not be easily programmed into the genes so being inclusive of the entire tribe would be a simple step. At the same time, if loyalty applied to everyone, it would increase fitness for all within the tribe. While evolution might predispose people to bond, the group with which they affiliated had to be learned. Bonding can, therefore, occur among virtually any collection of people with a common purpose or relationship.

Groups can be any identifiable set of people: clans, tribes, clubs, religions, nations, ethnic groups, speakers of a language, organizations, such as businesses, professions, or specific trades. People can and usually do belong to more than one group. Humans build loyalty to these various coteries and can often be called upon to help the association as a whole or people involved with the group. The wider, the more open, the more general the group, the less will be the loyalty it generates to the group. Closely knit cliques with features setting them apart from others are more likely to claim great solidarity than a multi-ethnic society such as the United States. Paradoxically much of what is good about human society and what is most damaging can be traced to group loyalties.

Tribal bonding is ubiquitous. Herbert Simon (1992, p. 77) points out "the central role in economic behavior [of] group loyalty." He (1992 and 1993) notes that business firms are not simply a collection of independent, selfish individuals; those employees usually identify with the goals of the organization and are loyal to it. In the modern world, outside of the market place, bonding can take the form of loyalty to one’s school and its football team, adhesion to a military unit, fealty within clubs, ethnic and religious solidarity, and language group attachments.

Would such bonding be evolutionary stable? Samuelson (1993) proves that in some circumstances group selection can overcome prejudicial individual selection. Bonding with others appears to be one of those cases. Evolution does not work at the group level, but at the individual. As social species such as ants, most primates, lions, wolves, and birds show associating together increases the probability of each member passing on his or her genes. Consequently to the extent that evolution can promote close association, especially with larger aggregations of individuals, it can increase individual fitness.

A number of practices strengthen group loyalty. As Dunbar (1996, p. 45) points out free riding can be minimized by making the joining of an coalition costly. Leaving the group means abandoning his previous investment and requiring a new investment with a new association. Although economists often argue that "sunk costs are sunk," men and women seem reluctant in practice to ignore prior investments.

Whenever group loyalty can be tested or measured in advance, the solidarity of the association is likely to be stronger. If bonding rituals are frequent, for example, individuals showing a high degree of tribal solidarity can be rewarded with status while slackers can be considered just that and subject to social pressure and ostracism. Being excluded from the group is a serious punishment. Since status pays in terms of fitness, the evolutionary incentive is to unite. Females will evoid mating with men who fail to show sufficient group solidarity. If her mate failed to help the tribe in times of emergency, her kin would probably suffer as well as unrelated individuals. As a result, those that are nonconformists are unlikely to attract desirable mates.

Free riding, that is, associating with the group when it pays but when undercutting them when it doesn’t, is always a danger; but, to the extent that people fear losses from leaving or betraying the group, solidarity is strengthened. Virtually all people, from children to criminals to nations, consider betraying the group a very serious sin. Evolution has instilled in people a strong abhorrence of and anger towards those who are disloyal. Even those who quit a business and move to a competitor face the charge of betraying their former colleagues and are likely to find themselves ostracized by their previous business acquaintances.

Bonding appears to be strengthened through the use of symbols and rituals. College teams have mascots, school songs, school colors. The military parades in uniforms, carries flags, plays martial music. As Ridley (1997, p. 190) points out, "Hymns, football chants, national anthems, military marches: music and song were probably associated with group-defining rituals long before they served other functions." Clubs have initiation rites, secret passwords, rituals, and restricted sanctuaries. Religions have rites, gods, buildings or places that are sacred. Ethnic groups have customs, clothing, and practices that set themselves apart from others. Skin color, the shape of one’s eyes, and other identifiable physical traits can be the basis for a strong association. Unfortunately, bonding tends to result in a mentality of "us versus them," the cause of much of the strife in the modern world. As E. O. Wilson writes (1978, p. 119):

Language can be a strong mechanism for bonding. Each tribe can and often develops its own dialects. Dunbar points out (1996, p.168) that "someone who speaks in the same way as you do, using similar words with the same accent, almost certainly grew up near you, and at least in the context of preindustrial societies, is likely to be a relative." Identifying membership is made easy. A person listening to a speaker can easily know whether he or she belongs. Such tests have been often used in war time to identify spies who fail to pronounce correctly certain words, names or terms.

Developing new speech styles, strange terms, or unusually ways to pronounce words provides a mechanism for identifying membership. The foreigner, who is never as trusted, can be easily recognized. In this context the development by inner-city African American teenagers of a dialect – Ebonics – is understandable as a process of building and assuring group loyalty. Its purpose is to make it more difficult for members to leave the group and for others to masquerade as members. American homosexual groups also employ (Wilson p. 143) an "argot of hundreds of words and expressions," presumably to identify each other.

Most closely knit cliques make membership expensive in order to make leaving the association costly. Hassidic Jews, for example, require adherence to a strict dress code, as do Mennonites, devout Muslims, Buddhist monks, Catholic nuns, and the military. Such trappings, by making the wearers distinctive, reinforce the sense of exclusivity. Social intercourse becomes confined to those who are members. Resigning or leaving the order implies giving up those relationships, especially since the remaining members will consider the renegade a traitor.

Anyone who has lived through a natural disaster, a major emergency, or a significant threat to life and property knows that during that time of strife an extraordinary feeling of solidarity and willingness to work together develops. People who have experienced this often treasure the sentiment and regret that it cannot be maintained in ordinary times. That feeling is obviously fitness enhancing. It stimulates people to subordinate their usual emotions and to work for the common good, thus protecting the tribe or group.

Threatening a faction strengthens its members loyalty. The threat need not be physical; it can even be the menace of assimilation into a larger culture or the loss of one’s own heritage in that of one more dominant. As a result, a clique that makes itself more distinctive increases the likelihood that others will discriminate against it. Although the unusual group naturally deplores and objects, with reason, to such behavior, the discrimination strengthens the feelings of being threatened and increases the solidarity of the group.

Group identification and loyalty may explain secret donations to further the coterie’s interests, self-sacrifice, and the paradox of voting (Simon 1992). Voting, in particular, cannot be considered a rational economic action. As we all know, voting costs something, a little time at the least. Since the probability of affecting the outcome is very close to zero, why vote? If one votes, why vote for higher taxes? Group loyalty, however, may induce people to go to the polls and lead them to vote, not for the narrowest of their interests, but for what is, in their view, in the interest of the group.

Although religion generally lies outside of the realm of economics, certain speculations seem germane. There is indeed historical precedent for such musings. Adam Smith in both the Wealth of Nations and in The Theory of Moral Sentiments addressed the subject. Gary Anderson (1988, p. 1069) reports that Adam Smith claimed that "one of the most significant functions of religious belief was to provide strong incentives to follow moral structures that helped to support civil society, that is, honesty, benevolence, restraint from violence, and so forth." Smith believed that the concept of God acted to enforce moral conduct. Smith also argued that religion provided a mechanism for guaranteeing reputation and moral certitude.

Ethnologists and anthropologists have found religion in every society in the world and everywhere in the historical record of man. A random drift of human cultures fails to explain such an ubiquitous phenomenon. It seems likely that religion arose because it promotes human survival and fitness. As Smith pointed out, religion can enhance reputation, which can be a strong force in assuring cooperation. Acting "Godly" or being a devout member of a religion can promote a belief in a person’s moral character. Adam Smith thus supplied one major factor explaining the ubiquitousness of religion. Given religion’s strong appeal, other factors may contribute to its hold on human emotions.

Some have explained religion as providing an explanation for natural phenomena that primitive people found miraculous or inexplicable. This hypothesis, however, fails to explain why religion persists in this modern age where science has removed most of the mystery of the origins of life or the causes of natural occurrences. Two polls of scientists, eighty-one years apart, found (Larson and Witham 1997) that about 40 percent of these learned individuals in both periods believed in

Strikingly the proportion of biologists, physicists, and mathematicians who believed in this very personal god had not changed significantly despite of the tremendous expansion in our knowledge about the origins of the universe, the development of life, and the evolution of humans. Over two-in-five physicists and astronomers still believe in this personal God. On the other hand, a belief in human immortality had fallen from 51 percent to 38 percent over the period and a desire for immortality had plummeted to 10 percent from 34 percent.

Faiths usually offer more than special rituals. They normally provide sanctuaries, employ certain specialized individuals to lead the group, and advance a belief in some supernatural power that can affect the lives of the followers. A supernatural power is often called upon to defend, to help, and to divert tragedies or to provide some special dispensation.* Most religions are unique to a tribe, a small group of tribes, an ethnic group, or a nation. Even modern religions tend to be area-specific; the United States and other societies built by immigrants are the exception.

Religion appear also to have arisen, at least in part, as a mechanism to foster group solidarity. As Herbert Simon (1992, p. 76) put it: "Beliefs about rewards and punishments after death, which are present in one form or another in most religions, provide an important example of the support of altruism …" Faith can strengthen an ethic of aiding others, especially those who are in the group – the tribe, congregation, or nation. If all members of the tribe are induced by religious dogma to help each other, their genes may be passed on in greater numbers than in tribes which have failed to develop strong group bonds.

Members of religious groups often refer to other believers as "brothers" or "sisters" and to the leaders of the faiths as "fathers." God is often referred to as "father" or in this day "mother." By tying adherents together with family terms, one strengthens the bonding. In the same vein, patriots use the term "fatherland" or "mother Russia."

Religions, including Christianity, virtually always stress the difference between the in-group and the heathan. The murder of people from other tribes or religions has only recently been considered wrong. After Joshua slaughtered the women, children, and men of Ai, he built an altar to the "Lord God of Israel" and "wrote there upon the stones a copy of the law of Moses," including the prohibition "Thou shall not kill." Since the people of Ai were not considered part of the chosen people, Joshua was not being hypocritical. Margaret Mead made the same point: murder is only wrong when it involves a member of one’s own tribe (Ridley 1997 p. 192).

Most creeds offer surcease from fear: fear of the unknown, fear of nature, fear of sickness, fear of death, and from the grief over the loss of dear ones. Love is a strong emotion designed to wed mates and to promote bonding between infants, children and their parents. When death of a loved one devastates a person, religion provides much needed comfort by promising an afterlife. Providing people with this sympathy and reassurance that they will see their departed again strengthens their faith and willingness to meet the ethical goals fostered by the religion.

Religion also relies on symbols, pageants, music, and rituals to reinforce adherence to the faith. As Pavlov demonstrated, humans and other animals can be trained to respond to arbitrary stimuli. Although he and other researchers have shown that animals and humans can be made to respond to optional symbols relating to fear and hunger, the same learned reaction appears to occur in other situations. For example, a snippet of a song connected to one’s youth, courtship, or family may bring a feeling of nostalgia. A religious chant, a prayer, a particular service may provide a feeling of awe, ecstasy, or unity with the world. The need to bond and the fear of the unknown, combined with symbols which trigger religious feelings, may work together to create cults, religions, and faiths.

It seems plausible that the tremendous need filled by the Church, the Synagogue, the Mosque and the Temple is very likely to be connected with the evolution of group loyalty. A joint feeling of awe of a supernatural force, combined with common ceremonies, rites, music, and art, can strengthen group solidarity. Sacrifice to a being special to the congregation may reinforce a collective inner experience. Pageantry, music, and rituals – all work to intensify a feeling of transcendence. The great importance of reinforcing group solidarity, which helps explain the strong feeling for religion, may also go far in explaining the origins and development of art and music. They may have developed simply as a mechanism to strengthen the emotional attractiveness of religion.

The approach of evolutionary psychology not only provides a more fundamental basis for utility theory but suggests certain modifications to established economics. Although these changes will not revolutionize the discipline, they do give new insights into human behavior, including man’s participation in the market place. I have sketched several of the main implications; others will surely discover additional lines of inquiry.

Economists have simply postulated a utility function which assumes that more goods and services are desirable. Evolutionary psychology can provide a firmer foundation for this hypothesis. In a primitive society, the more goods commanded, the greater the ability to secure a desirable mate or mates and to raise children successfully. Men especially have sought greater wealth because it brought them access to more women and enhanced their ability to support larger families. As a result of the greater rivalry among men for mates, explained above, males on average possess a stronger drive to succeed in the market place than women, even though there are, of course, many exceptions of women with strong ambitions.

Although technology, especially contraceptives, and economic growth may have made obsolete many of these evolutionary drives, they persist. Men fight, take risks, and go to great lengths to acquire wealth. The evolutionary motivation was to continue the genetic line; the immediate aim was to copulate. No longer does that automatically result in offspring. Even though many women can raise a family on their own, they still look for a husband who can and will support them and their children. The genes teach that income, wealth, prestige, and status all improve reproductive success.

In mathematical terms evolution would maximize not a utility function but a fitness function:

where F is inclusive reproductive fitness as measured by the ability to secure reproduction of the individual’s genes, G is economic goods and services, P is prestige or status, and O is other attributes that increase reproductive success. Holding other factors constant, individuals will desire to have more goods and services – the economist’s paradigm. It is important, however, to recognize that more goods and services are only one of a large number of factors that can increase fitness. Prestige can be just as effective.

People do desire more goods and services, but they do so because it enhances their chances of reproductive success. They desire high income since it attracts a mate and because it provides the resources to raise their offspring in a way that will allow them to mate successfully. For a male to tempt a female, he must offer more resources than his competitors. The man with the highest income in his society is the alpha male. The absolute level of income, which is significant only if one is near subsistence levels, is less important than the relative level.

The psychological and sociological literature supports this implication. The evidence fails to sustain the assumption that people prefer more income because it increases their happiness. Even though real incomes in the U.S. have more than doubled since 1960, surveys of reported happiness show no gain over this period. Does anyone believe that people today are much happier than they were in 1900? Suicide rates over this century, which should reflect any improvements in personal satisfaction, have remained roughly constant.

Sociologists have found that riches fail to increase happiness significantly, except for those in very poor countries where many are close to subsistence (Campbell, Converse, and Rogers 1976; Cantril 1965; Veenhoven 1984; Ingelhart and Rabier 1986; Lykken 1996).* To the extent that rich people report somewhat greater happiness than those who are poor, the assertion reflects expectations. If a person is doing better than he or she expected, that person reports that he or she is happier. The converse is true for people doing worse than expected. Clearly there are more people doing better than expected among the rich and more doing worse than expected among the poor.

Humans apparently have a "set point" for contentment to which they return over time. Happiness for any individual appears not to change much throughout his or her life. Recent research (Lykken 1996) has found that people have a set level of happiness from which they deviate temporarily only as a result of pleasant or unpleasant surprises.

As mentioned above, Darwinian forces are indifferent to such concepts as happiness. In order to ensure that humans reproduce, however, evolution has coded humans to experience a modest level of contentment irrespective of their economic or social position. Except temporarily, a growth in income will not boost a person’s feeling of well-being.

If more goods and services make people no happier, why do they struggle so hard to acquire them? Those goods and services increase their fitness or at least did so when humans were evolving. Most men and women fail to recognize this motivation, but selection pressures have produced the quite rational desire to acquire greater wealth or greater status. That urge is basic. In hunter-gatherers societies tens of thousands of years ago, artifacts were used to establish dominance, social position, and "group affiliation" (Mithen p.139), all of which promoted reproductive success.

At one time, increased wealth meant the difference between successful reproduction and failure. In pre-industrial societies, the higher the income of the father the more likely his children would survive to adulthood (Dunbar 1996, p. 186). Goods are still sought because even in the modern world they enhance reproductive success. Circumstances have altered; the drive remains the same.

Relative wealth, however, is what matters once an individuals earns more than subsistence. Competitive striving has often driven species evolution. Trees, for example, are tall because those plants whose leaves are above the others are more directly exposed to sunlight. Scholars have sometimes referred to this as the "Red Queen" effect, after Lewis Carroll description in Through the Looking Glass: "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." The race to be the alpha male through acquiring the more wealth than the others, over time led to economic growth but not necessarily to greater happiness.

That the desire for wealth is not really strongly related to the purchase of goods and services is clear from practices found around the world. Northwest Indian tribes, for example, celebrate the potlatch during which individuals compete in giving away or destroying their goods and services – thus sending a message that they can well support a family. Many very rich people give away much of their accumulated wealth. Professor Oded Stark (1995 p. 6) suggests that this may be the result of notions that inequities in income are somehow unfair. Evolutionary thinking, however, presents us with a more robust explanation, one that fits with the impression that many very rich men have exhibited little compassion or feeling of guilt during their lives. The important aspect of acquiring riches is so that others, especially women, know that you have the ability to provide well for them and for any children.

Big charity is rarely anonymous. A quick count by the author of the donors to the San Francisco Opera in 1996 found that fewer than 3 percent were anonymous. Such gifts may be attributable less to the donor’s wish to hide his or her generosity than a desire to cloak the meagerness of the contributions, relative to the wealth of the donor. A recent list in Slate magazine reported the largest 60 individual contributors in the country. Although there were some anonymous givers that would have made the list, what is surprising is how frequently the donor specified a building, a program, or a chair be named after him or her or after a close relative. Thorstein Veblen (1899) was right when he claimed that the rich indulge in conspicuous consumption. To the extent that some actually give anonymously, they are the exception and such a pattern is unlikely ever to become dominant in society. The few that do so have much stronger genes for being "nice" than others or have been exceptionally well trained. Even then, the failure of communist governments to produce the "new" selfless man, suggests that strong cultural mores are still unlikely to produce many Albert Schwietzers or Mother Teresas. Both of whom have achieved, incidentally, world renown and major status.

Evolutionary psychology also suggests that demand curves may not always, in all ranges, be negatively sloped. People, especially males, may buy goods simply because they are expensive and exhibit their wealth (Bagwell and Bernheim 1996). Why do some consumers purchase Rolex watches, Rolls Royces, or expensive furs? Certainly not because they need these items: a $10 watch from a drug store can keep time as accurately as a Rolex; a Mercedes Benz will run as well as the five times more expensive Rolls; a downlined coat can keep the wearer warmer than a fur. Those high-priced goods show that the individual can afford to be extravagant.

This approach also implies that individuals feel competitive only with their peers. Wealth and prestige are important for attracting mates and competition for mates occurs only between equals; relative standing is what is significant. The fitness function set forth in (2) should be modified to include the relative position of the individual in comparison to his/her counterparts:

Fi = F(Gi, Gjs, Pi, Pjs, O) (3)

;

where the fitness function is for the ith individual in comparison with his/her peers, js.

The Slate survey reported above came as a response to a complaint that the Forbes list of the richest people discouraged the wealthy from giving because they were reluctant to jeopardize their standing on the list. According to a report in the San Jose Mercury News (December 13, 1996, p. 2C) Wall Street firms were awarding "gargantuan" bonuses. The news account taken from The New York Times, however, described the mood as sour. The article reported:

Economists compete for prestige within the economics profession. Indian peasants compete with other local farmers and probably only with others of the same caste. Inhabitants of poor Third World countries are unlikely to feel hostile or envious of those in the wealthy industrialized world. It is important, however, to keep up with or exceed the Joneses!

Why do labor unions press for uniform wages that increase only with seniority? Perhaps they minimize friction by reducing jealousy among the workers. It is common for almost all employers to keep salaries secret. On the other hand, the earnings of CEO’s in comparison to minimum wage workers, while sometimes evoking comment, fail to arouse the public wrath – minimum wage workers are not competing with CEO’s for mates. In other words, the utility function should include relative wage and status, not the absolute level.

Note that status may be as beneficial as income in securing a mate and promoting fitness. Although we live in a society officially monogamous, very successful males often have several wives over time. Henry Kissinger once said that "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." Johnny Carson, many movie stars, and a large number of rich men have "enjoyed" a series of wives. As Elizabeth Taylor illustrates, women, if rich enough, can also indulge in this practice. Given biology, however, serial marriage will do little to it enhance their fitness once they are past their childbearing years.

As Becker (1976, p. 10) asserts, couples seek a divorce when expected utility from becoming single or marrying someone else exceed the loss from the breakup of the marriage. Evolutionary thinking illuminates the issue. Men continue to be fertile for their entire lives. From an evolutionary point of view, therefore, men are tempted to seek new partners who can propagate their genes when their mates reach menopause. In 1996, for example, Luciano Pavarotti divorced his 59-year-old wife of many years for a 26-year-old who has many fertile years ahead. Men may not be consciously aware of this motivation; they may simply feel they want a younger spouse.

Moreover, since post-menopausal women cannot contribute to the fitness of a mate, they are much more likely to be single in their later years (Bergstrom 1996, p. 1917). One study found that divorced men were three times as likely as women to remarry (Da Vonza and Rahman 1994). These scholars also reported that widowers are much more likely to remarry than widows. Of those 65 to 74 years old, 80 percent of the males are married but only 54 percent of the woman (Statistical Abstract 1995, p. 55, Table 59). In part the higher marriage rate for elderly males results from the greater mortality rates among men, but it also indicates that older women are less attractive mates because they cannot advance fitness.

Marriages also fall apart when one or both parties find themselves disappointed in their expectations of what the marriage would bring. Couples discovering that the family income is less than expected often become disenchanted with the relationship. Since more low income than high income families are likely to contain individuals who expected that they would do better, the divorce rate is inversely related to income.

Status as well as income can contribute to fitness, so many people, especially males, are attracted to high status professions, such as politics, academe, and the clergy, which pay less than other fields. Although there is no reliable data on the relative frequency of sexual philandering among male politicians, newspaper reports certainly make it appear more frequent than among those in less powerful posts. The lurid accounts, of course, may simply reflect a media bias that the sexual activities of the politically powerful are more newsworthy than those of the ordinary citizen.

As mentioned above, evolutionary biology explains why young men are more aggressive and fight more amongst themselves than either older males or women of any age. The payoff in terms of access to females is, or was in primitive societies, so high for successful risk taking that many young men even today are still very risk prone. Taking risks boosts one’s status and thus access to females. Economists have sometimes puzzled over why young males seem to act irrationally by failing to take precautions, by indulging in dangerous sports or activities, by aggressive behavior, or by defiance of authority. All of these actions are likely to increase the availability of women and hence the fitness, albeit at some risk, of the young men. Criminals, as Becker (1976, ch. 4) has shown, are risk preferers; they are also, especially violent law-breakers, mainly male.

To illustrate the much more risky behavior of men, the table below shows the death rates per 100,000 population from accidents and violence (suicide and homicide) for men and women. The year is arbitrary, but any year would show roughly the same pattern. The table shows that males die at much higher rates from accidents and violence than do females. Males are two to three times more likely to die in an accident. At all age groups males are much more likely to die from either violence or accidents. Men are at least three times as likely to die from motor vehicle accidents than are women. Insurance rates for young male drivers have for years been extraordinarily high; they were much more reasonable for young girls until equal treatment laws mandated equal rates. Traffic fatality rates for young males between 21 and 24 are over three times those for females in the same age group (Motor Vehicle Facts & Figures 1995). At every age from 16 on up to 55, male auto fatalities are at least twice those of females.

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States 1982-83, Table 118, p. 79

The much decried failure of women to reach the highest levels in business, politics, and scientific research may have less to do with discrimination than with the greater aggressiveness of male competitors. Almost every woman have always been able to marry and have children; in a primitive society, a man had to be aggressive to acquire a mate. Even today, as mentioned above, more successful men have access to more women and to higher quality women, those who are better educated, healthier, more socially adept.

Male aggressiveness may explain the human urge to gamble. In explaining the purchase of insurance and also gambling, Milton Friedman postulated that the utility function was "initially concave downward, then concave upward, and then finally concave downward" (Friedman 1953). Such a utility function can explain the simultaneous existence of insurance and gambling. For males at least, such a utility function makes genetic sense. Commercial gambling is a negative sum game, so why should people participate? A little increase in income for a young male will produce only a very small increases in fitness, but a large win could lead to a huge boost in the likelihood of passing on his genes. From a genetic point of view, male gambling in high stakes games make evolutionary sense. For those males with few prospects of attracting a mate, gambling provides a mechanism which, if they are lucky, will provide them with the resources to secure mates. High stakes gambling is mainly a male preoccupation; it is uncommon among women.

Violence and homicide in the inner-cities may result from a shortage of willing, marriageable females. Few women want to marry men who face dismal economic prospects. According to Trivers (p. 298) "men at the bottom of the scale remained single more than 30% of the time, while men at the top of the scale were single less than 5% of the time." If they are to copulate and pass on their genes, men must achieve sufficient economic well-being to be able to support a wife and children. In the inner-city ghettos, a man can secure access to females by proving himself an aggressive leader, the alpha male. Heading a gang, running drugs, being tougher than others, generally taking risks, provides a road to reproductive success (or possibly to death). The poor education of most of these men limits the paths to evolutionary fitness to superiority in athletics, the entertainment field, or violence. In the meantime, men with better possibilities take up the reproductive years of many women; as a consequence, many fewer women are available for those with relatively low incomes and prospects. The result is increased competition among disadvantaged males for access to women, leading to even greater violence.

A stylized fact of economic development is that parents produce many children in low income societies and few, but of high quality, in rich societies. Evolutionary biology can explain this shift. As Darwin pointed out, natural selection favors animals who leave the most offspring. The same can be said for the human animal. Depending on the circumstances fitness can be enhance by having many poorly educated offspring or a small number that are well schooled. Humans will follow the strategy that maximizes their children’s ability to mate and procreate.

Rural peasant societies typically offer few job opportunities off the land (Bernstam 1986, p. 112). In such an economy, the only strategy available to parents for increasing their fitness is to maximize the number of children. A few of their offspring may be able to mate and reproduce. Many other species follow this strategy; among humans who are poor and lack education would be likely to follow the path of many offspring.

In constrast, parents in a modern advanced society will find that educating their children is necessary if their children are to be successfully in finding a spouse. The better the education, the higher income or status that the child can achieve, and the more desirable the partner that he or she can secured. Since the children will face competition from their peers and from others somewhat older both for mates as well as for jobs and prestige, parents will need to invest significantly to assure fitness (Bernstam 1986, p. 112 & 114). This restricts the numbers, for fathers and mothers can do more to improve their own and their children’s fitness by spending to educate, clothe, and care for a few progeny rather than spreading their resources over many.

Successful mating, as stressed above, requires competition among males for females. In primitive or poor societies, this competition takes the form of aggression, fighting, and risk taking. In the modern advanced world, it takes the form of offering the best evidence of being able to succeed in the market place. Their genes encourage parents to advance the fitness of their children, especially their prospects for marriage. Parents will normally want a boy to be able to secure a high quality female or, in most of human societies, many partners. But that child will face competition from other young males. Their prospective wives or the parents of those possible partners will decide whom the man marries. They will look to the economic prospects of the potential husbands. [For any reader not yet convinced, read Jane Austen.] The parents that provide the best opportunity for any offspring to mate successfully have the fitness advantage. In the modern world, that advantage comes from producing high quality well-educated children.

A million or more years ago, before our ancestors could talk, the connection between copulation and pregnancy was probably unknown. Anthropologists have even found one primitive tribe which was ostensibly still unaware of the connection. Nature has programmed males to copulate with any available female. Without contraceptives or even the knowledge of the link between copulation and pregnancy, such a desire increased fitness without the partners necessarily realizing the implications of their act. The drive created by selection, especially for men, was simply to have more sex; children were the byproduct. The female also wants sex; but, for the reasons explained above, is more selective about her mate.

As a consequence, in the modern world, the rich and well-educated have few children – evolution could not have foreseen contraceptives – but may have many sexual encounters. Contraceptives have, of course, reduced the costs of sex, especially for women, and thus increased sexual activity. Nevertheless, long before contraceptives were invented, it is clear that men were highly promiscuous.

Discussion of children as a consumer’s good or a producer’s good may be misleading. Although children on farms can be useful, it is unlikely that they ever provided a social security net even in primitive societies (Bergstrom 1996). Since old people add little to reproductive fitness, their children value them less highly than the parents did the children. Children have greater fitness incentives to devote their resources to their own offspring than to the support of aging parents. It is also in the interest of the aged for their children to promote the well-being of their grandchildren. In primitive societies, of course, only the leaders and the wealthy may lived to the point of being unable to hunt or farm. For most people, for most of history, retirement planning was irrelevant.

The elderly have often wanted to have their children and the young give them respect and provide for them in times of need. A number of societies have emphasized the duties of the young to their elders. When, the young are much better off than their parents, as is the case in some recent Asian societies, children have provided income to the old. Nevertheless, it is not in the genetic interest of either the elderly parents or their children to devote resources to the old. Any such sums must be subtracted from those the young could use to attract a mate or to support their offspring.

Economists have sometimes hypothesized that leaving an estate at death derived simply from the uncertainty of the timing of death. Better to die with unspent assets than to discover that one has lived longer than expected and to have no assets left. The drive to perpetuate one’s genes, however, provides an additional explanation for the desire to leave an inheritance. Providing one’s children and their descendants with wealth will make it easier for them to acquire high status mates and to raise their own children adequately, thus extending one’s genetic heritage.

The evolutionary paradigm puts economic theory on a solid foundation. Utility theory itself emerges from evolutionary pressures that shaped human behavior long before we had markets, traded over long distances, or even used language. Martin Daly and Margo Wilson are correct: biology and, in particular, evolutionary psychology, "provide an encompassing conceptual framework" for social science. Basing economics on such a fundamental approach is also fruitful. I have sketched a few of biology’s implications for economics. No doubt more will emerge, even though economics is so well developed that it is unlikely for any major changes to unfold. Modifications in current thinking, however, are likely.

Perhaps the most significant insight for economics to be derived from evolutionary biology is the conclusion that the desire for goods and services is simply an instrumental want based on more fundamental underlying drives. Others (Lancaster 1966; Becker 1976a) have postulated this proposition before, but its relationship to fitness has been unclear. Nevertheless, if evolution is to be taken as a paradigm for human behavior, economists will have to build on this specification of utility theory. People are not interested in more and more goods, except as a means to attract high quality mates or as a means of increasing the fitness of their children. Moreover, it is not the absolute level of goods and services that is relevant but the relative level compared to one’s own peers. Bill Gates competes with Warren Buffett, not poor Richard Jewell, the FBI’s early suspect in the Atlanta bombing.

The implication that only relative income matters should please and distress both liberals and conservatives. If relative income is all that affects human well-being as measured by people’s utility function, progressive taxation – provided that it affects all equally and is not so high that individuals are better off in the underground economy than they are when earning reported income – will neither reduce nor increase people’s happiness. If taxes are raised, people will experience a temporary decline in happiness as they suffer an unexpected loss in disposable income; and if taxes are cut, they gain, again temporarily.

I leave to the reader to weigh the implications of an economics based on evolution for the desirability of economic growth. Growth is a natural consequence of investment and technological change designed to improve the fitness of the investors, inventors, or researchers. Those of us who believe that technological advance is good in itself find it fortunate that growth is almost unstoppable.

The reader may feel that the evolutionary perspective is bleak and leaves humans as nothing more than the slaves of Dawkins’ "selfish genes," but a more positive viewpoint is warranted. Given that evolution is based on selfish behavior and that economics assumes that people maximize their own utility, it is amazing that we see so much unselfish behavior; that people frown on greedy actions; that so many men and women sacrifice so much for others without obvious hope of reciprocity. It is incredible that a genetic structure designed simply to replicate itself successfully could produce a being that exhibits real altruism, self-sacrifice, and love of other beings. Moreover this product of evolution has and continues to generate great art, music, and a growing awareness of mankind’s place in an increasingly understood universe. We must stand in awe of the magnificence that the "blind watchmaker" has produced.