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The science of friendship: where evolutionary psychology fails.

Article Excerpt
THERE WAS A MINOR ANNIVERSARY IN THE history of evolutionary psychology in 2006. It was 40 years since an embryonic theory of friendship first emerged. Darwin himself had speculated on the value of "aiding fellows" in The Descent of Man. He suggested that it might start from the "low motive" of learning that giving to others would lead to receiving from them in return. Such an exchange could become a habit that would more properly be called sympathy, and from that friendship would arise. What he could not explain was how such habits might be passed from generation to generation. Also, he was left with the uncomfortable implication that friendship--what Aristotle called the greatest of all human goods--grew out of a cold calculation.

Then, in 1966 George Williams published Adaptation and Natural Selection in which he argued, first, that evolutionary theory did not require human beings to be conscious of the "low motive" even if it was the progenitor of amity: the feeling of friendship could be genuine, regardless of its origins; second, that the propensity for such altruism could be passed on simply because it was favored by natural selection: "Simply stated, an individual who maximizes his friendships and minimizes his antagonisms will have an evolutionary advantage, and selection should favor those characters that promote the optimization of personal relationships."

Williams inaugurated the neo-Darwinian explanation of friendship, and over the last 40 years its proponents have developed a growing body of evidence that they claim supports it. The big breakthrough came with the application of game theory to the issue, particularly in the shape of the prisoner's dilemma. A quick recap: two prisoners face prosecution for a crime in which they were both involved that would warrant a 10-year prison sentence. But the prosecutor, having evidence only for a lesser crime that would result in a one-year prison sentence, proposes a deal to each prisoner: if you implicate the other, you can go free; if you implicate the other but he implicates you, you both get three years; however, if you do not implicate the other, and he implicates you, then you alone get the 10 years. The prosecutor seeks to minimize the chance that the prisoners go for the fourth option--that neither implicate each other and so both only get one year for the lesser crime. Critically, he does not allow them to communicate and hopes that their predicament will undermine their honor. In short, the pressure is on each prisoner to implicate the other, since that route guarantees that the worst sentence they would receive...

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