Sociobiology is a field ofbiology that aims to explainsocial behavior in terms ofevolution. It draws from disciplines includingpsychology,ethology,anthropology,evolution,zoology,archaeology, andpopulation genetics. Within the study of humansocieties, sociobiology is closely allied toevolutionary anthropology,human behavioral ecology,evolutionary psychology,[1] andsociology.[2][3]
Sociobiology investigates social behaviors such asmating patterns,territorial fights,pack hunting, and the hive society ofsocial insects. It argues that just as selection pressure led to animals evolving useful ways of interacting with thenatural environment, so also it led to the genetic evolution of advantageous social behavior.[4]
While the term "sociobiology" originated at least as early as the 1940s; the concept did not gain major recognition until the publication ofE. O. Wilson's bookSociobiology: The New Synthesis in 1975. The field quickly became the subject ofscientific controversy. Critics, led byRichard Lewontin andStephen Jay Gould, argued that genes played a role in human behavior, but that traits such asaggressiveness could be explained by social environment rather than by biology. Sociobiologists responded by pointing to the complex relationship betweennature and nurture. Among sociobiologists, the controversy between laying weight to different levels of selection was settled between D.S. Wilson and E.O. Wilson in 2007.[5]
E. O. Wilson defined sociobiology as "the extension of population biology and evolutionary theory to social organization".[6]
Sociobiology is based on the premise that some behaviors (social and individual) are at least partly inherited and can be affected bynatural selection.[7]
The discipline seeks to explain behavior as a product of natural selection. Behavior is therefore seen as an effort to preserve one's genes in the population. Inherent in sociobiological reasoning is the idea that certain genes or gene combinations that influence particular behavioral traits can beinherited from generation to generation.[5]
For example, newly dominant male lions often kill cubs in the pride that they did not sire. Thisbehavior is adaptive because killing the cubs eliminatescompetition for their own offspring and causes the nursing females to come into heat faster, thus allowing more of his genes to enter into the population. Sociobiologists would view this instinctual cub-killing behavior as being inherited through the genes of successfully reproducing male lions, whereas non-killing behavior may have died out as those lions were less successful in reproducing.[8]
The philosopher of biologyDaniel Dennett suggested that the political philosopherThomas Hobbes was the first proto-sociobiologist, arguing that in his 1651 bookLeviathan Hobbes had explained the origins of morals in human society from an amoral sociobiological perspective.[9]
The geneticist of animal behaviorJohn Paul Scott coined the wordsociobiology at a 1948 conference on genetics and social behavior, which called for a conjoint development of field and laboratory studies in animal behavior research.[10] With John Paul Scott's organizational efforts, a "Section of Animal Behavior and Sociobiology" of the Ecological Society of America was created in 1956, which became a Division of Animal Behavior of the American Society of Zoology in 1958. In 1956,E. O. Wilson came in contact with this emerging sociobiology through his PhD student Stuart A. Altmann, who had been in close relation with the participants to the 1948 conference. Altmann developed his own brand of sociobiology to study the social behavior of rhesus macaques, using statistics, and was hired as a "sociobiologist" at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in 1965.Wilson's sociobiology is different fromJohn Paul Scott's or Altmann's, insofar as he drew on mathematical models of social behavior centered on the maximization of the genetic fitness byW. D. Hamilton,Robert Trivers,John Maynard Smith, andGeorge R. Price. The three sociobiologies by Scott, Altmann and Wilson have in common to place naturalist studies at the core of the research on animal social behavior and by drawing alliances with emerging research methodologies, at a time when "biology in the field" was threatened to be made old-fashioned by "modern" practices of science (laboratory studies, mathematical biology, molecular biology).[11]
Once a specialist term, "sociobiology" became widely known in 1975 when Wilson published his bookSociobiology: The New Synthesis, sparking intense controversy. Since then "sociobiology" has largely been equated with Wilson's vision. The book pioneered and popularized the attempt to explain the evolutionary mechanics behind social behaviors such asaltruism,aggression, and nurturance, primarily in ants (Wilson's own research specialty) and otherHymenoptera, but also in other animals. However, the influence of evolution on behavior has been of interest to biologists and philosophers from the 19th century onwards.Peter Kropotkin'sMutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, written in the early 1890s, is a popular example. The final chapter of the book is devoted to sociobiological explanations of human behavior, and Wilson later wrote aPulitzer Prize winning book,On Human Nature, that addressed human behavior specifically.[12]
Edward H. Hagen writes inThe Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology that sociobiology is, despite the public controversy on its application to humans, "one of the scientific triumphs of the twentieth century."[13] He adds that "Sociobiology is now part of the core research and curriculum of virtually all biology departments, and it is a foundation of the work of almost all field biologists."[13] Sociobiological research on nonhuman organisms has increased dramatically and continuously in the world's top scientific journals such asNature andScience.[13] The more general termbehavioral ecology is commonly substituted to avoid the public controversy.[13]
Sociobiologists maintain that human and other animal behavior can be partly explained as the outcome of natural selection. They contend that in order to fully understand behavior, it must be analyzed in terms of evolution, principally bynatural selection.[7] Sociobiology is based upon two fundamental premises:[7]
Sociobiology usesNikolaas Tinbergen'sfour questions to search for explanations of animal behavior.[14] Two of these categories are at the species level; two, at the individual level. The species-level categories (often called "ultimate explanations") are[15]
The individual-level categories (often called "proximate explanations") are[15]
Studies of human behavior genetics have found behavioral traits such as creativity, extroversion, aggressiveness, andIQ have highheritability. Researchers are careful to point out that heritability does not constrain the influence that environmental or cultural factors may have on these traits.[16][17]
Various theorists have argued that in some environmentscriminal behavior might be adaptive.[18] Theevolutionary neuroandrogenic (ENA) theory, by sociologist/criminologistLee Ellis, posits that female sexual selection has led to increased competitive behavior among men, sometimes resulting in criminality. In another theory,Mark van Vugt argues that a history of intergroup conflict for resources between men have led to differences in violence and aggression between men and women.[19] The novelistElias Canetti also has noted applications of sociobiological theory to cultural practices such as slavery and autocracy.[20]
Genetic mouse mutants illustrate the power that genes exert on behavior. For example, thetranscription factor FEV (aka Pet1), through its role in maintaining theserotonergic system in the brain, is required for normalaggressive andanxiety-like behavior.[21] Thus, when FEV is genetically deleted from the mouse genome, male mice will instantly attack other males, whereas their wild-type counterparts take significantly longer to initiate violent behavior. In addition, FEV has been shown to be required for correct maternal behavior in mice, such that offspring of mothers without the FEV factor do not survive unless cross-fostered to other wild-type female mice.[22]
A genetic basis for instinctive behavioral traits among non-human species, such as in the above example, is commonly accepted among many biologists; however, attempting to use a genetic basis to explain complex behaviors in human societies has remained extremely controversial.[23][24]
Steven Pinker argues that critics have been overly swayed by politics and a fear ofbiological determinism,[a] accusing among othersStephen Jay Gould andRichard Lewontin of being "radical scientists", whose stance on human nature is influenced by politics rather than science,[26] while Lewontin,Steven Rose andLeon Kamin, who drew a distinction between the politics and history of an idea and its scientific validity,[27] argue that sociobiology fails on scientific grounds. Gould grouped sociobiology witheugenics, criticizing both in his bookThe Mismeasure of Man.[28] WhenNapoleon Chagnon scheduled sessions on sociobiology at the 1976American Anthropological Association convention, other scholars attempted to cancel them with what Chagnon later described as "Impassioned accusations of racism, fascism and Nazism";Margaret Mead's support caused the sessions to occur as scheduled.[29]
Noam Chomsky has expressed views on sociobiology on several occasions. During a 1976 meeting of theSociobiology Study Group, as reported byUllica Segerstråle, Chomsky argued for the importance of a sociobiologically informed notion of human nature.[30] Chomsky argued that human beings are biological organisms and ought to be studied as such, with his criticism of the "blank slate" doctrine in the social sciences (which would inspire a great deal of Steven Pinker's and others' work in evolutionary psychology), in his 1975Reflections on Language.[31] Chomsky further hinted at the possible reconciliation of his anarchist political views and sociobiology in a discussion ofPeter Kropotkin'sMutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, which focused more on altruism than aggression, suggesting that anarchist societies were feasible because of an innate human tendency to cooperate.[32]
Wilson has claimed that he had never meant to imply whatought to be, only whatis the case. However, some critics have argued that the language of sociobiology readily slips from "is" to "ought",[27] an instance of thenaturalistic fallacy. Pinker has argued that opposition to stances considered anti-social, such as ethnic nepotism, is based onmoral assumptions, meaning that such opposition is notfalsifiable by scientific advances.[33] The history of this debate, and others related to it, are covered in detail byCronin (1993),Segerstråle (2000), andAlcock (2001).
Moreover, even highly heritable traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has little if anything to do with controllability. For example, height is on the order of 90% heritable, yet North and South Koreans, who come from the same genetic background, presently differ in average height by a full 6 inches (Pak, 2004; Schwekendiek, 2008).
But back to the question: What does heritability mean? Almost everyone who has ever thought about heritability has reached a commonsense intuition about it: One way or another, heritability has to be some kind of index of how genetic a trait is. That intuition explains why so many thousands of heritability coefficients have been calculated over the years... Unfortunately, that fundamental intuition is wrong. Heritability isn't an index of how genetic a trait is. A great deal of time has been wasted in the effort of measuring the heritability of traits in the false expectation that somehow the genetic nature of psychological phenomena would be revealed.
{{cite book}}:|work= ignored (help)A surprising number of intellectuals, particularly on the left, do deny that there is such a thing as inborn talent, especially intelligence. Stephen Jay Gould's 191 bestsellerThe Mismeasure of Man was written to debunk 'the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity ... and the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness'
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