Sociobiology

Sociobiology is the systematic study of animal and human social behavior from the perspective of biological evolution, especially from the gene's point of view. An evolutionary approach to social behavior means to focus not on the proximate mechanisms (e.g., biochemical or humoral) that cause a particular behavior, but mostly (even exclusively, if possible) on so-called ultimate explanations, which aim to discover why proximate behavioral machineries work that way and how they evolved as a result of natural selection.

The term sociobiology was coined by Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson in his book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975). His bulky book is a valuable summary and synthesis of several new ideas about the evolution of animal societies developed in the U.S.and Britain between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s. However, in the last chapter of his book, Wilson extended this newly emerging evolutionary approach to the social behavior of human species, which became the main reason for strong criticism of all sociobiology.

Most cultural and social anthropologists, sociologists, and philosophers felt and still feel insulted by the reduction of human behavior to what they called a biological and genetic determinism, which is, however, not a goal of sociobiology. They perceive sociobiology to be a modern renewal of Social Darwinism with all its objectionable consequences—justification of racial, economic, and gender inequalities—and a new pseudo-scientific apology for political conservatism. As a consequence of massive—and mostly unfair—criticism, sociobiology soon became an intellectual dirty word in academic circles. Today, the term sociobiology is seldom used by evolutionary biologists; however, sociobiological research is not dead. Sociobiological principles have become crucial parts of contemporary ethology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology.

Sociobiology has had a major impact on the conceptual revolution toward a gene-centered view of evolution. This paradigm shift in evolutionary theory was ingeniously and widely popularized by Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene (1976).

Altruism is often thought to be a distinguished mark of civilized human behavior, a quintessence of [Page 2108]humanism that differentiates us from the brute and selfish world of animals as well as from barbaric Hobbesian human societies. In this popular scenario, the natural human default is selfishness; humans are born as self-oriented, egoistic beings who have to learn as they grow through enculturation and socialization how to behave altruistically and prosocially. However, this view of Nature as “red in tooth and claw,” which seems to be so well described in terms of “struggle for survival,” is seriously undermined by the existence of altruistic behavior among animals.

A generally accepted explanation of animal altruism until the 1970s was group selection theory, which states that evolution works for the benefit of species rather than individual organisms. For example, through natural selection, organisms can develop special mechanisms (e.g., physiological, behavioral) that sense population density and can put limits on individual reproduction in order to prevent population overgrowth. By those evolved mechanisms, short-term individual and selfish reproduction interests are counterselected in favor of long-term population survival. Group selection theory has been refuted on theoretical as well as on empirical grounds, and contemporary biologists consider it to be a fallacy. Any population of reproductive altruists would be extremely vulnerable to spontaneous selfish mutants that are not genetically disposed to control their reproduction. A population of genetically determined altruists would then quickly turn to a population of genetically determined self-seekers. Group selection is not impossible, but is very rare.

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