Survival of the Friendliest

Our beliefs about human nature shape almost everything we do as a society. Theories about whether some people are innately good or evil influence whom we imprison and for how long. Theories about whether some groups of people are more worthy than others influence our economic policies. Theories about whether some people are born smarter than others, and what this intelligence looks like, influence how we teach our children.

Arguably, no folk theory of human nature has done more harm or is more mistaken than the survival of the fittest. The idea that the strong and ruthless will survive while the weak perish became cemented in the collective consciousness around the publication of the fifth edition of Charles Darwin s Origin of Species in 1869, in which he wrote that as a proxy for the term natural selection, Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.

But somewhere along the way, fitness became synonymous with physical fitness. In the wild, the logic goes, the bigger you are, and the more willing you are to fight, the less others will mess with you and the more successful you will become. You can monopolize the best food, find the most attractive mates, and have the most babies.
Over the past century and a half, this mistaken version of fitness has been the basis for social movements, corporate restructuring, and extreme views of the free market. It has been used to argue for the abolition of government, to judge groups of people as inferior, and to justify the cruelty that results. But to Darwin and modern biologists, survival of the fittest refers to something very specific the ability to survive and leave behind viable offspring. It is not meant to go beyond that.

Darwin was constantly impressed with the kindness and cooperation he observed in nature, and he wrote that those communities, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring.

Brian Hare is a professor in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University, where he founded the Duke Canine Cognition Center.

Vanessa Woods is a research scientist at the Center as well as an award-winning journalist and the author of Bonobo Handshake. Hare and Woods are married and live in North Carolina. They are the authors of The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter Than You Think.

Please read this beautiful, riveting, and uplifting book. You will learn the astonishing story of how and why humans evolved a deep impulse to help total strangers but also sometimes act with unspeakable cruelty. Just as important, you ll learn how these insights can help all of us become more compassionate and more cooperative. Daniel E. Lieberman, author The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease, and Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding
 
An utterly persuasive explanation for why the human psyche has evolved to be dangerous and what to do about it . . . It should be read by every politician and every schoolchild. Richard Wrangham, author of The Goodness Paradox

Very few books even attempt to do what this book succeeds in doing. It begins in basic behavioral science, proceeds to an analysis of cooperation (or lack thereof) in contemporary society, and ends with implications for public policy. Everyone should read this book. Michael Tomasello, author of Origins of Human Communication, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University

Survival of the Friendliest is a fascinating counterpoint to the popular [mis]conception of Darwin s survival of the fittest. Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods offer a convincing case that it was not brute strength, raw intelligence, or ruthlessness that allowed modern humans to thrive while our hominin relatives died out. Instead, they argue that friendliness was the key to our flourishing and that the same kind of cooperative communication is the key to freeing us from the tribalism currently threatening democratic governance around the world. Powerful, insightful, accessible this book gives me hope. Megan Phelps-Roper, author of Unfollow

How can a top predator like the wolf have evolved to become man s best friend ? Finally, a book that explains in the clearest terms how friendliness and cooperation shaped dogs and