Behavior Meets Neuroscience: Achievements, Prospects, and Complexity: Introduction Part IV

Abstract

This volume has as its goal to address the evolution and nature of cooperation and “altruism”. This perspective challenges the pervasive public perception of Darwinian evolution as a process necessarily “red in tooth and claw”, a view often promoted by media looking for an attention-getting headline to lead with in the evening news or on the front pages of a popular magazine. Aggression and violence are emotions with high valence and thus easily attract attention. Any of us who has experienced a powerfully aversive event recalls it readily and with little effort can easily retrieve the emotions, even though the event may have occurred in the far distant past. Positive experiences and emotions rarely have the same salience—nor do they receive the same attention in the popular media. The dark appeal of aggression has found a receptive audience and is translated into a conviction that this is how the world works, that aggression, is fundamental and, most important, that it forms the dominant explanatory base for theories that deal with the origins of human behavior and sociality.