Until recently, scientists weren't sure how niceness would survive from one generation to the next. Now, some researchers believe that altruistic traits are passed on because cooperation helps entire groups combat enemies.
The hardest things to contemplate in life are failure and age; and those are one and the same. And so every failure becomes a reminder of death. Yet, wait long enough, anything will realize its potential. It's simply not given to us in one lifetime.
The idea that kindness evolved was initially suggested by Charles Darwin, who suspected that wars might create an evolutionary advantage for individuals who worked together over more individualistic foes. Archeological evidence indicates that a period of almost constant war between 100,000 and 10,000 years ago ended with the emergence of super-cooperative groups. The law of reciprocity and selflessness evolved with other genetic traits, such as a desire to conform to a group's norms.
Neuroscientists have found through brain scans that when people cooperate in games in which they share hypothetical money, the reward centers of their brains light up, reflecting a pleasurable experience.
Researchers ran an experiment in which they created a two-person game. To start, player 1 got $10. If that player kept the money, player 2 also got $10 and the game ended. But if player 1 chose to let player 2 take a turn, then player 2 faced a choice: take home $40 and leave nothing for player 1, or take $25 and leave $15 for player 1.
About half the time, finds economist Kevin McCabe and colleagues at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, player 1 chooses to let player 2 into the game, forgoing a sure $10. In response, nearly three-quarters of the player 2s give up the $40, rewarding player 1's trust by splitting the money $25 to $15.
The functional magnetic resonance imaging ("fMRI") of the volunteers' brain shows that trust is marked by high activity in two brain regions, the researchers reported. Area 10 seems to be involved in delaying gratification, which tends to increase one's final reward. Area 8 figures out what other minds are thinking, in this case registering that the other player is trying to maximize gain through reciprocity. Some people, as the experiment shows, seem wired to delay gratification and act in a mutually beneficial way.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2007