SMNTY Classics: Why are humans helpful?

Are men or women more cooperative? In this classic episode, Caroline and Cristen explore the science of cooperation, including how selfishness evolutionarily bred cooperation.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff.
Mom never told you a prodiction of Iheartradias how stuff works.
So this is actually something I've been thinking about a
lot lately, um, especially around this time of year. And
I've been through a lot of pretty serious life changes lately,

(00:28):
and it's kindness. And I've learned that kindness is one
of my most valued traits. I that's I think that's
why I connects so strongly to the media that I do.
And it's really funny because right after my dad died, Um,
I for some reason, I wanted to watch How to

(00:49):
Train Your Dragon the whole series, like over and over,
and in the second one spoiler alert, the dad dies
and people were shot. They were like, why why sing this?
And what made me start crying? Not that is that
I was like, look how kind hiccup? I started crying
and it's just stuck with me and and Lives Out

(01:13):
is a movie that I love right now. And one
of the things I love about that movie, that entire
movie is a murder mystery about kindness or kindness is
at the heart of it. And so, um, it's just
as we close out this decade, I move into a
new decade thinking about the value of kindness. And you

(01:34):
never know how much impact being kind to someone else
has because it really so many things people do. I'm
sure they have no idea how much it meant to me,
but it did so And the words of Michelle McNamara,
the world is chaos to be kind and that just
really is something that I'm gonna I'm gonna stick to

(01:54):
you and I I appreciate so many of you listeners
because you are so kind when you contact us, and
it really really really means so much. So please enjoy
this classic episode on why are humans helpful? Welcome to

(02:15):
Stuff Mom Never told You from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
and I'm about to start things off with a statement
that might um cause outrage from our more science minded

(02:37):
and very knowledgeable listeners. I'm nervous out there, yeah, because
we've got we have a number of whip smart scientists
who listen in. So I'm just gonna go ahead and
say this from my layman's perspective. Okay, so scientists out there,
keep in mind, I'm just trying to cleverly possibly te
up this episode about the evolution of cooperation. So what

(02:59):
I was going to say was that, really, if we
are thinking of this podcast universe that we magically live in,
and in evolutionary terms, you and I really shouldn't be
sitting at the same table, Caroline. Why because we should
probably have separate podcasts, you know, because of survival of

(03:22):
the fittest and everything. Like. Humans are naturally selfish, right,
inherently selfish creatures. So I would really want to start
the Kristen Show so I could battle it out on
the charts and the Caroline our Christians limiting me, I
really would talk for an hour. Maybe we should do

(03:45):
it um. But as a matter of fact, it sort
of does make sense that we are sitting across the
table talking, cooperating, we're helping each other get ahead together,
we are getting are there than possibly we would separately.
Although you know, the theory behind cooperation and defecting, not

(04:07):
helping other people, being selfish and acting in one's own
self interest is that you know, as a defector, theoretically
you would you would get ahead because you're not You're
not helping your neighbor, so you're not doling out anything
you're not incurring any costs. But then your neighbor doesn't
get anything from you, doesn't get any help, so she
won't get ahead. So but if you both help each other,

(04:30):
then you both get ahead. And since we like talking
about success stories and this is just maybe the grand
success story of the human species is perhaps cooperation, because
scientists would refer to us as super cooperators, because without cooperation,
we wouldn't even be able to sit here, because we

(04:52):
wouldn't have this technology, we wouldn't have language, thumbs thumbs
sort of bat things around caps. I guess um. But
the whole idea behind us is that cooperation is a
driving force in evolution. And Martin Noack, who is from
Harvard University, in two thousand six wrote that the emergence

(05:13):
of genomes, sells, multicellular organisms, social insects, and human society
as a whole are all based on cooperation, right, which
is counterintuitive because I made the reference to evolution earlier,
because the theory is based on competition in the idea
of rewarding selfish behavior. But when you actually look at

(05:36):
biological organization, you find so much cooperation and self sacrifice
in a lot of instances yeah, and and I know
you might be thinking this sounds way more science e
than we normally get. But don't work. Don't worry, we'll
get to the gender stuff. We are reliable, We are
cooperating in this. We bring it around a gender every time, right.
But yeah, cooperation essentially means that selfish replicators, you know,

(06:00):
they're looking out for themselves, they forego some of their
reproductive potential to help one another. So, like I said earlier,
everybody gets ahead, everybody wins, and no whak you mentioned
from Harvard University UM establish a theory of five mechanisms
for the evolution of cooperation how all of this works.
And the first one makes a lot of sense, and

(06:21):
that is kin selection. We want to perpetuate our our genes,
and so naturally we are more willing to cooperate with
people that we are related to. And the closer they're
related to us than the more likely we are to
lend a helping hand. Right, And that's the whole theory
behind that. As we share more genes obviously with people
were more closely related to. So there's the whole saying

(06:43):
of I will jump in the river to save two
brothers or eight cousins. That's sort of the idea behind
that UM. There's also network reciprocity, which is formed in
a mixed population of cooperators and defectors. UH. Cooperators are
busy helping each other and forming network clusters, while defects
are getting left out because they're not benefiting their neighbors
at all. And then those clusters of cooperators end up

(07:06):
out competing the defectors because, like we said, they're pushing
each other ahead to succeed. And then we have group
selection UM, which maintains that competition is not only between
individuals but also between groups, and a group of cooperators
will not so surprisingly grow faster than a group of
defectors because they can actually work together. And this is

(07:27):
something that will also come up in later research on
like teamwork and sports. UM that it's also come up
and one thing that you guys might have heard of
possibly is the prisoner's dilemma, which is a test and
activity that's been reproduced in several studies that's known as
a direct reciprocity. Basically, if I cooperate now, you might

(07:48):
cooperate later. Tip for tat you owe me, I owe
you UM and This relies basically on repeated encounters between
the same two individuals, and it's basically, to quote the
study like a barter economy based on the immediate exchange
of goods. So first, let's outline quickly what the prisoners
the limit is, just because this comes up so often

(08:10):
in this line of scientific literature. Yeah, so, if Kristin
and I are both suspects who have been arrested on
suspicion of a crime, uh, they separate us and you know,
good cup, bad cop, and they're just like beating us
down mentally, trying to get one of us to confess
or both. The theory goes and tests have shown that
when one of the suspects confesses, So like let's say

(08:33):
Kristin confesses to the crime like she did it or
we did it or I did it or whatever. She
she confesses but I don't, then she's the one who's cooperating.
She receives preferential treatment, favorable treatment, so she might not
go to prison, or might not go to prison for
as long because she cooperated. When both of us confess,
the outcome is worse because it's like, well, you've lost

(08:55):
your leverage. And even though we both cooperated. We're both
like super guilty. We do not get favorable treatment either
one of us when both of us keep silent though
we're cooperating with each other, we haven't offered up any information.
Neither one of us goes to prison and gets shanked
or shived or half shoved, half or shoved. Uh. And

(09:16):
so the outcome is better for both of us. We
might both end up going to prison for a little while,
but we didn't confess we cooperated with each other. So
the outcome ends up although it's not the best for
one of us, it's the better for both of us. Yeah.
So it's a roll of the dice and this prisoner
prisoner's dilemma game that these researchers will often play with

(09:36):
participants to see how selfish we are, whether or not
we will go for the more cooperative option and just
hope for the best of The other person in the
game is also thinking cooperatively. Um. But it's it's interesting
how to see how those kinds of games shake out.
And again this will come up when we talk more

(09:56):
about gender. And let's briefly touch on that fifth mechanism,
which is indirect reciprocity, which is fueled by reputation. It's
essentially the idea of doing something in order to burnish
your reputation in case of a rainy day kind of. Yeah, Basically,
you help somebody, and you don't necessarily expect immediate help,

(10:17):
but you do expect other people to take note, possibly
inform others, and based on your now sterling reputation, you
expect down the line to get some perks. And the
study shows that this is a very human attribute, this
idea of indirect reciprocity, because we have to have the
ability to actually, like remember, keep track of our social network,

(10:39):
remember who's done what, who's benefited home, and kind of
keep talli's of you know, who's who's helping each other. Yeah,
and that whole idea of the social network dynamics UM
has received some more insight from a two thousand eleven
study out of Harvard University, which found that UM, when

(11:01):
it comes to cooperation and helpfulness within the social networks,
everything is constant and changing in response to those networks,
the people in those networks behaviors. Yeah, when we have
when you have a dynamic social network, basically you get
to choose the people that you want to keep hanging
out with the people who give you the greatest benefits,

(11:22):
who you like the best. Um, you end up with
big groups of cooperators because nobody wants to hang out
with the selfish guy. Yeah, and the sweet little moral
of the scientific story is that nice guys can finish
first because you want you're a coo cooperator exactly, exactly,
and uh yeah, So these dynamic groups where you can

(11:44):
pick and choose who you hang out with, end up
having very high level levels of cooperation because you're rewarded
for cooperating by getting to hang out with the cool kids.
If you're the selfish guy who's not cooperating, then you
typically end up getting shunned. And so you learn from
that mistake. You learned from the little sting of being shunned,
So then you try to cooperate, whether it's heartfelt or not.
You want to be part of the group. So it

(12:06):
keeps us in It keeps us in check as well
our behaviors, your reputation and social networks and basically thinking
that people are watching you. Now, there's something that comes
up a lot in this podcast that's going to put
a wrinkle in our cooperative or non cooperative behavior, and
that would be hormones. Yes, there is known evidence that

(12:31):
the hormone oxytocin, the cuddly feely hormone released in the
female brain, especially during an orgasm that promotes bonding. A
little boost of oxytocin will make us more cooperative. Studies
have shown that a boost of oxytocin in our brain
will make us more cooperative, which makes sense, you know,

(12:51):
if you think about all of the different traits that
are associated with oxytocin. Now, on the flip side of that,
a study published in January of two thousand twelve from
the University College London's Welcome Trust Center for neuro Imaging
found that testosterone. Yep, testosterone makes us less cooperative. Yeah,

(13:16):
it kind of blinds you to other people's point of
view and makes you overvalue your own opinions at the
expense of cooperating. And so they did the study. They
had seventeen pairs of female volunteers working together, and they
did they had a little asterisk and they said that,
you know, we did seventeen pairs of female volunteers because
testosterone levels naturally low, and so they could have some

(13:39):
of the women take a pill or whatever. To raise
their testosterone levels, whereas if they did that in men,
when you raise an already high testosterone level at backfires
and make some I don't know, weepy or something. Um.
But so they have these pairs of female volunteers working together,
and when given a placebo, the pairs cooperated well, performed
their assigned task better. But when they were given a

(14:02):
testosterone supplement, the benefit of cooperation was reduced. Individuals acted
ego centrically, and they tended to decide in favor of
their own ideas over those of their partner. So watch
out for that. Uh yeah. Dr Nick Right, who was
the lead researcher, said, too much cooperation and we may
never have our way. But if we're too self motivated,

(14:23):
we are likely to ignore people who have real insights.
So there is a balance to cooperation. And I mean,
if you're constantly rolling over for someone else, well, good grief,
don't do that. But then it can't be too hardheaded either. Well,
so does this mean that men and women are inherently
different as far as how they cooperate? Is there a
huge difference there? Well, I think that's the question we're

(14:44):
going to answer next in this podcast because you would
assume based on that study that we decided about testosterone,
we know that men tend to have higher levels of
testosterone running through their bloodstream. Yeah, so you might think, well, sure,
guys aren't going to be as cooperative as women and
women are just you know, sweet little pancakes of helpfulness.

(15:05):
I don't know why pancakes, but you know, fluffy, they're
fluffy and you can put butter and um. But yeah,
I keep going. And there is some support for something
called the male warrior hypothesis. Yeah, and that's basically the
men's social behavior and psychology are more strongly intergroup driven
than women's. And there's all this stuff about like you know,

(15:26):
evolutionary theory and men hunting the willed beast and everything
and taking it home to their women. But basically, researchers
from the universities of Kent in England and Tilburg I
believe in the Netherlands in two thousand and seven found
that men contributed more to their group if the group
was competing against other groups. So that's that that can
lead us later into a bunch of like sports theory

(15:48):
and and team theory and stuff like that. But they
found that female cooperation was pretty much unaffected by intergroup competition. Yeah,
and there was a September two to leven study published
by the American Psychological Association that looked at fifty years
of research because there are a ton of studies examining

(16:09):
gender and helpfulness and cooperation, and they found that men
are more cooperative kind of like you just said, particularly
when the interests of an individual are pitted against those
of a group. Um, and men cooperate with other men,
this was interesting, better than women cooperate with other women.
We should really not be getting alonger right now. Competition

(16:31):
and we're two women, um, and women will cooperate more
than men in mixed sex interactions. So basically, everybody cooperates
with men better. It sounds That's what it sounds like.
And you know I touched on evolutionary theory a second ago.
But uh, if they basically say that if everyone acted
according to self interest in hunting and warfare back in

(16:53):
the day with the wild a beast and the mastodons, uh,
no food would be provided and all wars would be
lost because everybody would be looking out for themselves. Like
I don't want to get hurt. I'm just gonna kill
this world debes for my woman and myself, not for
the rest of you guys. And so basically, men had
to develop strategies to cooperate with each other. Meanwhile, the
theory behind women's interaction and cooperation, according to the studies

(17:17):
lead author, is that ancestral women migrated between groups you know,
as wives are wont to do and quote, So the
dynamics among women would have been rife with sexual competition. Uh,
stereotypes about cattie women goes all the way back back
to evolutionary times. But before I get too bummed out

(17:40):
about that, doctor Art Markman, who's the executive editor of
Cognitive Science UM, looked at some meta analysis on all this,
because yes, we see some gender differences here and there,
depending on group versus individual versus who's sitting across the
table from you versus whether or not you're being an
environment that's being mono turn and he found that despite stereotypes,

(18:05):
the gender differences when it comes to cooperation is very small.
It's almost statistically insignificant. He says, Wow, it does affect
how how likely people are to cooperate to some degree,
it is not the most important factor. Yeah, it's definitely
fostering temmunity and trust that helps people cooperate, feel comfortable

(18:28):
working together, rather than focusing on a gender balance. So
I mean you shouldn't try to get you know, a
room full of men, or make sure you have an
exact balance of men and women necessarily, just make sure
that the people you hire you know you're fostering that
teammunity feeling. Although it is interesting to see what does
happen when uh say, we're in the room our studio

(18:50):
by ourselves having to cooperate away from the prying eyes
of all of our listeners. But if are you know,
when we could we could stop and you know, not
be so cooperative with each other. But chances are when
you're being watched, are monitored by some kind of an
audience then and your reputation is kind of more on
the line. It does change how men and women will interact.

(19:12):
It does. And this is a study from you see
Santa Barbara, and they had men and women playing a
game in front of an audience of the same or
opposite sex, either in their home room or in an
away room. And so the theory is that while both
males and females wish to gain approval of their in
group members. In other words, the people in their home room.
The actions that are socially desirable differ across gender, So

(19:36):
males wish to signal that they're formidable, while females wish
to signal that their cooperative. So it has a lot
to do not so much with your gender a little bit.
Basically we cooperate the same amount, but we cooperate kind
of differently. So men cooperate less quote unquote at home
in their home room than do females, and cooperate more

(19:57):
went away, and they actually cooperate most when in front
of a single sex audience. Um. Well, I thought it
was interesting that this uh that that study from UC
Santa Barbara also supports um A date a little bit
dated study in the Social Psychology Quarterly that found that
again there was a minor gender difference in cooperation, but

(20:22):
no matter what side, women came out on whether or
not they're being more cooperative, cooperative, excuse me, or defectors.
We tend to assume that we have the moral high ground. Yeah,
well yeah, we think we're more cooperative and altruistic and
all that stuff, And that that actually reminded me of
our Women's Intuition podcast, like, if you think in your

(20:43):
brain that you're supposed to be a certain way, you
just assume that your actions are more that way than
somebody else's. Kind of yeah. Well, and also we tend
to not get as even this is all an experimental settings,
but not to get as emotionally worked up about having
to hash something out with someone else. Often though, the
men were more likely to leave, um one of these

(21:04):
prisoner's dilemma esque games, very agitated and upset, whereas we
were like, it's fine. I mean I was being as
altruistic as I could possibly be, so fluffy pan kicks
of cooperation for everyone. Um. Now, we said we'd get

(21:34):
into a little bit of sports theory, and by that
I mean just a little itty bitty bit. Um. But
a two thousand four study in the Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology had a behavioral task assigned to these
people that involved shooting a basketball, and in this intergroup competition,
which is a combination of cooperation and competition, it led

(21:54):
to higher levels of intrinsic motivation, which we already kind
of talked about, where men were more likely to cooperate
if they were going up against a group. So basically
intergroup competition has positive effects on enjoyment of the sport,
and so they recommend The study recommends structuring recreational activities
to include both competition and cooperation because that can facilitate

(22:15):
high levels of both intrinsic motivation and performance. I don't
think it supplies to me because I hate competition or whatever,
but that's probably why. I mean, we join up with
REX sports teams because it is fun. I mean, the
competition level is there enough that it's stimulating, but then
you also get the whole cooperative benefits. You get to bond,

(22:36):
you get to do the all hands in high five
cheer thing, and pour big tubs of sports strengths on people. Yeah,
I've never done that. I should do that sometimes, short
circuit our equipment. Um And this whole competitive structure versus
cooperative structure translates not so surprisingly into the workplace, and

(22:59):
it is interesting see how they compare in terms of outcome,
because a study published in two thousand three in the
Academy of Management Journal found that competitive structures enhance speed
and a cooperative one enhances accuracy. Yeah, and it makes
sense if you think about it because if you're competing. Again,
if if if Kristen and I had different podcasts and

(23:21):
we're recording at the same time, and that's somehow how
the universe work. That we had to see who could
record the best, the best podcast the fastest, we we
would probably be focused, yeah, more on who would do
it the fastest, because so you would have the Caroline hour,
like you said, maybe I'd have the Conger minute minute.
Just pump those podcasts out. Yeah, but um, the cooperative

(23:44):
environment is really good for teams with extroverted and agreeable members. Uh.
Teams low on these attributes function better under a competitive structure,
which I thought was interesting. So I guess if you're
extroverted friendly, you're more likely to want to talk about
stuff with your coworkers to reach a solution. So I
wonder if someone who swings a little more introverted like myself,

(24:07):
does that mean see, I don't know, I was I
was thinking about that too, because you don't typically see
introverted people like being really cut throat in the workplace,
but they do work more independently, and so yeah, that
that whole competitive system is really good for people who
do work independently because it emphasizes performance differences, and it

(24:29):
rewards individuals with high performance. So it can actually the
good on the good the good side, it can promote efficiency.
On the bad side, it can lead individuals to place
their goals higher than those of the organization. Yeah, and
then there's the whole challenge with a cooperative system that
works well, like you said, with people who are extroverted
and agreeable, because if you put them in more of

(24:49):
a competitive reward structure, at least according to this study,
they made twice as many mistakes. So they're rushing around
me and like, but I want to talk to you
about it. So essentially we need some kind of balance
between it all. You know, we can't be too competitive,
we can't be too cooperative. We gotta get things done. Essentially,
we all need listen, everybody, just be perfect, no pressure,

(25:14):
no pressure at all, you know, keep those oxy oxytocin
levels high but not too high. Yeah, not too high.
We don't want to be hugging all the time. Yeah.
But then with testosterone, you know, yeah, low but not
too low. So I do want to ask our listeners,
you know, do they consider themselves to be more cooperators
or quote unquote defectors. Are you more likely to feel

(25:37):
like you're getting ahead if you're working closely with other people?
Do you like helping others? Do you ever feel like
you're helping others at the expense of your own success?
And was anyone surprised by the lack of gender difference
but in cooperation? Yeah, because a lot of people stereotypically,
you know, anecdotally, people think that women are inherently more cooperative.
Not necessarily true, Yeah, but that might be used as

(26:00):
misused as an adjective for subservient. I digress. Send us
an email. Mom. Stuff at Discovery dot com is where
you can send them. Okay, this is uh an email
from Claire about our Kathy episode. She says, I'm a

(26:22):
fourteen year old enthusiast of comic books and Liz Lemon
Woo go Claire, and read plenty of Garfield and Cathy
comics in my childhood. I wasn't aware of the feminist
backlash against Kathy until your podcast, and frankly, I disagree
with it. Not only do I think she shouldn't be
held to a standard that other comics are not held to,
but if being a prominent woman cartoonist means that she

(26:43):
has to uphold some responsibility of progressing women and having
some sort of big, meaningful character arc when Garfield has
only gotten fatter and John Lonelier are the two genders
in the media truly equal. I appreciate feminism and think
anyone's involvement in it is a fantastic thing to do.
But to assign someone a role like that for something
as to be blunt mediocre as a newspaper comic strip,

(27:06):
I think is over the top. Well, I have one
here from Madison, and it is in response to our
episode about erotica and which we mentioned uh b D
s M themes in erotic literature, and she writes, I'm
a confident woman who incorporates b D s M into
my sex life. I don't think safe, sane, consensual, kinky

(27:28):
sex among adults is damaging to women. Men can be
subs to. If getting tied up and stuff is really
hot to you, then find someone else who's into it.
I appreciate you guys acknowledge a difference between actual violence
and consensual violent play of b D s M. The
key word here is that b D s M is
play dan savage love whom describes sex role play as

(27:49):
cops and robbers for adults with your pants off and
orgasm so true. One of my problems with fifty shades
is that it paints a picture that only screwed up,
broken people participate in b d usim screwed up broken
people participate in vanilla relationships to emotional and physical abuse
is never okay, especially in the kink community. The last
thing that we need on the news is evil. Kinky

(28:10):
people do something sex crazed and evil. It's a great headline.
Most kinksters I know are extremely polite and will only
whip you if you ask nicely while you're sober. The
bottom really controls what's happening to them, since nothing else
happens without their permission. And I, on a side note,
am blushing. So thank you to Madison for that insight

(28:31):
on the b D s M community, and to everyone
who has written in. We have gotten a lot of
email about our erotica episode, so much in fact, I
haven't even gotten around to rootin now, so that and
more for the next episode. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot
com is where you can send your letters. You can
also find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

(28:53):
At mom's Stuff podcast, and you can head over to
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