The evolution of affect, sociality, altruism, and conscience in humans

Abstract

The topic that I have chosen may seem unnecessary to most sociologist because it is generally assumed that humans are naturally social, cooperative, group oriented, and altruistic. This set of assumptions about pro-social behavior is rarely questioned, with the result that it is not considered a problem to discover how these behaviors evolved and became hardwired into human neuroanatomy. We just assume that people are pro-social and proceed to analyze various types of such behavior without even considering what a remarkable accomplishment these behaviors represent for an evolved ape. If, however, we take a more evolutionary approach, questions on the origins of social behaviors allow us to see that the ancestors of humans were not very social compared to most other mammals and that becoming altruistic, cooperative, and group oriented was not to be expected of evolving apes.