Evolution & Behaviour

Man is surely the most intelligent species of animal. We domesticate plants for food and animals for work and meat, we build bridges and cities, we communicate across the globe and fly to the moon, we harness lethal diseases, we compete through technological innovation. Soon we will manipulate our own genes. No wonder that we have come to view rationality as the driving force of our own behaviour. At the same time we engage in seemingly futile contests for social status, we are prone to joy and to violence, we destroy our environment.

The most robust of our behaviour patterns, the daily cycle of sleeping and waking, can hardly be attributed to rational decision-making. Our ratio does not seem to offer an explanatory framework for love, depression, religion, addiction, and aesthetic experience. Indeed the "rational model" has only limited value as a general approach to understanding human behaviour.

In recent decades, Charles Darwin's idea that human behaviour is the product of evolution and natural selection has gained solid contours. Evolution is not an alternative for rationality, but it offers a much broader functional context in which both rational and non-rational behaviour can be placed in an explanatory framework. The principles of natural selection as the basis for behavioural patterns enjoy ever sharper and broader attention in biology. Models for cost-benefit analysis of behaviour in terms of the maximization of evolutionary fitness are being refined in theory and experiment. Evolutionary explanations are being sought and tested for countless social processes such as group formation, group composition, social relationships, and distribution of reproductive investment in animal groups and populations. Behavioural biologists are aware of the potential implications of their work for understanding human behaviour. In the social and psychological sciences the view is gaining support that evoluti on is an indispensable guide in studies of individual and group behaviour ? where the discipline of evolutionary psychology has become established ? as well as in studies of the (non-genetic) evolution of human societies and socio-economic systems. Cultural anthropology has a particularly long-standing tradition of evolutionary approaches.

A wide gap has grown in the 20th century between the life sciences and the social-behavioural sciences. In recent years, a fair number of creative thinkers have explored this gap, and on both sides one occasionally takes notice of developments across the divide; but there is little integration and interaction on the work floor. This is probably attributable to old cultural differences in approaches and methodology, and to the different options for experimentation between human and animal systems. Be this as it may, there is a rich and fertile ground for innovative science in this gap between biology on the one hand and the social and behavioural sciences on the other.

Within the programme Behaviour and Evolution, NWO will promote attempts to explore this interdisciplinary ground. In evolutionary research, a comparative perspective is indispensable. The programme aims to support evolutionary approaches to human behaviour with studies of similar phenomena in animals, or to base them upon concepts developed and testable in animal models. It will also be necessary to embark upon interdisciplinary collaborations between researchers on both sides.

There is considerable significance to society of developing deeper insight in evolution and behaviour. The primary threats to the functioning of modern society arise from human behaviour, from over-reproduction, criminal offence, addiction, depression, racism and cultural conflict, to name a few of the culprits. Insight in the evolution of behaviour will surely not solve these problems, but it may provide the context within which one can search for explanations and solutions.

Goal

To stimulate these developments NWO has decided to launch the programme Evolution and Behaviour, with the following goals:

• Expanding insight into the evolutionary basis of human behaviour.
• Stimulating the adoption of evolutionary approaches in the social and behavioural sciences at large.
• Promoting active collaboration between scientists from the life sciences and the social and behavioural sciences.

Three research themes have been defined:

• Evolutionary process
• Adaptive nature of human behaviour
• Evolutionary principles of social and economic institutions.