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Altruism’s Bloody Roots
By favoring acts of battlefield selflessness, Stone Age warfare might have accelerated the development of altruism. A computer model of cultural evolution and between-group competition primed with data...
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Termite Altruism Might Have Roots in War
Altruism might have evolved for fairly selfish reasons, at least in insects. When a warring termite colony loses its king and queen — the only members capable of reproduction — then its survivors merge...
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Plants Have a Social Life, Too
After decades of seeing plants as passive recipients of fate, scientists have found them capable of behaviors once thought unique to animals. Some plants even appear to be social, favoring family while...
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Searching for Network Laws in Slime
Of all science’s model organisms, none is as weird as Dictyostelium discoideum, a single-celled amoeba better known as slime mold. When they run out of food, millions coalesce into a single, slug-like...
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Kindness Breeds More Kindness, Study Shows
In findings sure to gladden the heart of anyone who’s ever wondered whether tiny acts of kindness have larger consequences, researchers have shown that generosity is contagious. Goodness spurs...
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Op-Ed: Why the Internet Should Win the Nobel Peace Prize
This year, a Chinese dissident and a Russian human rights advocate — recent nominees for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize — are joined by an unlikely, nonhuman contender: the internet. A campaign to nominate...
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Evolution of Fairness Driven by Culture, Not Genes
Human behaviors are often explained as hard-wired evolutionary leftovers of life on the savannah or during the Stone Age. But a study of one very modern behavior, fairness toward total strangers one...
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Do-Gooders Are Unpopular Team Members
By Olivia Solon, Wired UK Unselfish workers who are the first to offer to help with projects are among those that co-workers like the least, according to four separate social psychology studies. In the...
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E.O. Wilson Proposes New Theory of Social Evolution
The dominant evolutionary theory for Earth’s most successful creatures, and a proposed influence on human altruism, is under attack. For decades, selflessness — as exhibited in eusocial insect colonies...
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Neanderthals Had Feelings, Too
For decades, Neanderthal was cultural shorthand for primitive. Our closest non-living relatives were caricatured as lumbering, slope-browed simpletons unable to keep pace with nimble, quick-witted Homo...
View ArticleRobots Evolve Altruism, Just as Biology Predicts
Robots in a Swiss laboratory have evolved to help each other, just as predicted by a classic analysis of how self-sacrifice might emerge in the biological world. “Over hundreds of ...
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