Cooperation with Pat Barclay
2025-08-19 12:00:00.000 +00:00

I'm David Petrozowski. And I'm David Pinsoff. And uh today, what what is the name of this podcast, David? Evolutionary psychology, the podcast. Um that makes sense. That checks out if you look at the logo and yeah, okay, good. Uh oh, no, no, I'm supposed to say uh actual, yeah, actual actual evolutionary psychology by Actual Evolutionary Psychologists. All right. Hey, we did that in tandem. That was great. David, uh who uh it sounded like I had something and I didn't. Uh David, uh uh, what are we doing today? Uh we are talking to a really awesome guest uh by the name of Pat Barclay, who is fantastic and I think a super underrated, I think if you did the ratio of how important their work is and sort of to what extent uh do other people who are sort of

uh not doing the work but sort of foisting it onto us as their own. I would say, you know, this is this is a case of Pat just being the actual sort of person running the show. Pat is one of those people who I wish would be the poster child for what evolutionary psychology is. When people ask me for like good evolutionary psychology, Pat is one of the people I point people to uh just because he's doing such great work. Uh and he does work on on one of the most interesting and important topics, which is cooperation, altruism, um, how we choose our social partners, how we judge our social partners, uh uh based on their moral character. Uh this is just fascinating stuff. He has really insightful uh uh ways of thinking about it.

Um I I think you're you're really gonna like this conversation. We had a blast uh having it and I'm sure you'll have a blast listening to it. Yeah and just he's a a gentleman and a scholar, a wonderful man, and uh we're really lucky to have him in evolutionary social sciences. And without further ado, here is Pat Barclay um and David and I uh today we have Pat Barclay uh University of Guelph which is southern Ontario is that right Pat Yeah yeah I grew up an hour west of Toronto. Oh great yeah um uh yeah southern Ontario is lovely especially the when it's not dark and snowy but I grew up outside of Baseball. I would say it's more lovely when it's dark and snowy. Oh, that's true. Snow is beautiful when you, you know, you get used to wearing the layers and it's it's a

great time of year. There's no bad weather, just bad clothing. This is something the Germans said all the time. And the kids were out all year round. And I can attest that actually they're they're generally right. Um, although anyway, um, so Pat, really great to uh have you on. Um, and I'm just gonna go through a few things that you study. So one is biological markets, partner choice and competitive helping, uh, reputational benefits for cooperative behavior, costly punishment, scales of competition, uh, cognitive mechanisms underlying cooperative exchange, intergroup competition and group threats. Um I like this category miscellaneous cooperation. You have to explain that miscellaneous cooperation.

Everything that doesn't fit under the table above. Yeah, and uh exactly um so whenever we have somebody on, I sort of like to think about, and and maybe people don't like this, but I'll I don't know. People can let us know. Um, but I like to think about sort of what I think about them. And I think for me, uh, I've been listening to you give talks about cooperation for years. And my impression is, and you can tell me if this is accurate or not, is that for me, at least growing up in the early 2000s of the evolutionary biology of cooperation, that was the really hot topic. And even though people knew that organisms and especially people are hyper cooperative, there was a mystery as to how do you solve the inherent

fragility of cooperation. So there's this free rider problem, and we've talked about that on past episodes. David has sort of elaborated on what that means. and I think from my perspective, you have just sort of been doing a yeoman's work of just chugging along and steadily solving the problems of cooperation with colleagues like Nikolai Rahani, and we we should have her on too, although she's in New Zealand, which is gonna be a tricky time difference. Yeah. But um, but so number one, do you accept that that sort of would be an e the north star sort of of your research? And and you you you don't have to be I mean, I will say this for you. Like I I genuinely think that you are probably the person I can think of most that has sort

of solved this this problem of what are the mechanisms, both from an ultimate and also approximate perspective in terms of sort of like how do you solve the problems inherent in cooperation? Ultimate meaning the Darwinian function and proximate the What are the selective pressures that result in a psychology that makes us want to ever cooperate with others? Exactly. Yeah, good point. Yeah, we actually haven't, we should just talk about that jargon exactly. And just a good example would be something like if you say, well, why do parents love their children? And you say oxytocin is a hormone that makes parents love their children. Right. But then why do parents have oxytocin? Why does it you know, fire in these certain situations?

Exactly. And and I think the cooperation literature is one of these cases where we really need to distinguish between these different kinds of questions. People will say, like, you know, you see Johnny helping Sally, and you say, Well, why is Johnny helping Sally? And one person will say, Oh, it's because Johnny feels good about helping Sally. Somebody else will say, Oh, well, it's because Johnny learned to help others. And somebody else will say, Oh, it's because Johnny is engaging in reciprocity. He helps Sally and makes Sally more likely to help him in return. And people pit these against each other as if they're competing explanations. Whereas really, like all three of them could be right, or all three of them could be wrong,

right? Johnny feels good about helping Sally. Why does he feel good? Well, because he learned to uh uh to do so. Well, why did he learn that? Well, because when he helped people in the past, they helped him in return. And so he learned, right? But though that last question would be the kind of question that I tend to focus on the ultimate function what are the selective pressures that result in that you know helping psychology being in the head in in the in the first place so really it interestingly that the ultimate proximate confusion or explanation it really what you're saying is it lies at the heart of what had been and I think it's getting better and you can tell me if you agree with this a pretty confused and confusing literature.

Yeah, I think this mix up between what's going on in the head and how did it get there, I mean, I think that's been a confusion in a lot of literatures. Um, you know, I think it's a point that we need to start driving in right from first-year psychology. Um, it's it, but it definitely comes up in a lot of the evolutionary psychology, uh, psych um psychological discussions where people mistake what evolutionary psychologists are saying and will think that an evolutionary psychologist is talking about what is going on in the head, whereas really they might be talking about the selection pressures that got that stuff in the head there. And yeah, the cooperation literature has been particularly prone to this uh you know to

to this this proximate and ultimate confusion. Or at least it has been from my vantage point, maybe because I'm more familiar with it, but perhaps it has come up just as much in other areas as well. Right. Do you think it it's because we care so deeply about what's going on in the head in terms of our personal and social lives? We want to know how generous and kind other people are. We want to know their moral character. We scrutinize each other's actions and behaviors and utterances to try to gain insights into what kind of person they are, and we care deeply about our own reputation and broadcasting to others that we have a good moral character and that the stuff in our head is noble and praiseworthy.

And so might it be that because we're so obsessed with what's going on in the head, that this creates this confusion between proximate and ultimate levels that as soon as you start talking about how the stuff in the head got there, we instantly, you know, jump to this place that we're all too familiar with, which is judging other people and in showing off the our moral character. Do you do you buy that that might be that that's a really interesting idea? I'd never thought about it that way. I always had thought about it just more in terms of some people are naturally attracted to how questions. How does this thing work? Whereas other people are naturally attracted to why questions, like why are things this way

as opposed to something else? right? And when I was going through high school, I always thought, oh, you know, the sciences are great for answering the how questions, but they're not good at answering the why questions. Why is it this way? And then when I found evolution, that just blew my mind because it was like, oh, wait a second. Now science can answer these why questions. Why is it this way as opposed to some other way? So that would make sense. So I had always thought about some people wanting to investigate the how, you know, how does the mind work? Um, And other people liking the why questions of well, why is the mind that way as opposed to some other way? And that just being the result, the cause of that confusion.

People not realizing that people were asking a different question. But David, your uh your hypothesis is really intriguing that instead, because we yeah, we're trying to read each other's minds, their intentions, figuring out what their character is like, can we predict are is that person going to cooperate with me? Are they going to screw me over? Um, that you know, we're um that might be why uh people are looking at those kind of uh the why questions. There's a potential signaling uh argument here, too. People might be hesitant to accept these functional questions for altruism. Because if I say people are nice because niceness pays off, right, What are you going to interpret about my actions?

Suddenly, if I'm nice to you, you're gonna be like, What's in it for you? Why are you helping me? Um, so there's a signaling element where people might want to you know not promote this functionalist logic. Or, you know, so I think maybe the same thing when it comes to aggression, right? You know, aggression sometimes brings benefits. You have resources, yoink, they're mine. Um, you know, but if you if you talk about, well, organisms will sometimes fight for resources because it's their main means of getting resources cheaper sometimes than gathering it themselves, people start being like, wait a second, are you that kind of person who's going to take my stuff? Uh so there may be a signaling aspect.

And I mean maybe we should start testing this. Are people more likely to reject functionalist approaches when others are watching and potentially judging them for uh for espousing a functionalist view? No, that's and do, and do they actually have, do they get judged? So if I espouse a Darwinian functionalist explanation for altruism, are people going to judge me as a less altruistic and caring, compassionate person. That would also be really interesting to test empirically. I suspect, I mean, I I have a hunch that it's probably correct. Um but it's it's a question that I've been increasingly interested in is to is you know why um why is there this conflict between the functional Darwinian level of

analysis and the uh the level of analysis that we use to judge each other and try to shape how others judge us. So why why couldn't I just say that the reason that I'm helping you is because uh I I want to you know be seen as a good cooperative partner, or I want you to reciprocate, or I have a stake in in your welfare and I want to make sure that you can cooperate with me in the future. Why, when I say those things, would that license the negative inference about me, as opposed to me just saying that I'm doing it, you know, just because it's it's intrinsically fulfilling or rewarding or something like that. I well, I I think it's because we're we're trying to predict others' likelihood of cooperation.

But that includes how likely are you to cooperate with me when it's not in your immediate interest to do so. And so, like a lot of the work I do is on reputation and people gaining a reputation for cooper for cooperation. What we're ultimately trying to assess is how competent are you, uh like how able are you to produce benefits for me or for others, but also how willing are you to produce those benefits? And I think that's that's you know, with a there's signaling behind both of them. But when you're talking about um, you know, I am helping because I will get a good reputation for doing so, that indicates to you that I'm not doing it because I value you. I'm doing it just because I'm watched.

And if I'm not watched, I'm not going to do it. Whereas if I genuinely value your welfare, I will help you whether people are watching or not. Right? The most common example in humans would be parents and their kids. You know, Dave, I'm I'm sure you can relate to this. The shit that you do for your kid is intense. It's David has a younger child. Yeah. So yeah, we've both true. David has also even a younger daughter than Oh wow. Okay. So yeah. So you're both more in this. You are even more investing. Yeah. And they won't even remember those first five years. Right? Um, you you will help your child, even if nobody is watching, because you love that little bastard. Yeah, I love it. It's the best thing ever.

Just hook it to my veins. That is the best. Yeah. And that's you'll you that's a very powerful motivator to be so concerned for somebody's welfare that you'll help them even if it doesn't seem to pay off now, even if nobody is watching. Um, and it'd be the same with our friends. Like if you if you think for a second about your really close friends, is there a friend who you know if they were suddenly at risk of dying, you would help them even if you were sworn to secrecy and no one would ever know that you would help them. Is there anybody in your life where you would where you would do that for? And I think many of us would probably be like, yeah, there are some people where I would save them even if nobody would ever know.

And it's because we genuinely value them as friends. And that's yeah, that's that's a powerful thing. That to care for somebody that deeply, that's what's going on in the brain. What I would want to know was why does that get into the brain in the first place? Um, and then, but then if you can communicate that, if you can somehow signal, hey man, I'll you know, I love your brother and I will get your back no matter what. Like that's a very powerful thing to communicate, makes one a valuable uh partner, but at the same time, you know, is you know, it's gonna be hard to fake. And if somebody is saying, Oh, I'm just doing this because I look good, what that tells me is they don't actually value my well-being.

They don't really have a stake in my welfare. They just have a stake in appearing nice. Right. If I if I can sort of let me make sure I can sort of translate um or say it in a different way to make sure everyone's understanding, um, including myself, which is that um the our evolved psychology is by default interpreting explanations for cooperation as descriptions of underlying motivations. And so a scientist who comes along and who distinguishes between proximate and ultimate, when they start talking about the evolutionary reasons why something's happening, which requires talking about fitness benefits by definition, because that's all we're allowed to postulate in terms of like what we know

about how biological complexity occurs, given the logic of differential reproductive success. So, given that, when that scientist starts talking about benefits, it's read by our intuitive evolved psychology as a motivation that detracts from quote unquote genuine uh cooperation or altruism. And it's misunderstood as indicating that this a person will be less likely to be altruistic in the in the sense in which they'll be uh less likely to provide benefits or cooperate or more likely to free ride under certain circumstances. So it was a really long, complicated sentence. So I'm not sure I did any translating, but um, but the bottom line thing is it would be sort of the example of an evolutionary expect uh explanation makes it sound like you're

saying somebody has an ulterior motive as opposed to know their evolved psychology is going to do all the things you would expect them to do when they're genuinely feeling altruistic and cooperative. I'm not saying they're going to do any less. I'm just explaining why they have that intrinsic motivation. Yeah. I I think that's a good that's a good translation of all of that. So you have us, you know, wanting to detect other people's motivations and why they're doing stuff. Um and highlighting those uh selective benefits makes it sound like ulterior motives. And so you know you're right. Perhaps people who who say that, who highlight those will be viewed as more Machiavellian, more uh you know, likely to defect.

That's a great hypothesis that hey, like let's let's let's go test this as soon as this podcast is over. We'll design some uh some studies to to test that hypothesis. Um But yeah, that's that that's I think a good summary. Could could I could I take a different, slightly different angle on what might be going on here? So uh uh Pat, you've done wonderful work trying to solve this this Darwinian problem of altruism. Why do do organisms ever help other uh organisms? Um and you know, one explanation is is what's known as kin selection, where organisms uh help their genetic relatives because the gene for helping uh is often in the organism that is helped. Um, and then other explanations involve reciprocity, the helper is is likely to get helped

in return, reputation. If you're helped, you're seen as a good helper and you're more likely to be helped and to uh be chosen uh as a relationship partner. Um so there are all these beautiful uh explanations, and there's one more recent and more interesting explanation for altruism, which is what we might call stakeholder altruism, where you're not helping to because they're genetically related, you're not helping to get reciprocated, you're not helping for reputational benefits. You're helping because you have an intrinsic stake in the person's well-being, because their mere existence, their mere survival and flourishing uh is correlated with your biological fitness. So the healthier and the and the more well off they are, the better able they're they're

going to uh the better able they'll be to help you and provide benefits to you and cooperate with you. Their their mere existence uh is a is a boost for your fitness. So you you have a genuine stake in them. So the best example of of stakeholder altruism would be helping uh you know your children, for example. Uh in that case the stake would be uh uh uh uh genetic Uh but there are other kinds of stakeholder uh altruism. Um if you have some talent that is irreplaceable and that nobody else has, if you're the only person who knows which mushrooms are poisonous or whatever, um if you die then all that knowledge is lost. And so I have a reason to keep you alive just to gain access to that that knowledge.

So that's a different kind of stakeholder altruism. So that's a long winded way of getting to what I think might be going on, is that there are different candidate explanations for altruism. And uh we often have an interest in trying to paint our altruism or frame our altruism as stakeholder altruism, even when it might not be. And so uh and because because it it's it's in our interest to to describe it that way. It's it's better if you think that I have a stake in you, then that's then you're going to be more disposed to help me, you're going, and you're going to have a stake in my welfare in return. And so there might be an incentive to try to deceptively or strategically frame our motives as as as stakeholder motives.

When in reality they might be motivated by say reputational concerns or reciprocity concerns or or or or something else. And so what might be going on is that when we give a Darwinian explanation of the fitness benefits in terms of reciprocity or reputation, uh we're giving a diff it seems like we're giving a different proximate explanation for the behavior that is that is less desirable than the the pure stakeholder reason. And so I I might expect that if we explain a person's behavior uh in Darwinian terms in terms of stakeholder altruism, that you actually might not get those those adverse inferences about the person's character. It's only those other kinds of Darwinian explanations relating to reciprocity and

reputation that you might start to get uh those adverse inferences. What do you think about that? Uh that's really interesting. I I mean I'll have to uh I'll have to check whether people's reactions to when I speak about this start to change now that I'm looking more at this stakeholder altruism rather than the reputation base and whether people start looking, you know, stop looking at the at me skeptically, uh, you know, when I'm talking about stake. Um, but that's possibly it. I mean, I I I agree that there's this benefit to um framing one's interest in uh in terms of stake. And just you know, uh to back up for people who aren't uh as familiar with this with this idea of having a stake in somebody's welfare, uh you describe it as though it's a new

thing, but it really isn't. Um I mean, people have been talking about this for almost forty years. Mutualisms mutualism. Sorry? Yeah, mutualism mutualisms. Um talking about it. Pseudo-reciprocity. Yeah. John Tube and Lita Cosmides had a great paper in 96 on irreplaceability. You know, where they call it solving the bankers' paradox. So people have been talking about this idea for a while. Banger paper Stevens says banger paper. Wonderful paper, yeah. Good paper. It calls good papers bangers, which I think is hilarious. This is one of my favorite words. Anyway, continuing. Sorry, Pat. Um, but yeah, like it there's there's at least five or six different names for this same phenomena that different people have come up with, but it hasn't really coalesced into it.

I I prefer Gilbert Roberts' phrase of stake and and and stakeholder because I think that sums it up nicely. Um but yeah, the idea that you can have a vested interest in somebody else. The the example that I like to use best is imagine there is a tree that gives you shade. And you really need that shade. Well, you have an interest in watering that tree. You have an interest in protecting that tree from herbivores and from pests so that it can continue to in to produce the shade that you need. The tree is just doing its thing. Right. But because its thing benefits you, there should be selection on you to look out for that tree so it can continue to do things to benefit you. You know, selection for you to be altruistic towards that tree so that it can continue to

exist. Um, and we can have all sorts of stake in other individuals. So if one person's a good hunter who tends to bring home a lot of food for the rest of the group, Well, everybody else has a vested interest in that person remaining healthy. If they get injured, everybody else has a vested interest in making sure they're fed so they can get back out there and keep producing food. Somebody has useful knowledge, again, yeah, you you benefit from them being around and in good enough condition to share that. If you and I have a reciprocal relationship, right? You are selling stuff to me that I am then selling elsewhere, right? You know, this is a purely economic exchange. But if something happens to you, there goes my business.

Therefore, I have an incentive to help you and keep you well so that my business can continue. So, you know, I benefit from keeping you around. Um, and so you know that that's very beneficial. But I think, David, you're right with that I also have an interest in conveying to you, hey man, I do need you. I do benefit from you. And I am going to get your back if you need it. Why? Because then if you see that and you know that I'm going to get your back, now you have a have a higher interest in my well being. Because if I'm going to be there when you need it, you want to make sure that I'm around and able and willing to help. Right. That makes sense. And that's also why people are so sensitive. I mean, Pat, do you have data on this?

Of like, I mean, especially for David and I, you know, we're interested in like polyaddic, like three or more. So it's one thing Pat to say this, but you know, if if you say that to David, um, what you just said, when we should just record that and play it back. I got your back. Like it's just like um uh it's lovely to hear. But um uh but if if you say that to David, but then you me and David get together and then you take my side because David and I are having a fight, you know, like that that should really be b that should be something that David should be really vigilant for. It should be really uncomfortable. Is is there data on that? So um let me just see I mean, what you would expect, it's hard to

say if I am helping genuinely, is that because I value people in general? And so, to what extent does my helping towards David predict my helping towards Dave? You, the other day. Um, and if I just value other people really well, or I don't value myself that much, then yes, my helping of you will predict my helping of somebody else. But if there's a conflict scenario where the two of you are in conflict with each other, then my helping of one of you is not going to predict, is going to be a negative predictor of my willingness to help somebody else. So it's always hard to distinguish between is this a general helping or is this tailored towards a specific person. Right. Like just as an example, like I like every listener to imagine that like their political

outgroup and then imagine like Pat helping somebody who's a member of that political outgroup versus Pat helping somebody who's just neutral or a member of your political in-group. The valent the the way that that colors that's colored emotionally is very different for exactly for the reason you just said. it's interesting. Um so there are basically two approaches to friendship that exist. Um one is is what you just talked about, the bankers' paradox, stakeholder altruism, that friends are people who have a a stake in each other's well being. Uh and the other approach is called the alliance hypothesis, uh pioneered by Peter Dioli, which he argues that friends are there to sort of take our side uh in conflicts and have

our back uh against others should should conflict erupt. And it seems like what you're saying is that there might not actually be a difference between those two approaches. Um, because if I have a higher stake in Pat than Dave, uh, then I'm automatically going to take Pat's side if if if Pat gets into a conflict with Dave. Um, so this stakeholder idea, presum uh assuming that my stake and everyone isn't equal, uh which is it's you know, then then automatically it's it's the same thing as saying that the people for whom I have a stake in their welfare are going to be my allies, you know, by definition. Yeah. I I don't see these as as you know uh conflicting explanations and and never did. Even before we start we started talking about stakeholder, um, you know, you could describe

some of this just in terms of reciprocity. Yeah right like you know I help you you help me I share food with you you share food with me. Well one of the other ways that we reciprocate help is I help you in you coalitional conflict, you help me in coalitional conflict. So we've long talked about this in terms of reciprocity and how much you scratch my back, I scratch your back is uh is important. And I think um, you know, I think that underlies this this coalitional support model too, is a lot about reciprocity. Um, you know, and I don't think Peter Dioli would disagree. I I suspect he would he would he would agree with this that it is based on reciprocity as opposed to some you know some other phenomenon.

Um I think what's what's new is that we're looking at that it's not just about making sure that person sees that you help, but some helping you'd be willing to do even if they don't, even if they don't see because you benefit from their existence. But uh I I think this this is an exciting new direction to take this in is to look at well if I have a different differential stake in each of you to what extent does that predict which of you I'm going to support in a uh in a conflict? Um and it should depend not just on my stake in you but it may also depend upon your outside options. Right. And this gets into the market idea. This is where we get into the markets. Yeah. Is if I'm your only friend.

Well, even if I if I get that other person's back against you, if you got no one else you can ask for for help, you might still, you know, value me just because you have no other options. And we we see stuff like this in other species. So there's some great work by Redwan Bashari among the clean uh cleaner fish. So you saw there's cleaner fish which go up and they clean the mucus off uh host fishes. Um they go inside the mouth, so they're right inside the mouth, yeah, yeah. They're like they can easily get eaten by this bigger fish because the bigger fish is have to close its mouth and even have a free punch. But but but the cleaner fish, they can also cheat because instead of eating the parasites

from inside of the mouth, they can eat the host's mucus, which it doesn't like and the whole like jolts, and and you know doesn't like that and will sometimes chase the cleaner. Right. So um, but then you you can look at red ones looked at well, who are these cleaner fish giving good service to? Um, and not only are they giving better service when there's another fish, you know, client waiting, uh waiting in line, right? Because if they give bad service and their, you know, their client jolts, well, the observer might just say, all right, I'm getting bad service here. Let's go somewhere else. Um, but they'll also, um, depending on whether that, you know, the person, uh, the other sorry, the person, ha ha ha, anthropomorphism right there.

Um, the the other fish who's watching, what are its outside options? If that's if that if that is of a species that is like that one is only on my territory, nah, you can wait. I'll make you wait and I'll service this other guy first. But if that other guy has lots of territories it could go to, oh, you know what? Yes, coming right up, sir. I will service you right away, sir. Uh they are much faster. So uh you know the extent to which somebody's gonna be nice is gonna depend not just on how much stake they have, but what that other individual's outside options are. It's so interesting. Yeah. And so this idea. If you want to talk about Machiavellianism, right there, holy crap, I sound Machiavellianism when I'm describing that.

So anybody listening is to this is going to be like, wow, that Barkley dude, I don't trust him as far as I can throw him. Which is ironic because I would actually, well, I don't know. I I don't know if I want to go so far, but I think peeling back the layers of sort of the logic for this. I mean, with this, this came up, I think we were talking to Chris von Ruden. We were talking about, I think this is important to say again, because you can't overemphasize this. We want people to like, you know, give to kids who are dying around the world, right? Like we nobody thinks that like people who have more than enough shouldn't be giving to kids, right? Who are dying. And that's a horrible thing. But if we want to think, if we want to actually help as many kids as possible, we need to

be accurate about why, what's the approximate motivation? Yes. And how do we how do we get that proximate motivation activated as much as possible? And it might feel good to just say, well, it's just altruistic for the reasons we already talked about. But if that, if if the science or ways that we try to get people to help other people assume that that's the motivation or the Q structure of the proximate psychology, and that's wrong, We're allowing wanting to feel good about ourselves and signal that we're all nice people, getting in the way of helping actual people, actual kids who are like dying. So I think it's really important to say that there is virtue in talking about what the logic is and why there's benefits.

And I don't and I I totally yes, you're right. And it's it's a it's it's funny, but also like genuinely I do think that it's a really good habit. I mean, even for myself, like, why am I doing what I'm doing? As a sort of check on does it make sense or not? Like, you know, I know I'm helping my son. I love helping my son, even when it's a huge cost to me. I know why I'm doing it, and that's all cool, right? But there might be other situations where I think about why I'm doing something. It feels good. Like I always use the example of like, you know, like just like derogating an outgroup that may or may not even really exist, you know, like what consequence is that having on my on the world? And is it a bet good consequence?

So I think thinking about the actual costs and benefits is helpful. I I I agree. And I I that's I think one of the most useful perspective uh points about a functional perspective, and looking at, well, what would select for this behavior is to understand what are the the deep, you know, the I don't want to say motivations because it makes it sound like people are actually thinking about that. Right. But the relationships in the world. Like what outcomes does it cause in the world? What are the selective pressures that result in this behavior? It allows us to tailor any um any you know, any policies to actually hit the right, the the right thing as opposed to hitting the wrong thing. Right. Right.

And I think your your example of loving your child is a is a great example of that. So say for example, you were to find evidence that I guess going back to some some of the work done by my PhD advisors, Martin Daly, Margot Wilson, then when they're when they're looking at parental love and step parents. Right. Right. And uh, you know, an evolutionary perspective would say that people are going to love their children more than other people's children. Right. Right. I have a genetic stake in this child. I don't have a genetic stake in that child. I'm going to love my child much more and do much more for them. As a consequence, you know, people are going to be not as careful about other people's

kids, including stepchildren, not as careful and not as restrained and willing to put up with the bullshit that kids drive us through if it's somebody else's kid. So if you were to find different rates of neglect or abuse or something else towards stepchildren, um one perspective would be to say, oh, it's because the step parental script has not been correctly identified. And we need to like really define this social role a lot more so that step parents know that they sh that it's okay for them to invest deeply in stepchildren and to sacrifice just as much as a parent does. However, another perspective that views parental investment as very costly, and I love my children. And you know what? I'm sorry, your kid's nice, but I don't, you know, I'm not going to take a bullet for them

like I would for my own kid. Um, that perspective might say, okay, yeah, you know what? If you start dumping too many expectations on somebody else, that might actually exacerbate the problem. Right. Because part of it is a conflict. I'm expected to invest so much in this kid who is not mine. And oh, now you're asking the social role, you're expecting me to do much more, that'll actually make the problem worse. Right. So it's an example of where instead, maybe instead of define redefining the role, we should be more like, okay, clarifying and say, okay, you know what, it's okay if I'm nice towards this kid, but I'm I'm not gonna I'm not gonna take a bullet for them. And I'm I'm sorry, but that's what heal.

Yeah, it's a great example. That might help reduce the level of conflict within those relationships. Right. It's a great great example. I'm glad you brought up Martin and Margot too. We we should talk a little bit about them because I think you're the first person from that um uh f academic family we've had on so far. But um uh but it's a it's a really good example too because it sounds you could you could, I am sure this happened too, and I think it did, of people pushing back against this idea because it makes it sound like, well, all step parents are going to be abusive, which is of not at all what it's saying, right? Um correct. Yeah, that isn't it is not what it's saying, but that is how many people have interpreted

what they have said. Right. And it's it's almost the opposite in the sense of it's sort of just being clear-eyed about, as you said, all kids, it's just a lot of uh it's a lot of cost. And so at the the the the threshold at which any human will lose their temper, it's just going to be a design feature that that threshold is going to be further back for if the psychology is getting a cue that this is your own kid versus someone else's. So it's just accepting that actually the people who are step parents are doing this incredible thing. Yes. They're actually taking on more cost and they're more likely to feel more frustrated at all else equal. And so number one, we should just be aware of that individually and also socially.

Like maybe we should provide more support to step parents or like whatever you think, but like just being aware that like, you know, not not blaming step parents for being more frustrated, either themselves or structurally providing them something. So we're just aware and sober that it's hard to raise kids. And if you're not related to the kid, it's gonna feel harder and you're gonna um the the that threshold is gonna just get tripped quicker, um, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we we will put up with more crap from our kin than we would from a you know any a non-family member with whom we have like an equivalent relationship. Like, yes, our siblings might frustrate us at times, but imagine you were stuck in the

house with some other random person, you know, just like imagine a first year university. Sometimes you and you're thrown in a residence, sometimes you get along really well, but sometimes you really don't. Um, and you know, to what extent do you keep in touch with somebody? You know, we're uh given the level of contact, we're we're we're much you know more favorably uh disposed towards towards our our kin. And so we're gonna be more favorably disposed to our our our own children as well. So it's part of the same, part of the same phenomenon. Yeah, also equal, yeah. Actually, it's it's it's worth just a brief digression if you if you did want to hear more about Martin Amargo. Oh, we'd love to.

This is one of these great cases of uh an evolutionary perspective sometimes being twisted. The story gets twisted as it goes along. You know, the perspective always being people are gonna love their own kids more than other people's kids. But then you hear how it gets talked about in the popular press, and you hear stories about like lions killing cubs and all this other stuff. You hear people saying, oh, well, human parents' stepparents have evolved to kill their stepkids. But when you go back and read the original Martin Daly Margot Wilson, not only have they never said that, but they have always explicitly argued against it. Like human beings are not like lions. Here's why we would not expect stepparents to kill their children uh you know

habitually. And and most, you know, most times many step parent relationships are perfectly warm and lovely. And they point that out. But it's always twisted as though it's this adaptations for step parental homicide, sometimes even by members within the evolutionary psychology community who are, you know citing them, trying to do so favorably, but they're not always reading the original. And they're citing this research as saying something it's not, saying that there are adaptations to kill specific individuals that is just not supported by the data. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's there's yeah, and we we've talked a lot about on this so far that it's really, I mean, thinking about design, proximate design, and what we talked about, you

know, like a setting on a threshold, all else equal, right? So it's not even just that like you love your siblings more than anyone else. It's just like if you imagine the way your tr siblings interact with you versus you imagine the same person interacting with you in the exact same way, but they're not your sibling, which is not possible, but like that's the theory, is that you're gonna like be cool with your sibling more than that random person, all else equal, right? Like that's that's the idea. And so like this idea of a threshold or like thinking about design, yeah, it's hard for people. I think one of the themes we're talking about is that um if you don't get some training and thinking about uh we're talking about design and aspects on the design, and this comes back

to the cooperation thing, not about a behavior. Um, then it's hard for people to place sort of like, well, where do I put free rider? Where do I put a benefit? Where do I put the um that you're gonna like this threshold, you know, like non-kin a little bit less? And then it just gets put in one of the folk psychological entries, like, well, it's just gonna be behavior or it's an underlying ulterior motive. Um, so it's I'm not surprised people are confused about about these things. So let's let's let's take the um the example of you know donating to starving kids on the other side of the world. Let's say I'm you know donating to Oxfam. Um let's assume for Santa B. Oh no, uh uh sorry uh uh Oxfam.

Uh I thought uh no we can cut that out. There's something that's in Santa Barbara, um but it's not Oxfam, it's something else. But yeah, it's a great example of the colour. Oxfam is a great charity, yes. Great. If you're listening, please donate to Oxfam. That's what it's commercial. We have no commercials. Maybe we should do a commercial for a charity every episode. Uh but let's let's assume for the sake of argument that I am donating to Oxfam um mostly uh for reputational reasons. That I want to show others that I'm a really kind and generous person. I want to try to signal that I have a stake in everyone's welfare, even people's welfare who are on the other side of the world who I don't know.

That's just how big my heart is, that I just you know, I just have a stake in everyone. And that makes me a really attractive social partner. So let's assume for the sake of argument that that's my goal uh in in in donating to Oxfam. Well, if you come along and say, well, no, actually probably your motive is is uh mostly reputational, um, that you're trying to signal that you're that you're a good cooperative partner, well, all of a sudden I lose the benefits uh of of of my signal because people are no longer going to view that as a sign that I have a stake in in in those kids' welfare. They're gonna view it as me trying to look good. Um and so the the mere awareness that I'm trying to look good makes me not look good.

And if I if you come all come along and point out the fact that actually I'm just trying to look good, well, you're gonna ruin my chances of looking good. Um and if we create common knowledge of of self interested motives, well that could that could uh destroy the social in incentives necessary to produce the the pro social behavior. And so that it it may be that the that the pushback against these kinds of explanations are coming from a strategic place. What do you think about that? I absolutely agree with that. So I I put this uh I wrote a paper uh a while back um looking at what are some of what are some of the limits um strengths and limits of harnessing uh you know a rep a reputation and

one of them was that if you highlight what the reputational benefits are that might decrease the reputational benefits again saying exactly what what you just said and then um uh other other researchers have came at the same idea and showing that if you show that somebody benefits from their generosity, people will then judge that person not as well. So one person acts nicely and nothing particular happens, and another person acts nicely and gets rewarded for it. Okay, well, what do you think about that first person or that second person? You know, people they don't like the second one as much, the one who who got something out of it. We tend to infer um, you know, ulterior motives. Um, and so you know, whether this is because we uh infer our ulterior motives or you know,

whether it's some like law of conservation of benefits or something. Oh, they've already benefited. Okay, in that case, you know, I'm not gonna uh I'm not gonna reward them more. Um either way, once we start highlighting that, you're absolutely right, that might decrease the benefits, which then gives an incentive to anybody who does do e you know the these the public uh you know publicly cooperative acts, it gives them an incentive to disavow such reputational benefits and saying, no, no, no, no, that's not what happens. Yeah. Whether they're doing it for signaling or whether they're genuine, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. Right. They have a vested interest in in saying that no, that's that's not the reason.

Right. It also implies that if we want to increase the incentive for, say, giving to charity of charity, then we should disavow the reputational benefits of giving to charity, even if they truly exist. Yeah, yeah. Or educate everybody about this so that the the the there's not common knowledge that audiences will look poorly on it if everybody realizes that the reason why we're all doing it is for uh or uh the uh ultimate reason is reputational benefit and in fact if you give enough people that information they might say actually i'm disincentivizing giving if i criticize reputational benefits and it's a uh i mean i mean one of the things i like about an evolutionary approach is we're not allowed to say like we don't like ulterior motives

like the reason why like that's approximate description the ultimate reason would be that if it is yoked to a particular benefit, it's exactly what Pat said earlier. It predicts in the future, unless that benefit is somehow baked into the structure of the world, which it kind of isn't, then it's not a good predictor of future benefits. So for example, the only reason Pat benefited me was because it was going to be a reputational benefit in this one particular thing. If that same benefit isn't going to hold for you, David, or somebody else, then it's just you're going to, Pat is, it's less likely that Pat is a uh in a locus of benefits to others, right? So like the prediction is that ulterior motive version of Pat who got a benefit

is going to be less generous than intrinsically generous Pat. It's coming back to what we talked about earlier. And people don't like that second version as much, all else equal, right? Yeah, but if if the reputational benefit itself comes from the perception that Pat is intrinsically motivated. Exactly. No, I hear you. No, no, no. It's like we can either be able to do that. So no, I David, I totally agree. There's two stable equilibriums. Either everybody understands the ultimate proximate thing, or we don't talk about the ultimate thing. Is basically what we're saying. mean there's there's definitely I I I I'm aware of this irony of uh you know saying, hey, we need to make sure people are aware of the reputational benefits, but also, oh crap, that

might undermine the whole the whole endeavor. Um, you know, maybe we uh get it out there, but that that idea out there, but uh at least so people start creating more opportunities um for people to others to benefit from reputation, but without really stressing that uh oh, everybody does does benefit from this. Because I mean, you know, I think we do want a lot to be you know more uh more public, right? You know, shed some light in order to decrease bad behavior. Um, you know, because people are much more assholes when they're anonymous, you know, and I think, you know, I think the internet is a fantastic example of that. Um, you know, uh, but but you know, because basically any domain we've looked at, people

are nicer when others uh people are nicer when they're watched than when they're not. So we want to to create more uh opportunities for people to benefit from having a good reputation. And we want people to know that, hey, maybe we should create such opportunities, but perhaps we, you know, we don't want to highlight that uh, you know, oh, this person who's being nice is just doing so in order to be nice. Right. Because you're yeah, that would undermine it. Yeah. And I think there's also sort of structural issues that run up against the stakeholder evolved psychology too. So like this idea that sort of like your the the stakeholder idea that we had earlier is sort of, you know, like why I care about this tree because it's providing something to me.

That also I think even runs within the exploitation uh like whatever whatever the the trade off is, it can be a benefit but can also be a reason for me to not be exploitative. So for example, yes, if we're all in a village, you know, people have this naive idea that um, you know, nature is sort of red tooth and claw in it, it is in some ways, but like, you know, why why wouldn't it be evolutionarily beneficial for me to just take all of Pat's stuff? Yeah. Right. Like every time he got something. And it's because Pat is evolved to to not like that. And so it's gonna make Pat belligerent, right? And so even if he doesn't know who took his stuff, he's gonna be grumpier more belligerent and might kind of come back to me.

And so, sort of the idea that we're all gonna sort of like monitor and be okay with uh that people are sort of okay and not feeling really, really exploited would be something that would be selected for. I mean, there's other dynamics related to that, but I think that um a lot of sort of modern life and especially like advertising, like there's uh I've been looking recently um because I'm teaching intro psych and like the the effects of advertising, and there's sort of a lot of institutional selection pressures on advertising to sort of motivate people to sort of get resources. And so the one way to do that is to make people insecure, but it's also to hide like of the resources they do have, but it's also to sort of hide the costs that those getting

those things um pose on other people. So for example, you know, my my iPhone, nobody's gonna sort of advertise the working conditions of the workers. I'm not I don't I don't know what those are recently. I I know there's been uh talk of that, but like that's an example of you know, the institutional structure is not going to be at all telling me about how my actions are going to exploit people. It's only going to tell me the things that are going to motivate me to do to get stuff, right? And so that's an example of our natural evolved psychology might worry about exploiting people and have this sort of stakeholder psychology, but that we have this institutional structure of like advertising that's sort of by design, and it's nobody's

in nobody's pernicious motivation. It's just what kind of advertising gets selected for. Um is sort of filtering out a lot of stakeholder cues. So one example might be, and you know, I think charities do this is sort of the opposite, which is sort of say, look, there's this person, and you're better off if they're better off, right? Like they're not gonna um that's one idea. Yeah. Yeah. I I I mean, I think uh having an interest in somebody else's welfare, you're absolutely right, will will make people less e exploitative, right? I mean, one of the reasons you don't just come and take my stuff is not just because I might retaliate, but you know, if you benefit from my presence in in some way, even if it's

just like I'm another set of eyes who's watching for predators and outgroups. Right. Um, you know, and you see this in other other species, right? Like where um, you know, you benefit from having an extra group member because that's somebody else who might find a bonanza of food, or somebody else who uh can can watch for for predators. And so you'll you'll show uh you know cooperation towards other group members simply because, hey, I benefit from you know uh being part of this larger herd. And so that could that can work in humans too. You benefit from having a group size of a certain amount. And so you have some stake in somebody else's welfare. Whether or not we can harness that in order to get people to feel more concerned

about people in different political groups. our party and their party, it's all of us versus you know them, or all of humanity versus the Martians or whatever, right? You know, we all now have a stake in each other's well being. Um, some people have argued that this is one of the beneficial effects of trade. Um, you know, international trade. Uh now suddenly we have a vested interest in the people in that other country because they are producing the thing that we are trading for. Um, and so if we want our uh cheap, bountiful lifestyle, uh, you know, we've got to keep the people in that country uh in a good enough condition to continue to trade with them. And we have less incentive to exploit them and go to war against them if

uh you know if we are trading with them. Because if we do, well, whatever it is we were getting from them, we ain't getting anymore. So uh yeah, the the these are ways to perhaps foster uh you know the the the the stakeholder idea and use it to get people to be more cooperative and less uh less exploitative towards others, even across traditional group boundaries, uh across countries or whatnot. Yeah. I think a good maybe bottom line thing is sort of be skeptical of anything that tries to suggest to you that like certain people aren't stakeholders, right? Like it suggests that they're maybe trying to um sell you something or there's exploitation going on. Yes, people may try to exploit you into helping them exploit somebody else.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of um to sort of loop back to so at the beginning we talked about, although you've got all this work on evolution of cooperation. Um do you agree that I mean you're you're a humble person, I I would say, uh uh, but do you agree that sort of you've really um I don't know how to ask this question without it sounding like uh uh uh I I I won't know how to answer it without sounding yeah exactly. Exactly. So maybe well so I'll just say it like I think, you know, can you characterize for people how these solutions so like I'm sure p some people are wondering like, well, what's the problem with cooperation? right? And so what can you talk a little bit about? Because we're not going to go into all of the work you've done, but let's just assume that

Pat Barclay has sort of single handedly, roughly solved the problems of cooperation with colleagues. I'm not even going to go too far off honestly. Exactly. Exactly. Uh okay, so so peep people have been looking at the problem of cooperation for uh, you know, I don't know what year to in 2025, let's say uh, you know, what a hundred and uh how long since origin of the species, 1859? So we're you know, we're talking you know, 165 years, uh 66 years. Um so the the idea uh like of why one organism might incur a cost on itself in order to confer a benefit on another organism. I mean, people have been studying this for ages. Like Darwin pointed out this idea when he's like, you know, these bees are frustrating me.

Why are they helping, you know, sacrificing themselves for the hive? This, you know, this doesn't make sense. Uh he even said if one organ, you know, founded when an organism were to sacrifice itself solely for a member of another species, this would this would destroy my theory. Or I, you know, I think is something he he said, right? You know, great conditions for falsification right there. Um but um because you on the surface, this helping others would seem to be maladaptive. You are incurring a cost, which means, well, that's effort, time and effort and resources that you're not putting into your own survival. You're not putting into your reproduction and the proliferation of your genes. And so if there were somebody else who were not doing that, who were getting a free

ride on your cooperation, who were defecting on this social contract, well, they would be saving the cost. Therefore, they would be having more offspring. Therefore, their genes for selfishness would proliferate at the expense of your cooperative genes. So that's the basic, uh, you know, the basic puzzle that everybody is trying to address. And different researchers over the decades have come up with different explanations. So, you know, David, you mentioned kin selection being a big one. You know, one of biologists William Hamilton's great insights is the idea that if there were a gene or set of genes that influenced altruistic behavior, well, towards relatives, those relatives are statistically likely to carry a copy of the same genes or

set of genes. Okay, so we've got kin selection there, and that's how gene or set of genes for altruism could could proliferate. People came along a little bit later and started looking at reciprocity, where if you and I take turns helping each other, I help you, you help me, I scratch your back, I pick all the parasites off your back, and you pick all the parasites off my back. Well, we both benefit from that. We now have both of us have now have fewer parasites than anybody else. And so that can that can be selected for. And, you know, the idea put forward by Robert Trivers in 1971, some great early work on that using computer simulations to show that in a world where organisms can do that and can take turns of reciprocating, but at the same time

discriminating against defectors, against those who don't cooperate. Well, those sort of cooperative strategies can do really, really well because they get into long-term mutually beneficial relationships. Um, and at the same time, they don't get taken advantage of for long. And so, you know, people who are familiar with uh with with um with this will recognize I'm talking about Robert Axel Sortrod's work on the prisoner's dilemma and the tit for tat strategy of I will cooperate and then I will just afterwards I'll do whatever you did. If you cooperate with me, I'll cooperate with you. If you defect on me, I'll defect on you. And that sort of behavior evolves by natural selection. And like that's what got me into this stuff in the first place.

Like I was uh I was a psychology student, and you know, I uh this is somewhat interesting, but you know, you know, I was also taking biology. And then I, you know, I heard about this computer simulation where cooperation starts winning and starts evolving. And here we have like nice guys finishing first. And I heard that and just holy fuck, evolution is cool. Um, and put that on the t-shirt. Yeah, exactly. Holy fuck, evolution is cool. Yeah, I mean that's what got me uh it just blew my mind as an as an undergrad. And I was like, uh I love uh wow, I love evolution, but I also like psychology. Can I can I combine them into some sort of, I don't know, evolutionary psychology? Um, you know, turns out the field already existed.

I'm like, all right, I might as well join then. How did you uh at the risk of uh doing an origin story, how did you discover? So you just said you you you came across the Axlrod. Did you already know about Martin Margo or Lita? No, like I I came across them afterwards when I was just looking through for graduate graduate school. Okay. Um, and uh their stuff you know seemed r really interested and their stuff came recommended, like you know, Richard Dawkins had like, you know, his interviews of five different, you know, evolutionists or whatever. Or no, so somebody else did an interview of five different evolutionists, one of which was Dawkins is like, what do you think of evolutionary psychology?

It's like, I think it's got good promise, especially the stuff by Martin Daly and Margot Wilson. Oh, that's good. Oh, well, it's been recommended by the guy who created this video of Nice Guys Finish First that got me into this shit. And then I started reading their stuff and was getting frustrated because I couldn't poke holes in it. I'm like, aha, they didn't think about this. And oh wait, two paragraphs later they did. Aha, well, what about this? Oh, wait, two paragraphs later they resolved that. And I'm like, oh wow, this is actually really good. Like, I want to work with somebody who's really careful who deals with alternative explanations. So I went to went to work with them. So that's that's my origin story in a in a in a nutshell.

Wow we I think we got that in three minutes. There we go. See it is we addressed Kiki's criticism. We we'll have to figure out a way to make it so people understand what that yeah we can we'll link to that. Yeah exactly. That was great. Um so but what what I'm hearing is that you had had um I'm gonna take it away because I'm gonna stay on this for a second, but you had had an experience of reading stuff where you felt like it was not thorough or whole there were you were finding holes in it. And and this was one of the first times where that wasn't. Is that true? Yeah, yeah. So I mean I as as an undergrad uh you know would be reading articles and be like, ah well they need to deal to do this next or you know here's a crucial control change.

And I'm not talking within evolutionary psychology. I'm talking within psychology in general. And that's you know, not trying to slag psychology in general, you know, I mean, because there's there's great work and there's not so great work everywhere, right? Um, and so you know, I guess I was exposed to you know some stuff that I I thought you know could have gone a little bit deeper. And this was some of the first work that I thought I read that I thought was really careful, right? Um, and really addressed you know potential confounds. And you know, I couldn't think of uh any control conditions they had missed. Yeah. Um and that I I thought was very inspiring. Um and that, you know, realized that that's how to do good, solid science

that's that that's going to make sure it addresses all that confound uh those confounds and has a meaningful impact. That's really cool because that, I mean, there's two things to say. One is that if you are listening and you're a scientist, you should do thorough control conditions because that will attract students like Pat who also do that. Um and uh and two, I mean, it makes sense that you really the the literature, I can't overemphasize how confusing it was. And I think people, you are a a group of people, um sort of bringing clarity um to that and i'm really glad that somebody who has this disposition to sort of see the to to think deeply and sort of see the problems or what control conditions are necessary

that's super needed in the cooperation literature especially early 2000s yeah i would say yeah yeah there was definitely a lot of confusion in the early 2000s, a lot of confusion over proximate ultimate causes. Um, you know, led to some particular viewpoints coming around where people would see humans doing behaving cooperatively in anonymous situations. Right. And people would say, wait a second, people are behaving cooperatively when they're anonymous. Therefore, we can't explain that with traditional explanations like kin selection, reciprocity, or reputation. We need something big and new to explain this behavior because otherwise, why would people ever help when they're anonymous? Right.

So there was a lot of confusion. In the end, I think a lot of that was confusion over levels of uh of analysis, where realizing that we have this psychology for cooperation that does make us value other people, that does make us value cooperation itself. Um, and then you know, you can create an artificial situation where that causes somebody to behave generously when it doesn't bring the benefit, you know, just like you can create an artificial sweetener that triggers our desire for sugar, but doesn't provide any calories. Um, you know, you can you can provide a new scenario where a normally adaptive mechanism won't be adaptive anymore because it's completely artificial. Our lungs are designed to extract oxygen from the air, but I can create an artificial

situation where like an all-nitrogen environment where these lungs no longer function. And you can say, oh, it's maladaptive. Our lungs are clearly not evolved for air. If you know we're still trying to breathe when it's all nitrogen. It's like, well, no, we're just, you know, it's it's a new, it's a new environment. We wouldn't expect everything to be as adaptive there. Right. If somebody was oh, sorry, David, if somebody was running at you with an axe and you got scared and there was a big plexiglass wall that you hadn't seen and you reacted with fear, we wouldn't be like, boy, we have to explain, you know, that person can't hurt you. So the fact that you got afraid means that we have to come up with some other explanation

for why that fear mechanism exists. It's not that. It's just that we've created this weird artificial situation where you can't get hurt, but but that's just the evolved psychology can't anticipate this weird thing we've created. Yeah. Roller coasters are exciting. Um even though they're you know pretty safe um just because they're triggering all those cues of you know m fast motion stuff's coming at us quick. Yeah. Okay. So I I I I love all these analogies, but I want to drill deeper. So uh when you bring someone into the lab and uh give them this scenario where here's a chance to co uh cooperate or give money to someone and you're totally anonymous. Or punish a free rider, right? Or punish a free rider, whatever.

Um what in that scenario is analogous to the plexiglass, to the artificial sweetener, to the roller coaster? What about it is evolutionarily novel? How is it how does the trick work? Okay. Um so in in the real world, uh, you know, many of our actions have have consequences and we have social emotions that you know that that trigger behavior. Um, you know, we have things like guilt, uh, you know, if we cheat on somebody. We have emotions um, you know, like a a a warm glow when when we help somebody else. Um you know, all of these emotions are what triggers our actual behavior, right? Whatever those emotions happen to be. You know, I'm I'm a little agnostic about what they happen to be, but other people are

doing some great work examining what they are. Like Daniel Snitzer does some great work examining what some of the what some of these uh emotions are. Um and so we have these emotions and they work really well in the real world. You know, somebody who would feel guilty about screwing over a cooperative partner tends to not screw over the cooperative partner. And they tend to stay in good relationships. Where somebody who is absolutely guilt-free, absolutely shame-free, you know, is more likely to get caught and disowned. You know, uh, you know, at least in any environment environment with repeat interactions where you repeatedly meet the same people, people eventually realize oh, that guy is really

untrustworthy. So I'm not, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna uh I'm not gonna trust them. So these emotions work really, really well. In a lab experiment, we just create we create a situation where we sever the link between action the action and the normal consequences. So people can come in and they can still experience the same emotions. I am feeling guilt about screwing over that other that stranger there. I am feeling good about helping that other person. The fairness that I value in the outside world, I value in here too. But because the researchers have made it so that no one knows what happens, and because the researchers have made it, that you know, they're reputation, they have no reputation, this

behavior is towards complete strangers, there are no longer the social consequences that would normally occur outside the lab. And so as a result, you know, people are still following the same, you know, the same mechanisms, the same emotions that would normally happen in real life situations. But we've changed the situation such that these behaviors no longer have the consequences that they otherwise would. And then we're surprised that people still do them anyway, but we really shouldn't be surprised that that people will still do these behaviors anyway, because they're still acting on the same emotions. I I want to push back on that explanation a little bit. Okay. Um because wouldn't you so so uh you mention guilt um and how

it's sensitive to the costs that we impose on cooperative partners. Wouldn't you expect guilt to have design features uh that involve recognizing the likelihood that the person is actually going to be a cooperative partner or actually is a cooperative partner, or that the person might actually know about the cost that you inflict on them. You'd think that a well-designed system of guilt would be sensitive to those variables, and introducing those variables in a lab context might um affect the person's psychology. The same thing goes with you know a sense of fairness, a sense of you know feeling good when you help someone. you would expect the psychological machinery to be sensitive to the likely costs and

benefits, to be sensitive to the repu the potential reputational benefits uh or or costs. Uh so why why wouldn't we expect a well-designed system to be sensitive to the information that the psychology experimenter is giving to the participant? So this is a great question. Um and so part of the answer is it is somewhat responsive to the to these mechanisms. And this is some of the research that people are showing now. Um, you know, how much do we forgive somebody after a transgression? Well, it depends on how valuable a partner they are. You know, if they're a more valuable partner, we are more like we've experienced more forgiveness towards them. You know, how angry are we at somebody a violation of trust?

Well, it depends on how much of a cost they imposed on us and what they get from it. So our emotions are responsive to a lot of that. But within boundaries, right? So a couple of concepts to introduce. One is the idea of error management, which is uh also goes by, you know, it's if people are familiar with signal detection, it's a similar sort of idea. Where um you know what is more costly? Uh is it more costly to miss an opportunity to cheat somebody, or is it more costly to get caught cheating somebody else? And in many cases, the latter is is is more expensive, right? It is all these expressions, it takes a lifetime to build a reputation, but it you know it takes just a second to destroy it.

Um, and and this is often true, right? If you're caught cheating when you you know when you had an opportunity, people are going to distrust you, and you might never get an opportunity to you know to reclaim that. You know, if you get caught cheating on your spouse, they might never trust you again, um, you know, and uh you know, and and let you go out, you know, lay out late at night with your buddies, right? Because they will expect something, uh suspect something. So um as a result, because getting caught is so costly, we might err, you know, err on the side of, okay, I don't want to risk it. So it's kind of a risky decision. So that's that's part of it, is that there will be some, you know, yes, I'm gonna I, you

know, I might be more likely to cheat in this anonymous situation, but you know, I might not be completely willing, just in case. And different people are going to differ, different people are gonna have a different threshold as to how certain do they need to be about their anonymity before they cheat. So that so that's part of it. Another part of it might be tying back to the stakeholder cooperation that we talked about earlier, where if you perceive that you have a stake in somebody's welfare, you might cooperate with them even if you know a hundred percent that that they cannot observe. Just like you watering that tree and protecting it, even though it cannot detect that you are you are helping it, you will still help because you have it, if you think you have an

interest in them, then, then you'll help them. And this is some of the work that I've done. People are more likely to anonymously help somebody if doing so will keep that person around and available to cooperate with, than if it does not affect whether that person's going to be around and available to help. Right. So part of the anonymous cooperation might be some perception of um uh of stake going on there. But also, I would say we are also plastic about how we learn to deal with new situations. So if you chuck somebody in a lab environment for the first time, this is a bit of a new environment. Well, I'm going to follow the strategies that worked well for me out in the real world because I spend 99% of my time out there in the real world.

Therefore, I'm going to apply all of the heuristics that work well in the real world in the lab, even though it happens to not be beneficial here. Especially the first time. But the second time, I might have learned a little bit. The third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth time, I might have learned a little bit that, oh, wait a second. Cooperation doesn't pay off in this new environment. And research, some researches have shown that people do habituate a little bit to these artificial environments. And so if you have people giving in an online cooperative game, how much do you want of your money? Do you want to share with this other person? Um, well, you know, the first time they do it, they're they're pretty generous.

Second time, maybe not quite as much on average, third time, not as even less on average, as they gradually get used to this artificial scenario as it comprises a larger portion of the interactions. They then start to learn these heuristics of oh, this is a new situation where the payoffs are different. Right. Cite citation internet 2025. See the internet. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. People get used to online environments and realize, oh, I can be an asshole here. And so they do. Um, so that's uh so I I think that's another component of their uh of this too, is that we are plastic, but plasticity takes time. And we we shouldn't interpret, like overinterpret what people do the first time you throw them into an artificial environment.

Um, you know, you can the first if you take a person who has never swum before and you throw them in the water, they're not gonna do so well. If you take somebody who has learned how to deal with water, eventually you throw them in and they'll do the backstroke. Um, but you know, the first time is not necessarily indicative of anything. Right. I remember even like some of the first uh data coming out of this, like, oh, we need a whole new theory of cooperation, it would be something like, and Pat, you can correct me if I'm wrong, cooperation, they would say, like, look, it's gonna be some, there's gonna be um the end to this interaction. And so you would get cooperation on the on the y-axis, is the level of cooperation x-axis

is what round it is. And what you would see is as you're going and it's further and further, or getting closer to the end of cooperation, uh, people are still cooperating, but then it starts like they know this is the last round, and then it goes down. And so people are cooperating less than the rest round, but it's not at zero. And what people would sort of emphasize was the residual cooperation, and kind of so so even in that original data, there was sensitivity to the thing ending, but they were really emphasizing the fact it just didn't go to zero right away, which I think is kind of um you can I mean people were getting money by emphasizing it because they were like we need to discover a brand new thing, um, which I think was sort of overselling the

point. But yeah. There's there's always an incentive to discover a brand new thing. Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah. Uh because sometimes people will discover things that aren't new or aren't, you know, it a repackaging of something old. Yeah. I mean, I think one one way to put it is Pat, you have been steadily doing the actual science of what a lot of very well known people who study cooperation, the evolution of cooperation, have sort of snake oiled into. We've discovered a whole new kind of selection. Um, and I won't name names, but like you're you're actually doing the science of that as opposed to the the flashy snake oil. Yeah. I'm I yeah, I I I'm trying to avoid the the the snake oil. So one of my friends and colleagues, uh Sandy Misher, has a great expression that uh

scientists should be monks, not rock stars. Right. So you know, you know, it's like distrust the people who are super flashy and got all the stuff because you know, maybe they're overselling, you know, maybe they're you know cutting some corners, uh, you know, sort of like the that natural selection of bad science paper that uh uh which which is so good right people doing the really flashy stuff yes there's select you know it could be selection for that but a great paper by the way yeah Richard and Paul we need to have on and I know Willem and Karthic have another related one uh and Paul I think is on that too we should have all those all those folks on but you see you see Kiki this is this is why it's good to be boring sometimes.

Yeah you should this is another PSA. Like really value we should well there's a pay like really there is huge value to boredom. And I really think this, like, um the idea that you should be entertained is a really dangerous idea from like a epistemic stance to take towards the world. If you're like, I insist that I need to be entertained by something and I'm gonna evaluate everything on according to the entertainment value it provides, like buckle up you're gonna you're that's gonna make a really rough uh social experiment. Yeah no absolutely I I have a uh a blog post on that very topic uh cool you know you will find this interesting oh cool I should sorry David uh yeah no basically arguing exactly what you just said that our sense of what is interesting is uh in many ways

uh not to be trusted or it's not a reliable guide to what is true and useful um and it can often lead us toward bullshit in in various ways. And I think there's an overemphasis on uh on interestingness and being interesting uh in our culture. So we have just uh we have just explained why we're not interesting and boring and why it's a virtue. Yes. Yeah we we've given a a self-serving cynical explanation for it. Exactly. I think there's so much to say about cooperation in I mean so here I'm gonna give you two options Pat. One is is there a high-level sort of summary description of like the kinds of solutions to the problem of cooperation that you've discovered? And then option B is, and you can do both or one or the other, is uh

uh Martin and Margot in talking a little bit about them and sort of how you found them or what who they are because we haven't really talked about them. Okay, let me let me deal with the uh the the the first one first um So one of the things that I try to do when not being a snake oil salesman is to try to like rather than coming up with a flashy title. A lot of people like to, I have this new theory and they have their acronym for it or whatever. And then really like dive dive into that. So so some of the stuff I'm known for, um, you know, com competitive helping, you know, is the the idea that we are only implicitly competing in a in a biological market over social partners, right? So it's beneficial to be selected as you know a friend, an ally, a mate, a business

partner, coalitional ally, et cetera, right? Um and in that competition, you benefit from demonstrating your ability to provide benefits, but also your willingness to uh to provide benefits. One way to do so is to not just to be nice, but to be nicer than the other guy, right? To not just be competent, but be more competent than the other than than the other person, right? So you know we're we're very familiar with people competing to appear more competent, right? Athletics is all about that, um, you know, or intellectual competitions or or or whatnot, but there is also competition to to you know appear nicer, right? Or I am more devoted to uh you know to you than that other person would be. I'm a better friend than that other person would be.

Therefore, you should spend more time with me. Um, and one of the best ways to you know to get a good partner is to be a good partner. And so, you know, competing subtly over uh how generous one is in order to demonstrate both your uh ability to give, but also your your willingness to give. Um, and so this is kind of a combination of ideas from a number of other people. Um, Gilbert Roberts first put out the idea of competitive altruism. Um, and uh you know, some a couple of biologists, Ronald Noe and Peter Hammerstein, came up with the idea of biological markets and organisms competing over partnerships. So it's taking those ideas along with the idea of costly signaling, of how can you communicate information about yourself in a way that's honest and guaranteed to be honest,

um, as opposed to just being cheap talk, you know, hey, look at me, I'm cooperative, trust me. Okay, well, why should I trust you? How do I know that it's honest? Well, I'm doing something that would not be worth it if I weren't actually intending to follow through, right? So it's kind of combining these different ideas together into this framework of biological markets and competing over partnerships. So it's drawing from these other areas and trying also to give credit to all of the researchers that have come before. So, I mean, so that's one of the ideas that I'd like to be known for, this idea of a biological market for partnerships and how that shapes how we communicate our attributes, whom we choose, how we choose partners, we choose them based on their competence, their

ability to provide benefits and their willingness to do so. That affects our skepticism towards them when we believe that somebody's honestly a good partner versus when they don't. So that that's a big chunk of it there. Um more recently I've started to get into this idea of uh stakeholder uh generosity. And again, you know, you know, there there's many people have come up with this before. Again, I seem to be using Gilbert Roberts's terminology of stake, um, you know, because I I I I think it it really nicely reflects the idea that one organism can have a vested interest in somebody else. And all of these other actions, like you know, reciprocity, can create a stake in a partner. If we're engaging in purely economic exchange, I come to have an interest in your

well-being and I will help you because of that. If you just happen to be providing public goods, cooperative benefits, I have an interest in helping you. And so that provides an additional selective pressure for me to help you and for you to produce these goods. So it it it kind of nicely links many of these other causes of cooperation, including reciprocity, including uh signaling behavior, but also links to many of these other things like byproduct mutualism. Right. And I just want to say I love this market idea because it's really um it's dynamic. And I think one of the things and it was really influential for me when I worked on a paper about leadership and it was a similar idea of sort of like what what any outcome looks

like. I think people have this idea sort of like, well, like things are static. And so why does cooperation look like this? Or why does this kind of cooperative relationship look like this? And you see a range of sort of like both parties do really well versus like one party sort of exploited and one isn't, but there's still cooperation. And I think without the idea of sort of this market idea, the what you talked about before, you know, if your outside Yeah, what's your other option? And I think that is a really powerful idea. It's a complicating idea. I think people don't like, you know, the sort of snake oil people don't like complicating ideas. But I think it's really important for realism, which is that, and I think it's such a

profound insight. And I think you're you you really, your work inspired me. And I think it's worth saying out loud that this idea of what uh what a relationship looks like is not just a function of the sort of like kind of relationship it is. Like, is it a cooperative relationship? It just looks like this automatically. It's cooperation combined with the market forces of what are the other partners' options. And I think that's such a profound idea. It sounds simple when you say it, but I think it's such a profound idea. Um, so thank you for for in interjecting that. I think it's you're welcome, but I mean it's not just what are their options, but also what are their needs, right? I mean, because this is where supply and demand come in and how these can vary from

environments to from environment to environment. So in one environment where there might be not a lot of food, right, food is in high demand. So somebody who's particularly effective at producing food becomes a very high value partner because that's what you need in that location. And that's going to affect somebody's market value and what you value in a friend or a mate or in any relationship. In other environments, um, food might be plentiful, but maybe there is conflict with uh, you know, with outgroups or this conflict over resources, in which case, um, there, you know, coalitional aid is very important, is in high demand and low supply. And so you might become a more valuable partner by demonstrating, you know, your your

toughness and your you know, your loyalty uh to partners and willing to help them fight off exploiters. So what gets valued in a partner can vary from environment to environment, depending on the local supply and demand, what is needed in that location. And I think that's something where this perspective can also lead into cultural differences, right? In different um physical environments, different traits can be more valuable. In different sociological environments, different traits can be more valuable, either because they are more needed or because they are in shorter supply. And that affects what people are going to do to signal their traits. It affects what people are going to want in a social partner, um and how exactly

they're going to compete over them. That's really interesting. And maybe even individual differences. Like I think one of the tropes of life is sort of like people, I think all of us sort of sometimes we look at people and we're like, why is that person with that person? Whether it's romantic or socially or just or social identities, like why would this political party support this political candidate? And I think the idea of sort of being humble about or thinking about that they might have needs or becoming from a place that we don't have an understanding or being open to hearing about or learning about what their needs are, whether they're real or perceived, it might go a long way to understanding why people are doing or choosing the

partners they're choosing. Yeah. Yeah. So some individuals will have different needs depending on the their phase in life, right? Where they are, how old they are, uh, you know, what their profession is, uh, their environment. So yeah, there's going to be individual differences both in needs, what they can pursue. It also means some individuals maybe higher market value and are able to pursue different strategies. Um, you know, because the, you know, the you know, somebody who's very competent might spend more of their time demonstrating their competence. Somebody who doesn't have that might instead need to focus more on demonstrating their loyalty, right? I might not be as awesome, but I value you way more.

Right. So there are all sorts of compensatory strategies that different individuals are going to follow as a result of their own position within the market. So it's a very rich perspective in order to be able to predict individual differences, cultural differences, ecological differences in what people desire. And it's you know it's a very pl you know we would expect a lot of plasticity in terms of um you know how people respond to these different social environments uh you know that they have grown up in um yeah and uh and how you know the the past environments are going to affect them today because it has affected the market they have grown up in. Right. Well, I I want to float an idea by you, Pat.

It's an idea that we that Dave and I discussed on the on the first episode. Uh it's a a working paper that I'm I'm continuing to think about. Um, and that's between uh or that's it's it's about a conflict between what we might call competitive altruism or partner choice psychology and intergroup competition and intergroup conflict. Um, and it may be that uh, you know, we have this rich partner choice psychology where we want to uh signal how kind and generous and fair we are, um, how humble we are, and we're evaluating other people based on you know whether they're gonna really provide help us help for us, whether they're not gonna you know stab us on the back. We were we're looking for um you know uh peaceful collaborative partners who divide

resources fairly. Um and so there's all that stuff that we that we've gotten into uh in a variety of ways throughout uh the past hour and a half or so. Um and then there's this psychology of intergroup conflict, where in that case, um you don't want to divide resources fairly. It's in your Darwinian interest to divide resources in a lopsided way that benefit your group and exploit the outgroup. Uh in that context, you want to actually dominate and coerce the outgroup. You want to if you uh aggress against them, attack them violently and take their stuff whenever you can do so safely and at low risk when when you have a numerical advantage. It's in your interest to do that from a cold Darwinian perspective.

Definitely need to bring in the cold Darwinian perspective so that people know that you're not personally advocating this. Yes but you're just outlining the Darwinian logic. Yes, outlining the Darwinian logic. But there's a fundamental conflict here, and that it's hard to say violently attack an outgroup uh uh when you have a numerical advantage just for the sake of dominating them or exploiting them or taking their stuff. It's hard to do that when you live in a partner choice psychology where people are constantly evaluating your moral character uh and scrutinizing everything you do from that lens. So if I look like a mean bully uh when I behave in that way toward an outgroup, or if I'm a leader and I'm proposing a coalitional project where we go out and we attack the rival

group just just for no other reason than just you know self-interest or or dominance. Yeah. Um, well, that's gonna make me look like a really mean, ruthless, bad social partner. Turn on their next social partner. Yeah, exactly. And so the idea is that um this might be one of the functions of what we might call ideologies uh or political narratives. They function to reconcile this conflict between partner choice psychology on the one hand and the needs of intergroup competition on the other. That we need to create these pretexts that um aggressing against the outgroup is morally justified, they're evil, they're going to attack us. Um, we need we're doing it in retaliation, we're it's a preemptive strike, or maybe the

gods said that we had to do this. There are there are you know the history books are littered with these kinds of pretexts. But the argument is that we actually need these pretexts to be able to mobilize effectively uh in in a group competition, because if we can't have a pretext that is compatible with our partner choice psychology, uh then our collective action is doomed to failure. Um and so what do you think about uh this idea that that one of the reasons why we need these moral pretexts is to uh um reconcile the conflict between partner choice psychology and intergroup competition? Yeah, uh it's a great it's a great idea. I I'd been thinking along similar lines where some of this is signaling to ones in

group that you're not next. Right. Um so it's uh it it's signaling we are attacking them. Uh and you know uh so I I can't just turn around and suddenly do the same to you. Um so it's uh I I think a lot of it is reassuring uh other coalition members that you know you will you know benefit from the spoils as opposed to become the the next victim. You know, um you know I'm I'm always you know surprised that people aren't a little more skeptical of that. You know, I I love the line, you know, an appeaser is someone who feeds a crocodile in the hopes of being eaten last. Um, you know, so I so I'm very you know surprised that people don't kind of see through that more than they do. Um, but but I do think that the a a lot of it is along the same lines of exactly what you

said, um, um, about trying to still maintain value towards your uh your your desired partners, people with whom you could cooperate. um, but uh you know assure them that they will benefit from this action as opposed to, you know, I'm just a mean bastard who tends to, you know, uh take from anybody and you're next. Cool. So you buy it? Yeah, I buy it. Uh you know, okay. I'd like to see I'd like to see the mathematical model of it first. And uh Oh damn. Park, you're always doing this. You did you did this to me with humor and now you're doing it to me with this. But I've heard you've got a uh you know, for for some of the other questions, you you've got some good stuff on there. So he's got math now.

So so yeah, we're keeping each other honest. That's how this works. Yeah, we are. It's true. It's great. Um, and then uh Martin and Marg. Um wonderful human beings, uh, and and great, great researchers. Um, yeah, I I I trying to think where where where to start. Uh, you know, I mean, if you want to talk about origin stories, I mean somebody could easily give their 40-minute origin story on on on each of them. Um, but uh they so Martin Daly and Margot Wilson are uh two of the founders of the field of uh evolutionary psychology. Um they both came from an animal behavior uh background so those trained as uh animal behavior uh and getting I think which gives gives people a really, really strong basis

in the biology. Um so for anybody out there who's like interested uh in in in evolutionary psychology, you I'd recommend like brush up on some of the the non-human literature is is is really useful because um it really helps strip away any preconcept uh preconceptions we have about what what humans are like um you know and you know cultural differences and all this other stuff like you know look at the the you know that the the non-humans to really get at the underlying logic is is is useful. So they both came from that uh that tradition and then they started working on uh on humans. Um, funny enough, they were reading uh or reading group working uh on uh you know sociobiology, and you know, they uh they were reading about Sarah Hurdy's work about

um uh lions uh you know killing uh male lions killing cubs in order to cause the females to come into estrus earlier or killing cubs that weren't their own. Right. And then somebody's like, ha, what about the wicked step parent myths? So they said, all right, well, let's look into this. And they start collecting, they realized nobody had looked at this. So they started comparing data using um rates of like step-parental abuse to try and test this idea that, well, if parents love their own kids more than other people's kids, we should expect to see less abuse, less homicide in biological parent parentheses in step-parent families. And they found that they ran all these other things, uh, controls for it, and they started

using homicide data to test all sorts of other uh other hypotheses in in many other uh many other domains. So other questions about uh about parenting. Okay, well, which children are people going to uh going to uh to love more? Like, you know, there's an awkward question. You know, which of your two kids do you love more? Um, you know, no parent wants to answer that, but uh they started asking those kinds of questions and using you know homicide data to to test that, using it to test uh hypotheses about uh about mating, um, you know, and and jealousy to start testing hypotheses about risk taking, um, looking at like male-male homicide and the effects of inequality on um on risk taking and and homicide, um, and uh using very, very careful

analyses and started uh pushing evolutionary psychology into other domains. So starting, you know, criminologists started to become interested in their findings, saying, oh, this is cool, right? Uh these are these are very convincing data. Um, you know, to psychologists using these data very, very carefully controlled uh in order to say, oh, okay, this makes sense. Also very cautious about their conclusions, um, which I think also helped because you know it's it's very easy for people to make big flashy statements and and and you know sell their snake oil, which you know attracts some people but will push away other people. Um and you know, certainly evolutionary psychology has attracted its share of

controversy, um, but the their good careful research did help to bring a lot of people on board, including many, many biologists, were like, oh yes, okay, this is cool. We're treating humans like another animal, albeit a very smart social and cultural one. Um and those being Pat Barclay. Uh yeah. One of those being you, yeah. Uh sure, I guess. Yeah. Uh but but they also they they trained a number of other uh a number of other researchers who you who carried uh you know who carried this on. They trained uh people within animal behavior um And uh, you know, they within human stuff, you know, like uh uh Lisa DeBrian, uh Nick Pound, uh Andrew Clark, Danny Krupp, a few, a few other people uh that they trained in this uh, you know, the same sort of idea,

Catherine Salmon, um, so a number of other uh researchers to kind of uh carry on this perspective. And you know, coming up with some of the same ideas that some of the other schools of thought, um you know like with the the the uh Lita Cosmides John Tuby group also coming up with so there's a lot of back and forth between between those groups a lot of sharing of ideas also focusing on like what's what's the underlying psychology and always looking at well what you know what what is the what is the mind doing in this so rather than looking at you know the behavior itself being selected for instead the selection for a brain. And that brain is doing stuff. And so I think those perspectives fit very well together.

Both of them served as president of the Human Behavior and Revolution Society at one point. From what I heard, Margot Wilson was the one who actually it was really pushing for evolutionary psychology to be the the name as opposed to Darwinian psychology. Yes, I uh Lita, yeah, Lita and John would tell so I uh because you know, I was a student of Lita and John's and uh the my understanding is that Martin and Margot and John and Lita, they went down to because I think John and Lita were in Santa Barbara at this point, they went down to like um Palm Springs because Martin and Margot had a desert kangaroo site somewhere. Kangaroo rats. Yeah. And they had this meeting uh about what we should call this thing.

And there was exactly this discussion about do we call it Darwinian psychology or evolutionary psychology? So Pat, you know more about do you know a little bit. I think Margot's uh logic was like just in uh just in case in the future, maybe you know, Darwin's we we decide that Darwin's version of of evolution is maybe not exactly the way that it works. We don't want to be tied to one particular name. And I think you know, maybe this is this is wise to not be focused on individuals, but to be focused on ideas. There's a great quote that the strength of a field is measured by how quickly it forgets its founders. And it means that that field is moving on, right? And coming up with new ideas. Like Darwin's ideas aren't right because Darwin said them.

They're right because there's a crap ton of evidence for it. And so you could do great evolutionary psychology or evolutionary biology without ever reading Darwin. Right. That's interesting. I even when I hear people talk about Darwin and they talk about Darwinian, actually it kind of always rub me the wrong way. And I think this might be part of it. Like that that like I kind of hear like I like I'd rather people talk about like selection pressures, like the principles and not the source of the idea. Like I uh that's interesting, yeah. Yeah. It's it we should be good based on you know the the ideas, not not the people. Right. Um I mean it it ties into your partner choice work. You know, you if you're competing to display your your competence, you want to be known as

the person who had the awesome idea, and we want to all participate in that um uh competitive uh altruism dynamic. It it suggests you know a reason why we're so interested to uh you know tie things to names rather than just the ideas themselves, because it ultimately the the idea was produced by a uh status seeking primate who wants credit for it, uh and it's hard to step out of that to do good science. Yeah, it it will affect the the incentives for uh for for science. So yeah, we gotta we do gotta be cautious of that. Yeah. Um but yeah I I I don't know what else you want me to say about Martin uh Martin Margot. Margot unfortunately died of of cancer in 2009, which was a I think a great loss to the

field, not only for her um her science, but because um, you know, her her humanity. So she was always big on bringing different groups on board, right? People who might not normally have have had a voice and and and bringing them and making sure that they had a seat at the table, um, you know, reaching out to people in uh in other countries, you know, to help uh facilitate the the developing evolutionary communities in those uh in those countries. Um they were some of the people who got um the human behavior and evolution society going. So it was kind of a collection of people from um McMaster University, which is where they were at the time, and uh University of Michigan and I believe North uh Northwestern, um,

you know, kind of all meeting up. And so those three universities was kind of foring, forming the core of uh of HBAS. So, you know, and it took off from there. But also, I think their uh fostering of good science. And I I this is one of these stories about Martin of about uh Margot Wilson that I love, is uh I was giving a job talk. Uh and I had prepared this talk and I was giving it to the lab, and I could kind of see that it was not going so well. And I have to preface this by saying Margot Wilson was one of the loveliest human beings ever, just very warm, very generous just a person. And so at the end of the talk, and I can see you know it wasn't going so great. And I finish the talk, and she just looks at me and she's just like, that was shit.

And she's like, but we're gonna work with you to make sure that you get it to where it needs to be. And so for the next week, every night they work with me on it. And like it only works because Margo was the sweetest human being ever. So, like, when you're talking about intentions, you know that her intentions were really good because they uh you know, you know, and it was not this this self seeking, like, I'm better than you kind of thing. No, it was this warmth being like, you are not meeting your full potential. Right. Let us help you to reach your full potential. And you know, I love that, I I love that attitude of, you know what, as a field, I think we would benefit from saying, you know what?

We can do better. This is good. Let's take it and do better. I and I mean, I wouldn't advocate you know that sort of language in in general because you don't know the intention. Right. You know, if if if I were if I were to say to some random person that was shit, they'd be like, wow, Pat's a real asshole. Um there's some petter, there's some people on Twitter that could use that advice, Pat, actually. Yeah. Um, but but I think the general attitude of, you know what, let's let's police ourselves to make sure that it is all good quality, that we don't have those control conditions left unrun. To make sure that we plug the holes, to make sure that we deal with the alternative explanations, and that it's all communicated well.

I love that attitude of combining very strong scientific rigor, but also with the warmth to be like, okay, let us let's bring up everybody, you know, we'll bring up everybody and help everybody to do good stuff, but also making sure that we don't, you know, accept substandard stuff to make sure that we uh you know we we have demandingness in our work in order so that it it ends up being cited in another 50 years as good, solid stuff that survived the replication crisis. Um, you know, and that ends up having a lasting impact. Yeah, kind and competence so the kind, unkind, competent, incompetent is a two by two cell, and you can occupy the kind, competent cell of that. That's I think a good goal so good goal for everybody.

And a kind of altruistic criticism. Because oftentimes criticism is interpreted as competitive and aggressive. Because often it is. Because it often is. Yes. Uh but often it it is altruistic. And it is the the intent is is to help rather than to hurt. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I I think well well meaning um you know and this is maybe the you know the the private comments versus the public Twitter comments, right? Those are just self aggrandizing. But you know the private like, hey this is good, but you know here's you know here's some ways you can make it better uh, I think is is good. And I think that's a good model, you know, to uh to to aim for, you know, the monk model of doing good work rather than the flashiness and doing and doing it well.

And providing the provide private criticism to uh you know to bring everybody's work up. So I'm sure you have criticisms of my own stuff. And please, I'd love to hear them so I can make it better. You know, but we'll maybe do this uh do that off camera. Uh no, no, Bar Barclay, your stuff is spotless. I couldn't find a a thing to criticize in there if if I if I my life depended on it. Keep shoveling there, Pins off. Well, I mean, I think uh in that respect, I think Pat you have done uh a wonderful job sort of continuing Mar uh We should have Martin on, but Margot We need to have Lita on as well. It'd be fun to have them on together. I do remember John, who also we lost more recently than Margot.

He talked about Margot. I think it was at HBus. He was sort of like a memorial. And he talked about, he showed a picture of where she grew up. And I remember the one thing that stuck with me was he said, and you might know about this too, Pat, where he said she sort of had a difficult childhood, like it was sort of a rough physically, like I mean, I think she like grew up in like kind of a physically challenging, like kind of in the woods in Canada's north, yeah. Um, and John's take on that was sort of it opened her eyes to sort of um that life can be difficult, and it's important to sort of be sober about what exists and to sort of I I don't know how to put it, but he sort of argued that he thinks it sort of allowed her to sort of operate and look at things that other

people might look away from, like homicide. Not because it was salacious or to sort of be statusy about it, but to sort of say this is really insightful because, you know, as they argued, you know, most homicides people are motivated to figure out why it happened. It's a really rich data source. It's really clearly showing the output of strong motivations, you know, like it's not a strong passions involved. Exactly. So you're really getting at a big part of human nature. Um but it's it's also a data set that um, you know you don't have like self-you know self-reporting bias, right? People self-presenting themselves in a in a particular way. Yes. Um they initially you know got into that because with the you know child abuse data, people

could always say, Well, maybe there's a reporting bias. Right. Okay, well, let's look at homicide because you know the vast majority of those get reported, right? So it's and it's just it's just a better data set and they found even stronger effects. Right. It's not like the people, it's not like homicides are found up by self-report of just the people who admit to killing people, right? Right. It's that yeah. When when when we discover a body, there's an independent, disinterested group that are trying to figure out what happened. Yeah. There was a paper a while back about calling psychology is the science of self-report and finger pressing, right? You know, your you know experiment, you know, dink, dink, dink, dink, dink, or self-report.

um, you know, what happened to behavior? And I, you know, I think looking at things like you know, homicide data is a great example of there's there's real behavior involved here. Yeah. Well, um, but yeah, thank you for uh for being with us today. And yeah, really um I can't over emphasize that uh if people haven't looked up Pat your work, um they should look you up and um uh yeah, and just thank you for for helping solve this this problem of cooperation uh and doing it in a way that is not snake oily and that very much is in keeping with Margot's spirit of sort of doing things carefully um and and not in a uh flashy status-seeky way. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for having me on here.

It's been great. And, you know, thank you for hosting this this podcast and getting uh ideas out to uh to everybody. You know, you're doing a great job of uh yeah uh exposing people to some uh great researchers I've you know listened to some of the other people you've had on here and they're fantastic. So I'm I'm honored to be in that category. Thank you. And we're gonna honored that that you spent some time chatting with us and we and we'd love to have you back sometime, of course. Um this was a wonderful conversation and uh yeah we have to have you back and we love the idea of sort of getting return people uh just talking about other stuff now, you know, once we get under the uh under what what you do um so to pick our brains uh as a as a group but

thank you so much pat uh it was wonderful um yeah yeah thank you thank you very much so uh you have spent another couple hours with uh david and myself congratulations or i'm sorry depending on how you feel about it Uh, if you enjoyed the time you spent listening to us, uh please say so. Tell people about it. Um, you know, write us a kind review, uh, write about us on social media, uh, anything to help spread the word. Um, we we we do this uh with with the hope of actually reaching people, and the only way we can reach people is if is if you help us out uh by spreading the word. That's right. We have such wonderful guests. And I mean one of the reasons we're doing it too is because we have the wonderful guests we

have on are uh not all of one reached. Um so yeah, to whatever extent it feels like weird to um uh click on something to broaden the reach, just remember that there's all kinds of uh someone else will do it for someone else who isn't as deserving. Let's let's put it that way. Yes, absolutely. So uh please do your part. And uh yeah, we'll see you next time with another awesome guest. Sounds good, David. I'll see you in about a week. Sounds good. All right. Bye. Bye.