#187 Robert Trivers: Parental Investment, Reciprocal Altruism, Self-Deception
Dr. Robert Trivers is an American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist. He proposed the theories of reciprocal altruism (1971), parental investment (1972), facultative sex ratio determination (1973), and parent–offspring conflict (1974). He has also contributed by explaining self-deception as an adaptive evolutionary strategy (first described in 1976) and discussing intragenomic conflict. Steven Pinker considers Dr. Trivers to be “one of the great thinkers in the history of Western thought”. He’s also the author of books like Social Evolution (1985), Genes in Conflict: The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements (2006), Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others (2011), and Wild Life: Adventures of an Evolutionary Biologist (2015).
In this episode, we talk about all of the major contributions of Dr. Trivers’ to the field of Evolutionary Biology. First, we look through some of the major advancements in Evolutionary Biology since Darwin, particularly kin selection, inclusive fitness theory, and sexual selection. Dr. Trivers tells us about how we arrived at his theories of parental investment, reciprocal altruism, and parent-offspring conflict. We explore parental investment in its several dimensions and implications. Then, we discuss parent-offspring conflict and the many ways it can manifest across species. We also refer to reciprocal altruism and the situations where friends can be more aligned with our interests than our own family. After that, we talk about deceit and self-deception, how they work, and some of the domains where they might have the biggest impact. We briefly discuss the modularity of mind approach. Finally, Dr. Trivers comments on group selection, and I also ask him to tell us about his more recent work on the evolutionary bases of honor killings in humans societies.
Time Links:
William Hamilton, kin selection, inclusive fitness theory, and sexual selection
How Dr. Trivers came up with the theories of parental investment, reciprocal altruism, and parent-offspring conflict
What stems from a differential reproductive success between the sexes
The degree of parental investment (by males) depends on the ecological and the social circumstances
Cooperative breeding in humans
Costly and honest signaling
Parent-offspring conflict
Possible ways offspring could try to fool their parents
Reciprocal altruism, and situations where friends may be better for us than family
How self-deception works
About modularity of mind
Units and levels of selection, and group selection
Recent work by Dr. Trivers on honor killings
Follow Dr. Trivers’ work:
Website: https://bit.ly/2ZdSF3M
Twitter handle: @TriversRobert
Books on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2v9cVFL
Relevant papers/books:
Deceit and Self-Deception: https://amzn.to/2ZgQBrB
Parental Investment and Sexual Selection: https://bit.ly/2UySpwU
Parent-Offspring Conflict: https://bit.ly/2OLpsIq
Natural Selection of Parental Ability to Vary the Sex Ratio of Offspring: https://bit.ly/2TTyd4c
Deceit and self-deception (paper): https://bit.ly/2DbRQPl
The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism: https://bit.ly/2GoMMtc