Progress in Human Sociobiology

Abstract

Let us be clear from the start that the term 'human sociobiology' is merely a fashionable label for the use of evolutionary biological theory in the study of human social behaviour. It is often mistakenly equated with the more explicitly genetically based model of kin selection (see below), whereas the proper role of human sociobiology is to examine a much wider issue: how the diversity of human societies reflects the adaptation of individuals to their social and ecological environments. For this reason it is increasingly becoming known as behavioural ecology. What distinguishes this evolutionary perspective from those employed by anthropologists in the past is that it is explicitly Darwinian: behaviour is viewed as adaptive, and potentially shaped by natural selection, if an individual, as a consequence of this behaviour, accrues relative reproductive benefits compared with others who do not behave in this way. I stress at the outset that this Darwinian position does not require that behavioural differences stem from genetic differences. The point is simply this: if a particular pattern of behaviour causes a person to leave more descendants than those who do not exhibit such behaviour, it will come to predominate, or be naturally selected, irrespective of the mechanism of transmission from parents to offspring.' The Darwinian concepts central to evolutionary biological theory - adaptation and natural selection