20 WINTER 2020 / POPSCI.COM
LEAVING PLASTIC BEHIND • LENDING A HAND • LEARNING BETTER • LIVING ON THE EDGEBIG S
ABOUT SHARING?
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WHEN BRITISH-AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST COLIN
Turnbull published The Mountain Peoplein 1972, he dubbed his
subjects—a Ugandan group called the Ik—“the loveless people.”
After two years of observations, he decided that they reflected hu-
manity’s basest instincts: adultery, thievery, and pitilessness. Two
years later, physician Lewis Thomas recounted Turnbull’s find-
ings in The Lives of a Cell. “They breed without love or even casual
regard,” he wrote. “They defecate on each other’s doorsteps.”
But when Athena Aktipis and her collaborators from the Human
Generosity Project, a research network she founded in 2014 with
Rutgers anthropologist Lee Cronk, took a deeper look, they identi-
fied a community that shared everything. “The general conception
was that the Ik were horrible,” says Aktipis, a professor of psychol-
ogy at Arizona State University. But Turnbull had visited Uganda
during a devastating famine. “All he saw is what happens when
people are starving.” Her teammate Cathryn Townsend’s fieldwork
revealed that despite living under pressure, the Ik placed a high
value on helping one another when they could.
Aktipis believes that altruism is more common—and beneficial—
than evolutionary social science has long presumed. “A lot of
existing work on our behavior is based on this decades-old frame-
work that assumes people are designed to only do things to help
themselves or their kin, or that they’ll get paid back for,” she says.
By studying the unique, selfless practices that helped nine com-
munities across the world endure, the experts from the Human
Generosity Project are looking to show that we are indeed capable
of widespread cooperation. Aktipis combines their long-term ob-
servations with data to quantify the outcomes of generous actions.The Maasai ethnic group in Kenya provided one of the project’s
first focal points. The work, supervised by Rutgers graduate stu-
dent and Maasai member Dennis Sonkoi, has helped to show that
peer-to-peer altruism can benefit an entire population. Herders
rely on two-way friendships known as osotua, or “umbilical cord,”
for resources like food or livestock when they’re in need, without
expecting any repayment. Crunching data on average herd sizes
and losses, Aktipis designed computer models that outlined how
this method of sharing, compared to selfishness or quid pro quo,
led to better livestock survival and resource distribution among
families in times of drought, famine, or disease.
A world away, in the windblown Malpai Borderlands of Arizona
and New Mexico, the project is applying the same quantifying
methods to the time-tested rancher practice of “neighboring.”
While families often help one another brand or transport cattle
and receive support in return, folks will assist without repayment
if someone faces difficulties, such as an injury or the death of a
loved one. “You expect reciprocity for a planned event, but not for
unexpected hardship,” Aktipis explains.
Aktipis believes the modeling techniques and theoretical frame-
works she’s perfected through studying these groups can apply
broadly to any interdependent systems. “When you look at coop-
eration, whether you’re talking about humans or cells, there are
fundamental features that are very similar across scales,” she
says. In our bodies, for instance, cancerous tumors selfishly ditch
the social contract for short-term gain.
Her big goal, however, is to use the lessons from her work
to design social-service systems that support everyone. Take
market- based insurance in the United States as an example: It’s
priced based on individual risk factors such as health histories
and where people live, which means millions of Americans can’t
afford it. But in a system built on neighboring or osotua, pooled
costs would level the burden amassed during collective hardships
like natural disasters and pandemics. “Obviously, rethinking the
way insurance works is a big, big project,” Aktipis says.
For her, highlighting the cooperation that exists in tight-knit
communities all around the world also provides a sorely needed
mental shift from society’s obsession with individual success. Her
team’s work shows that there’s greatness in lifting each other up.
“It’s a good, legitimate instinct,” Aktipis says, “because it leaves
the whole group and every person in it more resilient.”POVBY RACHEL FELTMAN / PHOTOGRHPH BY CAITLIN O’HARA