insofar as it involves“instrumental aggression,”which makes the giving up of
resources by the exploited individual different from altruism. For example,
sharing food can be altruistic behavior; however, when the alpha male of a
group claims the food of a lower-ranking animal, we better speak of extortion.
It has to be noted, however, that individuals can be manipulated into giving up
benefits voluntarily and this can involve the manipulation of empathy, for
example. Thus the difference between altruism and exploitation might not
always be very clear.
Human cooperation is seldom based on an open-ended negotiation process
between equals. While living in groups offers obvious benefits, it also increases
competition for limited local resources. Thefield is tilted in favor of one party
more often than not and the resulting deals are never perfectly symmetrical.
The“Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis”(Byrne & Whiten, 1988) and the
“social brain hypothesis”(Dunbar, 2003, 2009) suggest that social cognitive
capacities in humans evolved to maximize benefits from social interactions for
the individual. The ability of deception has deep roots in our evolutionary past
(Byrne & Corp, 2004; Brosnan & Bshary, 2010).
Notwithstanding the liberal values of Western democracies, virtually all
cultures have accepted asymmetries in social interaction as a constitutive
factor of, rather than an impediment to, morality. Exploring the origin of
asymmetric social relationships in depth is beyond the scope of this chapter.
It can be argued that there is always variation within populations with
respect to physical, cognitive, and emotional traits—as indeed in most
other anatomical and cognitive characteristics. On the one hand, there is
no natural selection without variation, thus a species consisting of perfectly
identical individuals would stop adapting to its environment. On the other
hand, at least some phenotypical differences could be adaptations to specific
niches of human society. A much-discussed case is the presence of“chron-
otypes”in human populations (Roenneberg et al., 2003; Levandovski et al.,
2013). Due to differences in their circadian clock (daily cycle of activity),
some people wake up very early whereas some stay active until very late.
Such differences are largely based on genetic differences (Ambrosius et al.,
2008).^6 Evolutionary theorists make the point that exploitation can result in
mutually beneficial arrangements (Jones, 2007, p. 501). For example, males
can exploit females by not contributing to parenting, but males can at
(^6) What could explain the development of the chronotypes? Speculations about the origins of
“night owls”in human populations include the ideas that their ancestors were guards or
nocturnal hunters in hunter-gatherer societies (Roenneberg, 2012, pp. 90–105). Correlations of
the“evening chronotype”with“Machiavellian”psychological traits suggest, however, a different
explanation (Jonason et al., 2013). Humans whose cognitive performance was optimal late at
night and who had narcistic and exploitative psychological traits could use this constellation to
exploit others, including casual sex or other risky endeavors to take advantage of other group
members under the cover of darkness.
Morality 181