Kindness evolved to help us survive, says Brian Hare, evolutionary anthropologist. How can we exhibit it today so that it continues to work to the advantage of the human species?
Brian Hare’s course as a scientist was decided by Oreo, a black Labrador who was his childhood friend and to whom he taught tricks, observing his remarkable talents. It was his canine intelligence research that secured him his greatest popularity, though his interests are far broader. He and his wife, Vanessa Woods, a scientist and science journalist, work at Duke University, where they research the development of primates. Their latest book on evolution, Survival of the Friendliest, argues that, when it comes to evolution, it is not strength that counts, but being nice, open-minded, and friendly.
Paulina Wilk: As a scientist, you spend a lot of time with animals. Do you prefer them to people?
Brian Hare: I like people, and I don’t usually try to avoid them, but I do find pleasure being in nature. I feel happy when I can observe, for instance, two chimpanzee species: the common chimpanzee and the pygmy chimpanzee, or bonobo. I try to understand how their minds work. I observe, for instance, the errors they make and reflect on what those errors show. My work requires not only patient analysis of their behavior and drawing conclusions, but also feeling the animal’s situation, to whatever extent this is possible. I’m an evolutionary anthropologist, and everything I do comes down to studying other animals in order to learn more about ourselves.
What has surprised you the most in your work?
Two findings were groundbreaking for me. The first thing that amazed me were bonobos. When I began studying primates, it was generally assumed that evolution was driven by competition. With this assumption, I decided to check how the minds of common and bonobo chimpanzees work, comparing them with those of humans. In our experiments, we gave the former group a simple social problem—rivalry. We noticed they display much more competitive behavior than human children, who communicate better and show more of an inclination to cooperate. This came harder to the common chimpanzees. When I put the bonobo to the same test, however, they showed no desire to compete. Rivalry was so stressful for them that the experiment came to nothing. At first I thought the group was too small or atypical, but when I moved to Kinshasa in Congo and studied more bonobos, I confirmed my earlier observations. The awareness that this species totally avoided rivalry shook my faith in the decisive role of competition as a driving force in the development of species in general. I understood it was not the sole factor that brought about change.
And your second important discovery?
That I owe to the famous Belyaev foxes.
We should mention that these were the descendants of foxes Soviet scholar Dmitri Belyaev used for a 1960s experiment that is still a topic of discussion. Among several generations, he chose foxes that were friendlier to humans and, after some time, discovered that they more effectively multiplied, and their population grew faster than the less trusting ones.
That was the most incredible genetic experiment of the past century! Moreover, it was conducted in the Soviet Union, at a time when genetics were prohibited. I went to Siberia to observe the Belyaev foxes because I was interested in the process of taming wolves and the evolutionary development of dogs. I had previously assumed that dogs have subtler means of communication with people than wolves because, in the past, in the domestication process, people chose the animals with which they had a better understanding. I thought the selection was based on this very factor—their ability to make contact with people. In Siberia, however, I discovered that the foxes, which were chosen for the experiment because of their friendlier dispositions, were also far better at communicating. That was a surprise because it showed that if a species “wants” to be more socially developed and clever or better in its communication skills, then the key is a favorable attitude. If a species is friendlier, it often enters a new form of cooperation—and then this development takes place. This experience with the foxes helped me understand the bonobo. Today I am convinced they have evolved to become more tolerant and social, and less aggressive.
And they’ve become perfectly friendly?
Oh no, they’re far from perfect. They can fight or be aggressive, but they don’t kill one another, or at least, no such incident has been confirmed. Meanwhile, among common chimpanzees the homicide rate is close to that in early human cultures—they wage cyclical wars, taking territory and females, killing children and hostile groups. The bonobo shows none of this behavior—they have learned to live in ways people could only dream of. Our research shows that, when friendly behavior is on the rise, there is potential for new cooperation, and with it, the development of species and whole clans that suddenly begin to have considerable success competing with others.
And what important things did these observations tell you about people?
The history of human life unfolds slowly. We live a long time. Everything in us changes bit by bit. Our brains and bodies develop slowly. In this sluggish tale one thing surprises me that comes swiftly, in our first year of life. Right after birth, a person is unable to enter social interactions. As newborns we have remarkably undeveloped brains, and then suddenly, in just twelve months, we acquire a vast number of complex social abilities that no other creature has ever possessed. We can sense others well and understand their thinking. This is despite the fact that our brains will continue to take shape for years to come and will long be unable to solve simple tasks. That fascinates me: How does evolution make these abilities flourish at such an early stage? Scholars long supposed that the most sophisticated brain functions are developed much later on.
But I still don’t understand why you have to observe other animals to find out about people. Isn’t that like getting to Paris through Cape Town?
To scientifically define what is human we have to recognize what is not. If we want to establish what is exceptional and unique in humans, we need to go to animals for advice, because many of our images of ourselves are simply wrong. Ask the animals and they’ll tell you: we do that too, we also know how, you’re not so special, human. Comparisons with other species help us gain a much more refined picture. Few think of anthropologists as influential scholars, but in 2022 the Nobel Prize for medicine went to Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo, who sequenced the Neanderthal genes and discovered new hominids. In recent years, his work and research led many evolutionary anthropologists toward a great shift: we now know that over the past 200–300,000 years, there were at least four other human species apart from Homo sapiens. Isn’t that incredible? Imagine you’re at the airport and you’re about to board a plane, and three or four other species of passengers get on board with you.
What do we know about them?
First of all, their brains were the same size as ours. Secondly, they left behind artifacts of culture and technology. Thirdly, they are almost certain to have created a linguistic culture. I am not saying they formed a language, but they did have fairly refined means of communication. I mention these three factors because if you were to ask someone off the cuff what separates us from other creatures, they’d likely say: brain size, language, and culture. It looks like various species had those traits, yet only we managed to survive. And we have made some extraordinary progress. That means some other factor must have come into play. My findings show that it is the exceptional kindness of our species.
What has happened to make kindness shift into the foreground in the study of human beings? Steven Pinker, Claudia Hammond, and Rutger Bregman have written popular books about it. There is also research into friendly behavior.
I think it’s not just a question of one breakthrough; it is more a synthesis of research of scientists working diligently over decades. It incorporates research on animals, cognitive-behavioral studies on the development of the human mind, and establishing our coexistence with other human species. The best part is that it is kindness that has led us to this discovery: the science community’s ability to work together, their openness to being together in a way only our species can. We’re drawn to the foreign, to new perspectives; we share knowledge across the world. Other animals cannot do that and now we know it. In a joint effort, we leapt from the Hubble telescope to the Webb telescope—we can see ourselves and our past much more clearly.
We long believed in the superiority of Homo sapiens over other species and animals. That conviction was supported by institutions and authorities, by the Church and academies. Now research is coming in hard and fast that we were wrong. The truth about the world is diversity, not hierarchy. I wonder what the outcome of this knowledge could be.
That’s a big question. I’ll try to break it down. Researching animals and other hominids, we have managed to establish that individual Homo sapiens have no special advantage. What was critical to the success of our species was not more brain power in processing data but the fact that we could cooperate. Evolution has made us feel attracted to the unfamiliar. We can have a close, friendly bond with someone we meet as an adult. We can integrate the “external stranger,” whom we take in as a friend and treat entirely as our own—we have a shared identity with them. In the world of other primates, we never find this level of connection, this deep identification with an unrelated individual. And according to my research, this approach was also impossible for other human species, who feared every foreign creature. The fact that we have developed a kindness mechanism toward strangers definitely sets us apart—this is our group identity. If we see an indication of shared values, such as a similar faith or a fondness for art, we can immediately strike up a friendship and tend to one another like family. Our superior kindness facilitates cultural and technological evolution at a remarkable pace. It has allowed us to adapt at a lightning speed and respond to complex challenges. Because many innovators, many minds, have created tight bonds, our group’s collective knowledge has risen swiftly. One hundred thousand years ago, a human being would interact with hundreds of people, exchange ideas, and improve them. Today, the whole world is connected.
That sounds too beautiful. There must be a dark side to this story.
There is. When we sense a threat to a group that is vital to us, when we are deeply concerned about those whose identities we share, it turns into a lethal force. That beautiful ability to cooperate shuts down, and we cease to sense people’s thoughts and empathize with them.
As if someone turned off the lights?
Right. We lose our ability to empathize with people whom we see as a threat to our group. Were it not for studies on other animals, we would recognize neither the incredible gift of kindness, nor the key paradox of human nature.
Which is that we can be the kindest, but also the cruelest?
Exactly. You asked about the implications of these findings. If we want to build a kinder future, we already know the mechanism we need to develop to strengthen our capacity to make friends. Many human cultures create hierarchies, many religions put humans above other creatures, distancing them from nature. Meanwhile, every species is exceptional. It is, after all, unique that we see them as different, and thus separate. There is nothing special about being special. When you study animal wisdom, you find out that there are no better or worse kinds of intelligence, only different ones. Only people have created the internet? Great, in this department we are unique. But let’s talk about how great we are at echolocation. We haven’t got that skill at all, while in other species it is highly developed.
Creating hierarchies builds an unscientific conviction that the wiser or cleverer you are, the more value you represent. I study dogs, however, and I do not find better or worse ones, only various cognitive profiles. One deals splendidly with helping people with disabilities, but is less adept at sniffing out explosives; with others, it’s the reverse. None of them are stupid. When building a hierarchy of intelligence, we overlook particular talents and mismanage them.
And what about the hierarchies within human societies? After all, we also divide each other into better and worse.
Some people really do believe that there are better and worse groups. The “better” ones are supposed to have higher moral values. They might also feel more easily that their group identity is endangered.
Is this Darwin’s legacy?
I see it differently. The title of Survival of the Friendliest plays on the old maxim about survival of the fittest, which is a common but totally erroneous understanding of evolution. It is not science that claims certain groups are more valuable because they are better adapted, stronger, richer, or more influential. It is hierarchical institutions that have appropriated and distorted the findings of science to justify their sense of moral superiority and mechanisms of exclusion. Darwin’s findings were taken up and used by groups that had previously supported the idea of a hierarchical world.
How can we use these findings of our remarkable friendliness in our social lives?
Clinical psychology has been successful in treating phobias. It has proven that, if we can learn anxiety, we can unlearn it as well. I’ve always believed that, as we have discovered the mechanism that makes people remarkably friendly and cruel, it is now time to develop strategies to reduce the negative side. In the book we write about the dehumanization that is set in motion when we sense we are in danger. In times of fear, the human brain cannot adopt an outside perspective or be empathetic. It is designed in exactly the opposite way: in this situation it knows how to hate. There are two questions: how to protect ourselves from hatred stoked by a sense of danger, and how to reignite a sense of shared identification and empathy?
What solutions do you suggest?
Ones similar to those used in raising dogs. In a contemporary urbanized world, a dog has to know the same things as a person: how to enter into a mass of interactions without aggression. Long ago, wolves functioned a bit like Neanderthals: they didn’t go to playgrounds; they didn’t befriend strangers—they even killed them. How, then, to bolster the dog’s potential for friendliness? From a young age, you have to acclimatize him to various strangers, animals, and situations. The same goes for us: we have to make contact with a range of people and stimuli, and ideally, have friends in different groups and create many collective identities.
Doesn’t the world do that for us? Children are confronted with a whole mass of experiences, they are made to interact. Maybe that diversity overwhelms us, which is why we are prone to hate?
I believe that socialization on its own can only ensure a certain level of tolerance and reduce anxiety and nervousness toward others a bit. But this is an initial phase, preparation for building friendships, particularly with members of other groups. They help humanize strangers and limit the potential of hatred. Our findings allow us to conclude that friendships outside our own group identity are a potent vaccine against dehumanization.
What is the basic difference between kindness and friendliness?
Kindness is an attitude that allows you to enter a whole range of interactions; it appears widely in fauna, but also among flowers and mushrooms. You can think of it as an attraction to others that replaced repulsion. An example is the little fish who clean the mouths of predator fish—this behavior ought never to have evolved! Yet they have lost their fear, leading to new cooperation and the success of their population. The moment in which attraction replaces flight and fear is conquered by curiosity we call kindness.
And what is friendship? And are only people capable of it?
Friendship is not unique to our species; among animals we define it as a relationship in which two unrelated creatures decide to spend lots of time together. This is not about blood ties or procreation; it is about enjoying themselves together or protecting one another.
How exactly is the kindness mechanism initiated, making friendship possible?
In terms of psychology, a key element is the ability to imagine how others think and feel. But there is also a neurophysiological foundation here. In short: in the presence of strangers, we develop a mother bear syndrome. At the sight of a stranger we excrete an extra portion of oxytocins, our level of cortisol drops, and we are also building neuropeptides in our brain, strengthening our social bonds. This lets us treat them as a member of our own group, like a relative. We internalize them. And we become as solicitous around them as a mother bear to her cubs. If anyone should threaten their safety, the mother attacks with lethal force. People are the same: care turns into a fierce attack if the internalized strangers turn out to be dangerous.
No one blames a mother bear for violently protecting her cubs. But why does kindness shut down in people and pave the way for aggression in conditions such as social media?
Social media makes it easier to vent aggression because there are no inhibitions: you can be anonymous, you can’t see your adversary, you have no chance to observe the consequences of what you’ve done to them, probably you will never interact with the object of your attack again . . . In real situations, if you come across someone who will not cooperate, you can leave—find better partners. Antisocial behavior does not pay, because the aggressor remains alone and thus loses out. Moreover, there are punishments in reality—the price of deceiving someone or hostile behavior could be too high. Social media encourages us to express group identities on an extreme level. We are less inclined to sanction an aggressor than to explode into group struggles and violent exchanges. The internet is a place with loads of people, and everything happens quickly. There is no time to go in-depth, and reactions are automatic. But those wars and storms are usually started by small groups of people to whom algorithms give disproportionate attention. The emotional grenades are lobbed by a handful of terrorists. In the real world we work differently.
Your book points to cities as places that train us in a variety of contacts. How do they work as grounds for socialization?
Large cities are an astonishing success of human civilization. Millions of people live together in them, and tragedies are incredibly rare. Yet urbanization can work miracles only when cities are built to encourage interaction between various groups, joining people in schools, on playing fields, forming early friendships between children. What if the access to resources becomes limited and competition grows? This integrated city will be more resistant than a metropolis dividing groups into closed districts or neighborhoods. The best historical example of the power of friendly relationships in a crisis is the research showing who helped save Jews during the Holocaust. Most often these were people who had Jewish friends. Friendship made them courageous; it helped them resist dehumanization.
I have to ask about war. The one in Ukraine is the second armed conflict in Europe in my lifetime. I clearly recall the collapse of Yugoslavia. Residents of the same villages killed one another, even in the same settlements. Now, nations with similar cultures, plenty of shared history, related cuisine, and a partly shared language are at war. Maybe no relationship, no matter how close, is a foolproof vaccine against hatred?
According to our scientific knowledge at present, that’s unfortunately true—total security does not exist. The dark, paradoxical side of human nature is a universal trait of our species. Every person has it. That’s the bad news. But I have some good news as well. Much like you can switch off kindness and defuse dehumanization, you can also turn kindness back on and begin restoring the bonds. In 2013, during the Boston Marathon, there was a bomb attack (carried out by two brothers from Kyrgyzstan to avenge the American war in Afghanistan and Iraq—ed.). A month later, in London, two Islamic extremists knifed a British soldier to death. Research following these events showed that the dehumanization of Muslims spiked in the whole American population, to levels typically found in white supremacists. Only two weeks later, however, it fell to the level from before the attacks. If we live in societies that have norms and mechanisms to unite us, such as public declarations like “We are one nation, we will not be divided,” we can control dehumanization by appealing to meta-identities that generally cover larger groups. If, however, a terrorist attack or a tragic accident is used to blame a certain group and will be continually reinforced as an example of how guilty strangers pose a threat, dehumanization can remain high for a long time. There are three riders of the dark side of human nature: authority, conformism, and bias.
What needs to happen to instigate kindness in a state of stimulated hatred?
It is enough that the arguments that besmirch members of others groups or deny them their full humanity fall silent. Humanization turns back on by itself after some time, and I would suggest that this happens easily. I’ll have more to say later, because I’ve only started studying this phenomenon in South Korea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the USA. When I think about the Ukrainians and Russians, now fractured by the war, I try to recall that those nations share many events in history, in culture, in cuisine—there is no shortage of points for building a shared identity. Our authority in restoring humanization need not be a ruler. It can also be sports or a popular artist, for instance.
When we dehumanize people, we compare our enemies to animals—we speak of them as beasts; we speak of their inhuman crimes. What does being fully human mean to you?
I’d explain it scientifically as follows: when I see another creature, I ascribe it human mental abilities. I am now peering at blooming camellias outside the window and am thinking they must be happy in the sun and warmth. I give them feelings they do not have. You know that cartoon where a lamp gets sad or a bus smiles? There’s no way not to see them as people! I do an experiment with students in my classes. We slice two carrots. One is just a carrot. The other one is named John. I tell them: this is John the Carrot, he has a wife and children, he likes basketball. And then my students’ brains go nuts—the neuron network responsible for social relations springs to life. They slice and weep, feeling sorry for poor John. Our brains seek out all that is human and can be ascribed humanity. And those unmistakable eyes. As a person, I recognize another person by the whites of their eyes.
And more philosophically?
I quite like a thought I found in Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species. He wrote that human virtue came about accidentally, out of our sympathy and understanding, which gradually spread to all sensitive creatures and which we pass on from generation to generation. And so humanity is something we create. We did not evolve with it; we became aware of it. It is something we learn and for which we strive.
Brian Hare:
Hare is a professor at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University, where he founded a center for the study of canine cognitive functions. He has also researched how chimpanzees and lemurs think.
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