'Brilliant, eye-opening, and absolutely inspiring - and a riveting
read.' Cass Sunstein, author of How Change Happens and co-author of
Nudge What is the secret to humanity's evolutionary success? Could
it be our strength, our intellect... or something much nicer? From
the authors of New York Times bestseller The Genius of Dogs comes a
powerful new idea about how 'friendliness' is the key factor in the
flourishing of our species. Hare and Woods present an elegant new
theory called self-domestication, looking at examples of
co-operation and empathy and what this can tell us about the
evolutionary success of Homo sapiens...
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Review This Product
Tue, 28 Jun 2022 | Review
by: Tanya K.
This is a relatively short book in which Hare and Woods hypothesise that "friendliness" is the key factor is what makes humans different from other social animals and lead to our evolutionary success. This human self-domestication hypothesis postulates that natural selection affected the human species in favour of friendlier behaviour that enhanced our ability to cooperate and communicate more flexibly with others of our kind. Over many generations, individuals with hormonal and developmental profiles that favour friendliness, and therefore cooperative communication, were more successful. This theory predicts that there will be evidence for (a) selection for reduced emotional reactivity and heightened tolerance linked to new types of human cooprerative-communicative abilities, and (b) changes in our morphology, physiology, and cognition resembling the domestication syndrome seen in other animals. This is, indeed, what the authors' research finds.
The first half of the book covers various studies on animal domestication, cognition and behaviour, including Belyaev's famous fox experiments, dogs, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans, as they relate to "friendliness" and behaviour towards group and out-group members. The arguments relating animal domestication to human self-domestication are sound and particularly interesting. The comparison between humans and bonobos is also fascinating. The writing is pleasant and easy to follow.
However, the second half of the book deals with human aggression against what we consider "other", but any scientific information on the subject is overwhelmed by a diatribe on political ideologies. I wished to read about the science of the hypothesis, not to get inundated with the mostly-American-centric, author-biased, and overly simplified political ideologies the authors felt they needed to disgorge onto the page! I found this section of the book to be the weakest in terms of the science presented (sloppy!) and the style of presentation.
In short, this book provides an interesting, and easily digested, introduction to the self-domestication hypothesis, but Hare and Woods should have stuck with the science, included more information how "friendliness" affects relationships, minimized the politics, and included more bonobos!
OTHER BOOK:
~Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-Made World by Richard C. Francis
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