Herbert Gintis examines cultural evolution of group selection with a more statistical method, offering evidence that societies that promote pro-social norms, as in group selection, have higher survival rates than societies that do not.
•
First, some authors have shown that the argument that haplodiploid inheritance, characteristic of the Hymenoptera, creates a strong selection pressure towards nonreproductive castes is mathematically flawed.
Universal Music Group | Warner Music Group | Coxeter group | Volkswagen Group | Group of 77 | RTL Group | girl group | BT Group | ABB Group | Group One | Virgin Group | Thales Group | ING Group | group | Rio Tinto Group | Bloomsbury Group | Penguin Group | Carlsberg Group | Borders Group | Arup Group Limited | Benetton Group | Stagecoach Group | LMFAO (group) | Anschutz Entertainment Group | Tata Group | Rootes Group | Westfield Group | Group races | Group C | MTN Group |
In Unto Others: the Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (1998), Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson demonstrated that evaluative diversity could evolve through group selection.
However a generally positive reception has been seen amongst proponents of group selection and Philip Ball wrote a largely positive review in the Times that acknowledges she is right to "call time on a Whiggish view of the history of evolution".
Whether the "it" be that of Richard Dawkins' reductionist gene-centred worldpicture, the "universal acid" of Daniel Dennett's meaningless Darwinism, or David Sloan Wilson's faith in group selection (not least to explain the role of human religions), we certainly need to acknowledge each provides insights but as total explanations of what we see around us they are, to put it politely, somewhat incomplete.
John Tooby, past president of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society and a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, insists that MacDonald is not an evolutionary psychologist, and that he advocates models incorporating "group-selection theory", a generally discredited view of natural selection.