Social Norms, the Self, and Sociobiology: Building on the Ideas of A. I. Hallowell [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract

A. I. Hallowell tried to turn anthropology towards a sociobiology while the former field was still strongly opposed to any consideration of the evolution of human behavior. His work is of more than historical interest, however, because he stressed the evolution of the human ability to internalize social norms and evaluate self and others in terms of them. This ability is the basis of our species's trait of cultural rather than biological adaptation to diverse ecological settings. Sociobiologists have dealt with the evolution of norm acquisition under the rubric of "altruism." Insofar as adherence to norms either directly increases the fitnes of kin (kin selection) or indirectly increases the fitness of all participants (reciprocal altruism), both Hamilton and Trivers have offered explanations for adherence to social norms. Hallowell's approach permits the building of a thrid but complementary explanation based on selection for the ability to internalize others and to attend to their representations even in the absence of their prototypes. These "others" would have been parental and dominant individuals who tended to enforce fitness-enhancing behaviors. Attending to their internalized representations would therefore have been adaptive: it would also have been "protonormative" behavior leading to adherence to symbolically expressed norms not necessarily associated with any particular individual. This explanation has the merit of being consistent with the theories of ontogenetic norm acquisition associated with both Sigmund Freud and G. H. Mead. Interactions among selection for attending to internalized representations of others, kin selection, and reciprocal altruism would therefore have generated the human ability to acquire social norms.