Cooperation and Conflict among Kin

Abstract

The evolved psychology of conflict and cooperation among kin depends on the ultimate causes of kin interaction. This chapter reviews the relevant evolutionary theory and outlines its potential application to the study of human kin interactions and concomitant psychology, within and beyond the nuclear family. The problem for sociobiology and allied fields has been to provide an explanation for the evolution of altruism and sociality. The discussion of conflict and cooperation among human kin focuses on Hamiltonian kinship theory. There are two alternate ways of thinking about kinship effects in evolution: one uses Hamilton's concept of inclusive fitness, and the other, less appreciated approach employs neighbor-modulated fitness. Recognizing the important principle of modularity—the idea that psychological adaptations are likely to be specialized for rather narrow functions—one can sketch the landscape of human kinship psychology.

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