Ongoing selection against violent behaviour

Author

Jason Collins

Published

August 18, 2012

From Mark Pagel, author of Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind, in a RSA podcast:

Cultural evolution and genetic evolution are still going on. We’re still evolving. Our societies are strongly selecting against violence and antisocial behaviour at a genetic level. People who knock you over the head and steal your wallet get thrown in jail, and it’s hard to have reproductive success in jail. And some societies even kill people who do those things, and so we are still selecting against antisocial behaviour very strongly in our societies. And so we’re still evolving. There’s hope.