Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

Consider the data presented in the figure above, from the largest study of mate preferences ever undertaken, involving 10,000 participants in 37 nations. David Buss asked people at the age of reproduction (20 to 25) to indicate how important different attributes were in potential romantic partners (0 = unimportant, 3 = indispensable). What generated the most heat (and some light) from these findings were the gender differences in mate preferences that remain to this day some of the most highly contested findings in the social sciences: Men prioritize beauty more than women, looking for hourglass-shaped women at the peak of their reproductive potential (see the two bars to the right); women, facing the extreme costs of raising offspring, show a greater preference for silver-haired, ambitious mates with big pocketbooks (see the two middle bars).

Lost in the controversy of this study is another finding: The most important criterion for females and males alike in their search for love, an overwhelming universal across the thirty-seven countries surveyed, is kindness. There are many clear benefits to mating with caretaking individuals, the vagal superstars of our world. They are likely to devote more resources to offspring. They are more likely to provide physical care—touch, protection, play, affection—and create cooperative, caring communities vital to survival. They are more likely to raise offspring that themselves do well in the mating game when they reach the age of reproduction. And presumably, they should be less likely to run off with the next cute thing. The sexual preference for kind individuals makes evolutionary sense, as Darwin long ago surmised: “Sympathy…will have been increased through natural selection; for those communities which include the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.”

Evolution went one step further. Social selection pressures—who we favor with friendships, attention, and status in groups—created additional pressure for kindness to be wired into our genes. We only survive socially, in groups, and groups fare better when comprised of kind individuals. In my research, we have asked individuals in different groups to talk in free form about the reputations of randomly selected group members. We provided an opportunity for sorority sisters to gossip about each other by simply asking them to tell nicknames of other sorority sisters not present and what kinds of activities justified those nicknames. The central issue in this kind of reputational discourse was not what you might think—the group member’s tendency to drink too much or take illegal drugs, or irritating idiosyncracies (the tendency to play the drums at 2:00 AM, to not do the dishes, or to leave dirty socks or underwear out for all to view and smell). Instead, the central focus of reputational discourse is the kindness and warmth of other group members. Off-the-record chat, banter, and gossip all center upon who lacks kindness and compassion and poses a threat to the harmony of the group. We ferret out cold, self-interested, backstabbing Machiavellians through reputational processes—gossip, casual conversations about the latest things other group members have done.

In fact, so important was the capacity to care to the survival of our species that new data suggest that we have been wired to identify the trustworthy and reliable caretakers among us, and preferentially trust, and give resources to, those vagal superstars. In a study that explored this reasoning, participants played the trust game with a set of vagal superstars and a set of low-vagal-tone individuals, whom we’ll call Machiavellians. These participants first viewed each vagal superstar or Machiavellian for twenty seconds on videotape in a conversation with another person. The sound was off. The cues our vagal superstars and Machiavellians were giving off were minimal (a few head nods, an open-handed posture, a gleam in the eye). The task for our participants was to indicate how much they trusted each vagal superstar or Machiavellian. They then gave some amount of money to each vagal superstar and Machiavellian, which would be sent to that person over the Internet and tripled. That individual on videotape would then give some amount back to our participants.

As in life, the task for our new participants was to trust the right people. Gifts to the more cooperative vagal superstars would more likely be returned in kind. Avoiding generosity toward the Machiavellians would prevent the participants from being exploited by these competitive types. And indeed, our new participants trusted the vagal superstars more. They also gave them more money. The branches of the nervous system that support compassion and altruism are detected and rewarded in brief encounters with strangers. It pays to be kind.

SYMPATHY BREAKTHROUGH