Human group living is obligate, driven by morphology and ecology rather than choice

Evidence

Dunbar is correct, as far as the logic of population genetics goes. But from the perspective of the phenotype, and in particular, the human phenotype, which is our object of investigation, the logic falls short. Humans are trapped into group living, which is a solution to the free rider problem (Brewer & Caporael, 2006). They are constrained by their morphology (e.g., their lack of natural defenses such as deadly incisors or tough hides, their long period of infant helplessness, and their slow bipedal mode of locomotion) and their ecology (e.g., their mode of subsistence extraction in combination with the carrying capacity of their habitat). Thus, humans are obligately interdependent: they are unable to reproduce and survive to reproductive age without a group even in technologically advanced regions. Without dismissing the significance of individual self-interest in group life, the central problem for understanding the biology of social life is coordination. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 385

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the neo-Darwinian/indexical self-interest baseline relevant to the reader’s Allport reassessment; coordination, not selfishness, is the core evolutionary problem.
• QUESTION: If group life is obligate rather than chosen, what does that imply for models of intergroup prejudice that assume a default solipsistic self expanded outward?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 385