The Untidy Truth About Human Nature

When I was a student studying anthropology, one of the major debates we had to grapple with was the Nature versus Nurture Argument. The nature versus nurture argument is a classic debate about what determines human behaviour and development. The Nature side argues that our traits and characteristics are primarily the result of genetics and biology—in other words, we are shaped by our DNA. The Nurture theory argues that we are primarily shaped by our environment and experiences—such as upbringing, culture, and education.

Today, most anthropologists agree that it is not a matter of one or the other, but a complex interaction between both that defines who we are.

With the advancement of genetics and the understanding of DNA, the Nature argument has shifted, to a degree, in trying understand what makes us human. Are we, at our core, selfish creatures driven only by a cold genetic calculus, as some biologists have argued since Darwin? Or are we a uniquely cooperative species, wired for fairness and mutual aid, as some anthropologists and psychologists would suggest?

I would argue that the answer is far messier and more interesting than either of these opposing camps would have you believe. The traditional biological narrative is stark, painting evolution as a game of narrow self-interest where organisms are shaped solely to maximise survival and reproduction - Darwin's 'natural selection' often cited as 'the survival of the fittest': a phrase coined by British philosopher and sociologist Herbert Spencer in his 1864 book Principles of Biology. This view reached its zenith with movements like Sociobiology, which framed even our deepest loves and moral codes as elaborate illusions, clever tricks played by Richard Dawkins' selfish gene to perpetuate itself. In this version, a mother’s sacrifice is not altruism but strategy, and morality is merely a useful mirage.

In reaction to this rather bleak portrait of human behaviour, a counter-narrative emerged, one that highlights our extraordinary capacity for cooperation as the real secret to our species’ success. I remember (name dropping here) meeting the anthropologist, Richard Leakey, at Southampton University, who asserted that "we are human because our ancestors learned to share". In his view, early humans used social cohesion and vocal communication to overcome challenges, such as processing animal hides, which they could not do individually. This view paints us as inherently prosocial, using our intelligence, language, and cultural learning to build complex societies and solve problems together. It draws strength from theories like cultural group selection, which proposes that groups with stronger cooperative norms simply out-competed and outlasted less cohesive ones. This story is comforting: it aligns with romanticised visions of an egalitarian hunter-gatherer past and suggests that cooperation, not selfishness, is our default state. It saves us from the chilling conclusion that biological selfishness underpins all behaviour.

Yet, for all their compelling arguments, I suggest both of these stories are ultimately incomplete. Human evolution did not hardwire us to be either selfish or selfless. Instead, it equipped us with a dual capacity for both profound cooperation and fierce competition. Our unique intelligence serves a double purpose: it allows us to build trust and collaborate for mutual benefit, but it also allows us to calculate when to dominate, when to hide our intentions, and when to cheat if we believe we can get away with it. We are not prisoners of a single instinct but masters of social strategies.

This complexity reveals a critical flaw in the 'cooperative utopia' model. The evidence often cited for innate human fairness comes from experiments like the Ultimatum Game: a behavioural economics experiment where a 'proposer' suggests how to split a sum of money with a 'responder,' who can accept (both get money) or reject (neither gets money). Contrary to rational, self-interest theory, people, across cultures, often reject low offers (20-30%) as unfair, leading proposers to offer more equitable splits. The tendency to make fair offers and punish unfairness, suggesting a deep 'inequity aversion' - seen as a keystone of human morality.

However, what emerges in the reality of human behaviour is that context is everything. These games are typically played anonymously, stripped of the very forces that govern cooperation in real life: reputation, ongoing relationships, and the threat of future retaliation. When anthropologists like Polly Wiessner, currently a professor at the University of Utah, made the lack of social consequences explicitly clear to participants, behaviour shifted noticeably. This demonstrates that behaviour in a sterile lab is not a window into a fixed human nature; it shows what we do when the normal social pressures that make cooperation possible are removed. It measures not who we are, but what we do when no one is watching, and nothing is at stake.

This brings us to the heart of the matter: what is often referred to as the Problem of Opportunity: the concept that many, if not all, obstacles, challenges, or 'problems' actually present valuable opportunities for innovation, growth, and improvement. By reframing a negative situation—like budget cuts or competition—as a chance to change, businesses can drive improvement, gain competitive advantages, and boost employee motivation. Humans possess a remarkable behavioural plasticity. The same person who acts with a generous spirit in their close-knit community might exploit a loophole in a distant, anonymous bureaucracy.

Studies on moral credentialing show how people who first establish a 'good' identity, perhaps by donating to charity, can feel licensed to act more selfishly later. We are not a species of born cooperators or born cheaters. We are a species of strategic actors, exquisitely sensitive to social context, risk, and reward. Our nature is, in essence, to adapt our social behaviour to the landscape of opportunities before us. In fact, Darwin understood this trait but articulated it distantly: he understood adaptation to the environment, he conceived it as a process that shapes a species' inherited traits over vast periods, not as something an individual does consciously in their own life. Our strategic acting is more about behavioural flexibility, which is itself an evolved trait that Darwin and subsequent scientists (like those in the field of evolutionary psychology) have explored.

If cooperation is not our automatic setting but a fragile social achievement, then the goal is not to wish for a kinder human nature but to consciously design the environments that elicit our better selves. I would argue that the way forward lies in building societies that foster real interdependence and community, where people are known, and accountability is high. It requires creating more transparent systems that reduce the 'moral wiggle room' and anonymous loopholes that enable hidden selfishness. Ultimately, it means structuring incentives so that fair play and collective benefit become the most strategically sound personal choices.

This has to be acutely important as Western societies struggle to create social coherence within a global society. The global society presents significant challenges. On the one hand,

it can lead to cultural homogenization, where the dominance of a few major cultures erodes local traditions, languages, and unique identities, resulting in a less diverse world. Economically, while globalisation creates wealth, it often concentrates it among a few, leaving developing nations and lower-skilled workers behind through the exploitation of cheap labour. This is compounded by a loss of local control, as distant and unaccountable international bodies or corporations can hold more power over people's lives than their own governments. On the other hand, the high mobility and digital connection of a globalised world can paradoxically weaken tight-knit local communities and traditional support systems. This tight interconnection means that problems spread faster, allowing economic crises, pandemics, and crime to become global threats that are much harder to contain. Stability and cultural coherence are undermined, and democratic control is fractured leading to more authoritarian governance and repression.

It is clear, I would argue, that the story of human nature isn’t a simple fable of selfish genes or noble savages. It’s the complex saga of a species intelligent enough to build towering civilisations on trust, yet cunning enough to quietly undermine them for personal gain. By accepting this picture—our capacity for both incredible unity and ingenious self-interest—we should stop searching for a mythical human essence and an ideological paradise and focus, thoughtfully, on constructing a world where choosing to cooperate is, unmistakably, the right and smart move for everyone.