In Search of the “Society Genes”: What Can Link Individual Genetics and Social Structure

Abstract

Genome editing technologies make it important to look for genetic determinants that can influence the structure of society and basic social relations. This paper proposes to look for such determinants in the evolutionarily ancient mechanisms of group interaction, namely in the genes that determine the balance of cooperation and competition. The opposition of these two forces is thought to be the basis of the evolutionary development of intelligence in higher primates and humans. The article provides examples showing that individual characteristics such as extraversion/introversion as measured by the "Big Five" methodology, aggressiveness, which strongly associates with the risk taking, and the level of intelligence, all of these traits a) greatly influence the organization of social processes and b) are largely genetically determined. As a development of this approach of searching for socially significant genetic determinants, it is proposed to model genetic changes in sociality, aggressiveness and intelligence at the individual level, followed by an analysis of the resulting social changes.