The evolution of jerks

[John Eric Tiessen]

To start things off I am not critizing evolution, it is a valid scientific theory that has been used succesfully numerous times to explain biological phenomenon. What I am asking is how did jerkus-maximus come to exist.

According to theory of evolution traits that increase ones chances for survival are more likely to be passed down to the next generation and thus spread through the population. This is why humans have big brains and tucans have huge beaks. What is strange though is why evolution of humans would allow 'jerks' to exist.

From an objective prospective 'jerks' tend to consume more resources and also tend to be more likely to cause problems for a group, so why would their genes be successful in human populations? Where living in groups was one of our key evolutionary adaptations?

In theory 'jerks' should be bred out of existence. Their incredibly self-interested genes should fade away into an undesirable genetic disorder. So why are they still a significant and vocal minority?

[Hutch Hogan]

From an objective prospective 'jerks' tend to consume more resources and also tend to be more likely to cause problems for a group, so why would their genes be successful in human populations? Where living in groups was one of our key evolutionary adaptations?

Maybe you'll understand with a bit of word history.  We used to call "jerks", "king" instead. 

[John Eric Tiessen]

Not all kings were Jerks though. The most successful kings tended to be men who had a genuine concern for their people. Think of King Darius, King Solomon and Queen Elizabeth. These are some of history's greatest rulers and they seemed like pretty nice people.

In Chinese history Emperors who didn't follow the mandate of heaven tended to not succeed, or if they did not for very many generations. So yes a king could be a jerk but it would be to their disadvantage.

[Abreo]

You're really deciding whether someone was a jerk or not by whether they behaved rashly and without forethought or if they considered the consequences of their actions before hand. It very possible to be a jerk and to realize that if you go out of your way to destroy your country by overworking citizens, killing them or ruining the economy you'll be screwed. Jerks are capable of self-preservation even if the stereotypical one is a slightly below-average intellect bully with anger issues. 

[Hutch Hogan]

In Chinese history Emperors who didn't follow the mandate of heaven tended to not succeed, or if they did not for very many generations. So yes a king could be a jerk but it would be to their disadvantage.

In Chinese history, the mandate of heaven was invented well after entire dynasties ended.  It was also taken away in hindsight. 

[John Eric Tiessen]

Alright, I made a mistake in how I interpreted the mandate of heaven. I can also accept that rulers behaving rationally and wisely can be due to self interest rather than actual benevolence. Though I would still argue that many of the most successful rulers were in fact benevolent.

However, Abreo cited an excellent article that explains in evolutionary terms why 'jerk' traits would tend to be reinforced in a population. The article states that traits characteristic of bad-boys tend to indicate abilities that are important for reproduction. Specifically bad-boy traits tend to be a cue to women that they are capable of providing resources and protection which are essential to having ones offspring survive. The article goes on to reason that women tend to feel that after they get into a relationship with a bad-boy that they feel they can change them into a committed partner. That provides an explanation of why the genes can continue to persist but fails to explain why a woman would feel that the only person who can provide for them is their mate. In social groups the group usually takes care of offspring. In short, if you live in a group what is the advantage of risking a non-committal relationship for some genes that ultimately have very little impact on the survivability of offspring?

[Cameron Ch.]

Good people don't necessarily make good rulers, and good rulers aren't necessarily good people. Many a leader has had to make a choice between "horrible" and "slightly less horrible but also has these other things that make it equally bad." It's very rare that a policy shows up on your desk that can be so clear-cut and obvious. If it was that easy, it wouldn't be that hard, and YOU as the ruler wouldn't have to deal with it because everyone lower in the chain of command wouldn't have had a problem with it.

Like take the recent ACA supreme court ruling. Sure, it's GREAT for everyone to have health care, but is it really fair to REQUIRE EVERYONE to buy it? Even those that can't afford it?

I'm not standing in one camp or the other on this, but that's an example where there is no easy answer and there is no clear, benevolent solution. The more you try to make it benevolent, the more complicated it gets (well, we'll just make a new program to cover the poor people... well how is that fair to the people who CAN afford it, and who is going to pay for that too? It's not like it magically becomes "free" because you make a program).

For everything you try to do that is good, you spring up multiple additional problems. It becomes cancerous and bloated and starts making people question why it was a good idea in the first place.

I'm... not going to comment on the "girls like bad boys" thing because... that's a tinderbox I don't want to touch.

[Eystein,]

Jerks are successful because they have a way of making everyone else their bitches. Why that is I do not know, but I think it might have something to do with that they usually have a lot of admirable qualities before they consolidate power; like having a good-looking athletic bodies, handsome smiles and confidence etc. Usually they have good humor too. People will naturally want be around them and I guess it's just a matter of time before the jerk learns to use this attraction for his own personal gain. Carefully at first, but after a while a ruthless hierarchy based of looks and money will have emerged, leaving those at the bottom fair game for everyone to push around for personal satisfaction. Everyone wants to be as close to the jerk as possible because it gives them more immunity towards to the kind public humiliation it is so fun to subject the losers to. One way of doing this is to behave even more like a jerk so the jerk doesn't have to.

 

So I don't think it is an individual's genes who creates the jerk, it is the product of having the sort of traits social animals generally looks for in a leader and subsequently how everyone else behaves around them.

 

It is of course very stressful to live under the tyranny of a jerk, not only for the losers who gets bullied around, but also for everyone else who lives in constant fear of tripping down the social ladder. This eventually makes people, in their own time and for their own reasons, turn their backs at the jerk if they can. As the previous poster mentioned, that have for the most part in our history not been possible. Today though, the jerk will usually gradually lose his grip on the majority, but by then it's already too late because the jerk has already been born and many jerks find it hard to change. Of course on the occation that the jerk acctually managed to pass High School, then he might still pose a problem - especially if he has learned to become manipulative, but he will usually never again reattain the kind of respect and authority he held in the begging of High School. ...unless he ventures into politics.

[John Eric Tiessen]

Are you saying that people learn to be jerks and that their genetics are what makes it possible for them to consider being a jerk? i.e. If you are strong and fit you can afford to be a jerk, while if you are weak and sickly you cannot?

[Abreo]

Well the first important thing to realize is that being a jerk is not an evolutionary trait so much as it is just a learned trait. There are have been tribes in which every single member is considered an equal part of the group and because of the philosophy of the tribe the jerks that you're describing wouldn't come about in those tribes unless they were actually just someone with a mental disorder.

However jerks have a much easier time surviving and reproducing than other members of society. 

http://expose.fas.harvard.edu/issues/issue_2011/horgan.html

That's an article about in what ways and why women seem to have a preference for bad boys and why they generally claim otherwise. There's other articles out there as well that say things like women prefer bad boys for one nighters and nice guys for marriage or stuff like that. Basically jerks display traits like confidence and power that women like however those traits may get annoying after a while. Still it only takes one night to produce a baby. 

Natural selection wise jerks are the ones who steal from and kill everyone else to get on top, not nice people. 

It's easy to figure out.

[John Eric Tiessen]

I read the article and agree with its reasoning. The article provides an explanation of what women find attractive and why. The article fails to explain though how the 'why' is even remotely valid.

The article says that women like bad boys because they seem to be able to provide adequate resources and protection. In a groups/tribal environment though why would it matter if an individual can provide resources? The female can just as easily gain assistance from friends and family, why would she need to place all of her hopes of food and protection on one individual? In a group setting the ideal person would be one that can work well with others and get the group to maximize its utility. I suppose that two types of people could fill that role: A vindictive leader or a wise and benevolent one. Now which one does evolution favor more strongly?

Perhaps I am being too critical of evolution. Humans have only been living in large societies for about 4,000 years, an evolutionary blink of an eye, it would be interesting to see what traits continue to be passed down over time.

[Abreo]

4,000 years is nothing. We would only completely lose the trait if it was definitely completely useless.

Even then though if a female wants good offspring who would produce better offspring then someone who is powerful and confident? Nobody wants their children to be weak and insecure. Children who are weak and insecure in human societies stay at the bottom of the social ladder, even if they're in fixed hierarchy they're not respected by their peers.

Also I would argue that receiving help from other members of your group isn't the best thing to rely on. In some societies more than others you can rely on this but usually in every society up until very recently the male provided for the female more so than anybody else. If she was a single-mother she may have even suffered some disrespect for it. She'd also have to go move in with other members of the family and if she couldn't work that just meant she'd be a burden. The human race also never had a consistent society all over the Earth. We split off into groups and those groups are always changing how they do things. Not to mention some societies were very war focused so if the man the women slept with was weak he might die in war and then her child might die in war. 

Basically there hasn't been a long period of peaceful communal living in human society where women weren't second class citizens so there's no way they could evolve to not want a strong male presence in their lives. 

[Nicole Garamella]

The problem with this question is that Jerks exist not through evolution in it's scientific form, as you so wonderfully  put it, but because they are products of the society in which they live in. Humans leave very little to evolution nowadays. Physically, we are all still mutating and changing with every new born child. Yet, society on the whole is very rigidly structured, and although many strive to intellectually and mentally enhance themselves, many are content with living in the mundane roles society has given them.

Because of this, Jerks are born and raised into a hollywood created society were the jerks reign and consume more than they are worth and step on non-jerks to get to the top. Because our society, thankfully, does not permit killing people who are jerks, they can live on, reproduce, and make more jerks. 

But most importantly, parts of society HAVE progressed, eliminating jerks out of their spheres. This in its self is a sort of evolution. Some of us humans really are continuing forward. But, like all evolutionary tracks, some 'species' branch off earlier than others.  Nerdfighteria, for example, is full of the knowledge and goodness of human nature; the good genes that you seek. However, the jerks branched off earlier and didn't get to evolve further. We are the same species technically, but we function on different levels. Luckily, we have outlets like this to stay away from jerks, and both jerks and non-jerks can live together without any real problems.  That's the beauty of human nature, actually. We are all uniquely different from each other, no two people completely the same. It's what separates us from other primates. So try to be tolerant of the jerks; that's just the way life works.