Evolution, Immigration and Trade

By Paul H. Rubin
Special to washingtonpost.com's Think Tank Town
Monday, May 7, 2007; 12:00 AM

It was once thought that humans are born as "blank slates" to be programmed by our families, culture and society. While those forces play an important role, evolutionary psychology teaches us that human behavior is also the product of the environment in which humanity evolved -- that many of our intuitions are ingrained because they contributed to our primitive ancestors' survival.

Public policy pays surprisingly little attention to evolutionary psychology. Yet there are many human intuitions and behaviors that influence contemporary policy issues -- sometimes in ways that are no longer useful or perhaps even harmful to humans flourishing. These intuitions are sometimes referred to as "folk economics," and one area in which they often emerge is the international economy.

Our primitive ancestors lived in a world that was essentially static; there was little societal or technological change from one generation to the next. This meant that our ancestors lived in a world that was zero sum -- if a particular gain happened to one group of humans, it came at the expense of another.

This is the world our minds evolved to understand. To this day, we often see the gain of some people and assume it has come at the expense of others. Economists have argued for more than two centuries that voluntary trade, whether domestic or international, is positive sum: it benefits both parties, or else the exchange wouldn't occur. Economists have also long argued that the economics of immigration -- immigrants coming here to exchange their labor for money that they then exchange for the products of other people's labor -- is positive sum. Yet our evolutionary intuition is that, because foreign workers gain from trade and immigrant workers gain from joining the U.S. economy, native-born workers must lose. This zero-sum thinking leads us to see trade and immigration as conflict ("trade wars," "immigrant invaders") when trade and immigration actually produce cooperation and mutual benefit, the exact opposite of conflict.

Conflict was common in the environment in which humans evolved. As primates, which are a very social order, our ancestors lived in relatively small groups in which everyone knew everyone else. Our minds are adapted to deal with populations of that size. Our ancestors made strong distinctions between members of the in-group and outsiders, and we still make such distinctions today -- social psychologists can create in-group and out-group feelings based on virtually any arbitrary difference between populations.

The in-group and out-group intuitions help fuel opposition to expanded trade and immigration. The public intuitively believes that the beneficiaries of such policies will be foreigners, and it is easy to arouse suspicion about those who are not part of our in-group. When coupled with zero-sum thinking, this is a powerful political tool. For instance, a domestic industry or collection of domestic workers, when having difficulty competing with foreign or immigrant competitors, can use innate dislike of outsiders when advocating for increased barriers.

As the evolutionary inheritors of small-group societies, our minds sometimes have difficulty appreciating risks, harms and benefits experienced by a large population. In a group of 100 people, when we observe something that has happened to someone, it is a reasonably likely event. In a society of 300 million, when we learn about something happening to one person, it may be an extremely unlikely event, but we often perceive it as likely when we see it on the news. This instinct also shapes our perspective on trade and immigration. We understandably have great sympathy for workers who lose their jobs because they can't compete with foreign workers, but we have difficulty appreciating the benefit that our nation of consumers gains from the products of foreign laborers.

As products of evolution, humans cannot help but be born with certain biases. But we are not condemned to this evolutionary programming; we can identify the biases and recognize when they lead us astray in the modern world. American history is marked by many periods of openness to trade and immigration, and those periods have often featured strong economic growth and human prosperity. However, American history has also seen many instances in which our zero-sum and anti-outsider intuitions reemerged, whether in the form of prohibitions against "dogs or Irishmen" or policies against "outsourcing."

A useful analogy is between speech and reading. All humans growing up in a normal environment learn to speak, but reading must be taught because it does not come naturally. Folk economic beliefs are like speech -- we get them without trying. A deeper understanding of economics is like reading -- it must be taught.

America's success in lowering its barriers to outsiders shows that we can and do learn. But like reading, we must teach each generation anew.

Paul H. Rubin is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Economics and Law at Emory University and the author of Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origin of Freedom (Rutgers University Press, 2002). He has been writing a series on evolution and economic behavior for the Cato Institute's journal Regulation.

I've never subscribed to that Tabula Rasa crap,I've seen enough to conclude heredity has a dominant role,If I have a bad heart and my Father had the same thing,in addition to certain other faulty genetic markers why not similar behavioural traits passed on?First thing I noticed about my daughter was her striking similarity personality-wise and physical resemblance to my wife's mother.

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PAUL H. RUBIN is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Economics and Law at Emory University in Atlanta and editor in chief of Managerial and Decision Economics. He is a Fellow of the Public Choice Society and former Vice President of the Southern Economics Association, and is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Independent Institute, a Senior Fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, an Adjunct Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. Dr. Rubin has been Senior Staff Economist at President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, Chief Economist at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Director of Advertising Economics at the Federal Trade Commission, and vice-president of Glassman-Oliver Economic Consultants, Inc., a litigation consulting firm in Washington. He has taught economics at the University of Georgia, City University of New York, VPI, and George Washington University Law School. Dr. Rubin has written or edited seven books, and published over one hundred articles and chapters on economics, law, regulation, and evolution in journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Legal Studies, Journal of Law and Economics, the Yale Journal on Regulation, and Human Nature, and he sometimes contributes to the Wall Street Journal and other leading newspapers. His work has been cited in the professional literature over 1400 times. He has consulted widely on litigation related matters and is an advisor to the Congressional Budget Office on tort reform. He has addressed numerous business, professional, policy and academic audiences. Dr. Rubin received his B.A. from the University of Cincinnati in 1963 and his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1970.

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I'm having trouble reading between the lines (I think). What is he really saying?

My guess: I'm thinking he is hinting around that the US should mellow out about people crossing the border illegally, because ultimately it will benefit folks on both sides of the border.

I'm also thinking that if this is indeed what he is dancing around (the guy should be a politician), then he needs to know that a large portion of the population wouldn't mind so much if the border crossers paid their share of taxes.

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It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so. Robert A. Heinlein


09 Jetta TDI
1985 300D

As much as it pains me to admit this....I am agreeing with you, you old Spaniard pirate.

IN the whole debate between nature and nurture, I come down heavily on the side of nature. Having 4 kids has allowed me to observe this phenomenon first hand.

In addition, we have to consider the fact that as humans we all share certain common biological memories. According to Joseph Campbell this helps explains the common thread running through many cultures. For example, the story of the flood is found in many, diverse cultures. Only through a commonly shared biological memory can we explain the prevalence of the flood legend. Joseph Campbell

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