How is competition better than cooperation?

Does the concept that human evolution has been driven by competition between groups, with success based on altruism and cooperation, undermine any common arguments of evolutionary psychology theory?

• For example, that men have fewer resources invested in a child, so they have a drive to impregnate and run. In pursuing our self-interested goals, we often have an incentive to repay kindness with kindness, so others will do us favors when we’re in need. We have an incentive to establish a reputation for niceness, so people will want to work with us. We have an incentive to work in teams, even against our short-term self-interest because cohesive groups thrive. Cooperation is as central to evolution as mutation and selection, Nowak argues. ... In his book, “The Righteous Mind,” to be published early next year, Jonathan Haidt joins Edward O. Wilson, David Sloan Wilson, and others who argue that natural selection takes place not only when individuals compete with other individuals, but also when groups compete with other groups. Both competitions are examples of the survival of the fittest, but when groups compete, it’s the cohesive, cooperative, internally altruistic groups that win and pass on their genes. The idea of “group selection” was heresy a few years ago, but there is momentum behind it now. Human beings, Haidt argues, are “the giraffes of altruism.” Just as giraffes got long necks to help them survive, humans developed moral minds that help them and their groups succeed. Humans build moral communities out of shared norms, habits, emotions and gods, and then will fight and even sometimes die to defend their communities. Different interpretations of evolution produce different ways of analyzing the world. The selfish-competitor model fostered the utility-maximizing model that is so prevalent in the social sciences, particularly economics. The new, more cooperative view will complicate all that. But the big upshot is this: For decades, people tried to devise a rigorous “scientific” system to analyze behavior that would be divorced from morality. But if cooperation permeates our nature, then so does morality, and there is no escaping ethics, emotion and religion in our quest to understand who we are and how we got this way. David Brooks, "Nice Guys Finish First" http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/opinion/17brooks.html?ref=davidbrooks

• Answer:

  Evolution has historically only favored cooperation and altruism within groups, and the definition of a "group" is a pretty fluid and contextual one. People band together to fight a common enemy and then fall into squabbling among one another as soon as the shared threat is removed. Even families can compete bitterly and even violently among themselves. It's true that we're programmed by evolution for morality and altruism, but we're also programmed for deception and cheating. To me, the central mystery of human nature is how our compassionate and moral impulses can coexist in the same minds as our murderous rages. I've noticed that the most serenely moral societies nevertheless find it effortless to hate and persecute outsiders. My hippie friends love to invoke Buddhist societies like Tibet and Bhutan as being more enlightened than our own, but those two countries were at war with each other for centuries. Genetically, Tibetans and Bhutanese are indistinguishable, and logically ought to be cooperating, but no. The concept of universal love among humans is a very recent idea, and an extremely fragile one. While I think it's a wonderful ideal to strive for, I'm guessing that it's no more attainable than universal love among chimpanzees. Given our nature, I think universal grudging indifference is a more realistic goal.