The unselfish gene

From the Guardian Unlimited: The origin of altruism goes to the heart of the gene/culture debate that was launched in 1975 with the publication of EO Wilson's Sociobiology and, a year later, Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene. Sociobiology claims that human nature - and by extension human society - is rooted in our genes: we are, according to Dawkins, "lumbering robots" created "body and mind" by selfish genes.
At the same time kindness and cooperation underpin much of human society. From the Kyoto agreement to arms controls or the state of public toilets, they all depend on individual willingness to commit resources to a common good. But no one has come up with a satisfactory evolutionary explanation of why we do it. In a recent Nature paper, Ernst Fehr and Urs Fischbacher of the University of Zurich claim that the key to promote what they call strong reciprocity is rewarding generosity with kindness but punishing cheaters, even at the expense of the punisher. Strong reciprocity promotes kindness and discourages cheats, but is it a product of our genes or in our culture? It can't be entirely genetic, since different human societies (with very similar genes) vary greatly in their tolerance of cheating. Fehr and Fischbacher argue for gene-culture co-evolution: cultural and institutional environments promote social norms that favour the selection of genes that promote cooperation.
Making strong reciprocity work at both a local level (discouraging anti-social behaviour) and international level (persuading the Americans to sign the Kyoto agreement) would be beneficial to society and the world.