Photo by Sanjay Kanojia/AFP/Getty Images An age-old debate about human nature is being energised with new findings on the tightrope of cooperation and competition By Jonathan R Goodman, is a social scientist based at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge, UK. He is the author of Invisible Rivals: How We Evolved to Compete in a Cooperative World (2025). Reading classic works in evolutionary biology is unlikely to make you optimistic about human nature. From Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man (1871) onwards, there is a fundamental understanding among biologists that organisms, especially humans, evolved to maximise self-interest. We act to promote our own … Continue reading How selfish are we?